Monday, July 06, 2009

Oz Character - the Giant Horse of Oz

Here's another obscure "Wizard of Oz" character. It's High Boy, the Giant Horse of Oz. He starred in the 1928 book The Giant Horse of Oz. High Boy is distinguished from other horses by his telescoping extensions.

The book also features King Cheeriobed. From his name, I think it might be a safe guess that he eats cereal in bed. There is also a quixotic character named Quiberon.

The illustration of to the left is from 1983 and is by Eric Shanower.




11 comments:

Ananda girl said...

High Boy is wonderful! I have not read this one and I was fairly sure that I had read them all. Thanks!

Wouldn't it be nice if we could make our legs do that? I could reach my top kitchen shelf!

dmarks said...

Thanks for your comment on this limited-interest post!

Rob said...

I read all of Baum's Oz books in 9th grade. I didn't read this one because it's not by Baum.

Of course, only the first two or so of Baum's books were worth reading. For all I know, Thompson's book may be better than Baum's hack work.

dmarks said...

Baum's 4th Oz book might be my favorite, looking back.

cube said...

Is King Cheeriobed related to Queen Frostedflakebed? ;-)

DaBlade said...

I didn't think the stilted legged horse interested me... but then I couldn't stop staring at him.

MrManuel said...

I can honestly say I didn't know there were other stories of Oz besides The Wizard of...

dmarks said...

MrManuel: 40 or 50 official books. 20 or so by the original author.

laura b. said...

Oz was probably about the first children's book franchises. Now they just keep on coming...

Rob said...

You could be right, Laura. Of course, the Oz books were preceded by Aesop's Fables, Hans Christian Anderson's fairy tales, Grimm's Fairy Tales, Carroll's Alice in Wonderland, Alcott's Little Women, and Kipling's The Jungle Books and Just So Stories. Don't know if you could count any of these as real "franchises."

P.S. A good list of "Classics for Young People":

http://www.ucalgary.ca/~dkBrown/storclas.html

Churlita said...

I tried to read all of the Oz books when I was younger, but didn't get very far. They all seemed to get weirder and more disjointed, the further along I got in the series.