HANDY MANDY IN OZ

Handy Mandy in Oz (1937) is the thirty-first of the Oz books created by L. Frank Baum and his successors, and the seventeenth written by Ruth Plumly Thompson. It was illustrated by John R. Neill. The book's heroine is an "honest and industrious" goat-girl named Mandy, who grazes her flock on the slopes of Mt. Mern (a location otherwise unidentified). The story opens with a bang and a splash: an underground spring erupts in a geyser that blasts Mandy into the sky. The force propels her across the Deadly Desert to Oz; she lands in the little principality of Keretaria in the Munchkin Country, her impact cushioned by the power of a magic blue daisy. Mandy finds a silver hammer, and meets a white ox with golden horns; she blunders into the court of King Kerr of Keretaria and his courtiers. They are outraged by the intrusion of such an outlandish figure ? for Mandy has seven arms and hands.