The Surprising Adventures of the Magical Monarch of Mo and His People
1903
The Surprising Adventures of the Magical Monarch of Mo and His People
1903
This is L. Frank Baum before Oz, and you can feel the joy of a writer discovering his imagination unfettered. The Magical Monarch of Mo rules a valley where the sun never sets, where rivers run with milk and candy grows in fields but this isn't a gentle nursery tale. It's something stranger: a world where a king can lose his head fighting a Purple Dragon and receive a series of absurd replacements from his devoted subjects, each new head more ridiculous than the last. Baum piles nonsense upon nonsense with the delight of a man playing make-believe, and the effect is utterly enchanting. For readers who fell in love with Alice in Wonderland, this is Baum working in similar territory before he found his more structured Oz universe. It endures because it captures the pure freedom of a writer inventing without rules, and it remains irresistible to anyone who wants to remember what it felt like to believe in impossible worlds.
