31 October 2006

Gump in The Pinhoe Egg?

So what's Diana Wynne Jones's latest fantasy doing on the right, the spot I usually reserve for Oz-related images? And why is that the British cover of the book instead of the American?

Today I received a comment from Gili in Israel. She wrote:

I take it you read the American edition of this book, and I don't know if that contains the chapter heading illustrations drawn by Tim Stevens. But if it does, go back to the illustration for chapter 18. Look! It's the Gump!!
The Gump, for the unitiated, is a character from L. Frank Baum's The Marvelous Land of Oz. Originally it was a wild horned ruminant, like an elk with a goat's beard, but then it heard a loud noise and all went black. When the Gump regained life and consciousness, it found that its body had been replaced with a roped-together hodgepodge of sofas, palm leaves, and a broom for a tail.

Here's a picture of the Gump by John R. Neill, the moosy version from the Return to Oz movie, and a latter-day image.

But I can't see the image by Tim Stevens that Gili wrote about because his illustrations aren't in the US edition of The Pinhoe Egg!

3 comments:

David Lee Ingersoll said...

Another version of the Gump

Anonymous said...

second try - a URL for the Tim Stevens illustration:

http://www.picturetrail.com/gallery/view?p=999&gid=13489545&uid=488496

Gili

J. L. Bell said...

Thanks! Stevens's picture of the boys' flying machine indeed looks gumpish, with a taxidermy head on the front and a broom out the back.

But I don't find the boys looking much like the boys I'd imagined. Roger's face is too thin, Joe's head too large. If this is what I'm missing by reading the US edition, I'm okay with that.