Peter Brown is a boy from America who visited the Land of Oz several times.
Peter is from Philadelphia, and is an avid baseball player; he is the pitcher for his team, and loyalty to his teammates prevents him from seriously considering remaining in Oz after his adventures are done. (He even declines to be made a prince.) Peter lives with his grandfather (he may be an orphan), and his grandfather is surprisingly tolerant of his grandson's excursions to fairyland.
Peter was nine years old on his first trip to Oz.
Book Appearances[]
- The Gnome King of Oz (1927) (first appearance)
- Jack Pumpkinhead of Oz (1929)
- Pirates in Oz (1931)
Background[]
Ruth Plumly Thompson employed Peter in three books in five years, making him the most used of her original human child characters.
Peter is a rare male child protagonist in the Oz series; L. Frank Baum had famously favored little girl protagonists - Dorothy Gale, Betsy Bobbin, and Trot among humans, and Ozma as well. (Ojo the Unlucky is an exception to this tendency, though he is somewhat timid for a hero; Kiki Aru, in The Magic of Oz, is a villain's henchman. Others, like Button-Bright, or Zeb Hugson in Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz, are supporting characters.)
Thompson, in contrast, preferred to create boy heroes - Peter in three novels, Speedy in two, Tompy Terry in one, and David B. Perry in another. Peter constitutes the first American boy hero in the Oz series. (Bobby Downs from The Cowardly Lion of Oz is a supporting character.)
Thompson is inconsistent in regard to Peter's age. He is nine in The Gnome King of Oz. Later in Pirates in Oz she states that he is eleven years old, but also indicates that five years have passed since his original Oz experience. For his first two appearances, he is simply called Peter, with his surname Brown being revealed in his third.
Copyright protections on Thompson's novels have made it difficult for other authors to use Peter. The Gnome King of Oz is in the public domain as of 1 January 2023, which may open up new possibilities.