The Paper Gardens

I think I enjoyed The Marvelous Land of Oz more than I did the original. It managed to keep the same tone as the first book, but made everything bigger.

My biggest complaint with this book were the puns...oh lord, the puns.

At least I wasn't alone in being annoyed at the puns, though. Pretty much every non-punning character in the story made it perfectly clear that puns were not to be tolerated - they're actually treated as downright offensive, and quite a few arguments break out over their use.

I'm glad that the Scarecrow and Tip saw to it that the Wogglebug was...was...pun-

Oh god. It's contagious!

The book also managed a strange balance in its portrayal of girls. On one hand, General Jinjur was a strong, feminist character who wanted girls to be able to aspire to more than cooking and cleaning...

...yet on the other hand, she invaded the Emerald City with an army equipped with knitting needles to steal the jewels because they were pretty, and her great defensive strategy was "you wouldn't hit a girl".

There was also the conversation between the Scarecrow and one of the men of the Emerald City, where the man was complaining about all the work they've got to do now that women run the place, and the Scarecrow points out that the men are only doing what the women had been managing for years.

Like I said, it was a weird balance to observe, especially for when the book was written.