Many features of the Harry Potter series are similar to those
of L. Frank Baum’s famous series that began with the Wonderful Wizard of Oz in 1900.
Both begin with a pre-teen orphan
living a very drab life.
Both show that child being raised
by a humdrum aunt and uncle.
In both cases there exist two worlds
in juxtaposition, one is magical, the other not.
Both series center on the orphan entering
the alternative magical world, which is wondrously fascinating though concurrently
filled with mortal danger.
In that new world, perilous tasks
are required of the child—things that the adults of that world seem unable to
do.
Both stories feature witches and
wizards who may be either good or bad.
Dorothy is accompanied by her black
dog, Toto, while Harry Potter has his snowy owl, Hedwig.
Both series feature forbidding
forests, magical mirrors, and fighting trees with branches that hit and grasp.
Both series have animals that can
speak and others that cannot.
The list goes on. . .
MOST IMPORTANTLY—There are evil
forces in both storylines (these take the form of persons highly adept in magic)
and it is the child protagonist who is uniquely able to destroy them.
Major differences between the Baum and Rowling stories
include the fact that Baum never explains how Dorothy was orphaned, while the
way in which Harry lost his parents is key to the entire Harry Potter series.
The environment differs. Dorothy ranges over the countryside
of a magical land, while much of the Potter series is set in a school for
wizards and witches—a fantasy version of Tom
Brown's School Days (1857) by Thomas Hughes.
Another major difference is that the Baum books were far
looser in plot. They were more in the earlier fashion of Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland than in the style developed
for such tales during the twentieth century. Furthermore, the later Oz books written
by Baum do not show much consistency with his first one. They go on to contradict
each other in respect to many of the most basic facts: how Oz was created, whether
people die in Oz, whether money is used there, etc. Subsequent maps of Oz vary
greatly, east even turns to west.
In sharp distinction, the fuller elaboration of plotting in
the Harry Potter books was typical of most of the serial fantasy books of this
type written during the twentieth century—series like those of J. R. R. Tolkien
or C. S. Lewis.
There is little character development shown for Dorothy. Later
books by Baum about Dorothy going back to Oz often ramble through a sequence of
loosely related adventures. She visits a ‘King-of-This’ here, and then goes off
to meet the ‘King-of-That’ there. The Wizard turns up again in a later book,
but he seems a very different person than the one we first met.
Rowling’s stories feature character development. How Harry
grows up is the very basis of her books. Hers books can be called a series of ‘coming
of age’ stories—bildungsromans, some
call the genre. Others around Harry develop as well, surely little Ginny, but
also Hermione and Ron. We even see the villainous Draco Malfoy go through agonizing
character change as the story develops.
............
Let us now look at the new Oz series—THE HIDDEN CHRONICLES
OF OZ.
The first book is now out (The Mysterious Tintype of Oz) and readers will already discover that
the reason that Dorothy lost her parents back in Bowling Green, Kentucky, is likely
to be a key to much that will be going on in the entire new series.
That is only one small way in which the new Oz series is far
closer to Harry Potter than to Alice in Wonderland.
Designed to appeal to older age groups, the world it shows is far more consistently
depicted than in the Baum series.
MOST IMPORTANTLY—While much of the story is laid in 1900, the
style of the new Oz series is consistent with that of the twenty-first century fiction.
Harry Potter fans will quickly realize that fact.
The first book of the new series, The Mysterious Tintype of Oz, may now be found in several e-book
formats.
At Barnes & Noble : http://bit.ly/16koVBu
A preview of the first chapters of Book Two in the series, Balloon to Oz, follow The Mysterious Tintype of Oz.
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