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

By Lyman Frank Baum, Martin Gardner and Frederick Richardson

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.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dover Publications
• Release date: Sep 26, 2012
• ISBN: 9780486172873

Lyman Frank Baum

L. Frank Baum (1856-1919) published The Wonderful Wizard of Oz in 1900 and received enormous, immediate success. Baum went on to write seventeen additional novels in the Oz series. Today, he is considered the father of the American fairy tale. His stories inspired the 1939 classic film The Wizard of Oz, one of the most widely viewed movies of all time. MinaLima is an award-winning graphic design studio founded by Miraphora Mina and Eduardo Lima, renowned for establishing the visual graphic style of the Harry Potter and Fantastic Beasts film series. Specializing in graphic design and illustration, Miraphora and Eduardo have continued their involvement in the Harry Potter franchise through numerous design commissions, from creating all the graphic elements for The Wizarding World of Harry Potter Diagon Alley at Universal Orlando Resort, to designing award-winning publications for the brand. Their best-selling books include Harry Potter and the Philospher’s Stone, Harry Potter Film Wizardry, The Case of Beasts: Explore the Film Wizardry of Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, The Archive of Magic: Explore the Film Wizardry of Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald, and J.K. Rowling’s Fantastic Beasts screenplays. MinaLima studio is renowned internationally for telling stories through design and has created its own MinaLima Classics series, reimagining a growing collection of much-loved tales including Peter Pan, The Secret Garden, and Pinocchio.

Reviews for Queen Zixi of Ix

[niquetteb · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

An enchanted cloak is woven by fairies and given to a poor orphan girl. The fantastical adventures and oddities that surround the cloak take flight throughout the story.

[cassiewinters-2 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

have been a fan of Baum's Oz series for a long time, so I decided it was about time to give some of his other works a chance. I found that my university had a copy of this particular book, so I checked it out. It was a rather interesting read because I realized I was so familiar with the characters of Oz that I was expecting for them to show up, but they never did. I applaud Baum for creating another world, even if it was never as popular as Oz. He creates a wonderful children's story here that has the exact charm as any of his stories about Oz. He truly is a wonderful writer and can drag you into the nonsense that he creates for these worlds with almost no effort.

[ericpatterson · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

have been a fan of Baum's Oz series for a long time, so I decided it was about time to give some of his other works a chance. I found that my university had a copy of this particular book, so I checked it out. It was a rather interesting read because I realized I was so familiar with the characters of Oz that I was expecting for them to show up, but they never did. I applaud Baum for creating another world, even if it was never as popular as Oz. He creates a wonderful children's story here that has the exact charm as any of his stories about Oz. He truly is a wonderful writer and can drag you into the nonsense that he creates for these worlds with almost no effort.

[drbubbles_1 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

I don't know what it is about Edwardian children's literature. As a child I enjoyed all of the examples I read (so far as I can remember); re-reading them as an adult, I find them unpleasantly preposterous, stuffy, or preachy. The examples I've read newly as an adult are about evenly split between pleasant and unpleasant.Zixi is about ¹/₃ pleasant and ²/₃ unpleasant, the latter because it is preposterous and slightly preachy. The preposterousness is astounding: certain spherical villains at one point have arms long enough to capture people, and three paragraphs later have arms barely long enough for them to fold their own hands. Had Baum no respect for children's ability to think? There's a fair amount of deus ex machina, too.