Queen Zixi of Ix: or the Story of the Magic Cloak

L. Frank Baum

sept 2012 · Courier Corporation

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When the renowned author of the wonderful Oz stories surpasses himself with a full-blown fairy tale, complete with magic wishes, palace life, an evil hag, and a poor boy and girl, we know we are in for something exceptional in storytelling. "In some ways," Baum confided to his son, "Queen Zixi is my best effort." The critic Edward Wagenknecht goes further, terming it flatly one of the best fairy tales ever written by anyone.
The master tale-spinner captures suspenseful attention at once with a magic wishing cloak which the fairies decide to give to the first unhappy mortal — man, woman, or child — their emissary chance to meet. At the same time, the King of Noland has died without heir, and the law says the new King shall be the forty-seventh person who happens to pass through the city gates that day. In the neighboring kingdom of Ix, malevolent Queen Zixi, six hundred and eighty-three years old and smug in the secrets of witchcraft, craves that magic cloak with all her evil heart. And that morning, a humble ferryman's son, Bud, happens to be on his way to the city with his pretty sister Fluff …
All who know the enchantment that a real fairy tale can hold for a child will recognize here the ingredients of a spellbinder. Add to them the well-known gifts of the author in creating captivating characters, sparkling fantasy, rich humor, and inventive absurdity, and a true classic of juvenile literature emerges to fascinate both child and parent. An added delight is the inclusion of all 90 of the original illustrations by Frederick Richardson, straight from the pages of St. Nicholas Magazine, where this tale was originally serialized.

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Best known as the author of the Wizard of Oz series, Lyman Frank Baum was born on May 15, 1856, in New York. When Baum was a young man, his father, who had made a fortune in oil, gave him several theaters in New York and Pennsylvania to manage. Eventually, Baum had his first taste of success as a writer when he staged The Maid of Arran, a melodrama he had written and scored. Married in 1882 to Maud Gage, whose mother was an influential suffragette, the two had four sons. Baum often entertained his children with nursery rhymes and in 1897 published a compilation titled Mother Goose in Prose, which was illustrated by Maxfield Parrish. The project was followed by three other picture books of rhymes, illustrated by William Wallace Denslow. The success of the nursery rhymes persuaded Baum to craft a novel out of one of the stories, which he titled The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. Some critics have suggested that Baum modeled the character of the Wizard on himself. Other books for children followed the original Oz book, and Baum continued to produce the popular Oz books until his death in 1919. The series was so popular that after Baum's death and by special arrangement, Oz books continued to be written for the series by other authors. Glinda of Oz, the last Oz book that Baum wrote, was published in 1920.