The Sea Fairies

L. Frank Baum and John R. Neills fantasy book The Sea Fairies is for young readers. A little child named Mayre Griffiths also known as Trot resides on the southern Californian coast. Capn Bill Weedles a former sailor with a wooden leg is her regular friend and her father is the skipper of a sailing schooner. Trot expresses a desire to see a mermaid one day and the next day her dream is accomplished after being overheard.One of the very few completely unredeemable pure-evil characters in Baums novels Zog the Magician is one of the monsters Trot and Capn Bill face. He is a grotesque hybrid of a man an animal and a fish. They see incredible sights in the kingdom of Queen Aquarine and King Anko including an embarrassed octopus who discovers he is the emblem of the Standard Oil Company. The two main characters learn that many sailors who were believed to have drowned were really seized and sold into slavery by Zog.The dominant characters in Oz Baums Oz and his fantasy tales in particular are strong morally upright women; the stereotype of the father figure is barely present. This general pattern is broken only by The Sea Fairies who describe King Anko a sea serpent as being the closest thing to a strong loving father figure.