I think The Emerald Wand of Oz and Trouble Under Oz were intended to be the first two of four books authorized by the Baum Family Trust, published by book packager Byron Preiss and publisher HarperCollins. But Byron Preiss died in a car accident, and I think the books didn't sell very well anyway.
But there was clearly also unfinished business. The first two books both had Dorothy missing, and mysterious clouds that would pop up and bedevil Dori and Em. I think it's pretty impressive, then, that years later Sherwood Smith decided to do a third book that would wrap it all up, published through Pumpernickel Pickle, one of those small presses that exists to essentially self-publish Oz novels. Illustrator William Stout did not return; instead, the book was illustrated by Kim McFarland, herself an author and illustrator of the self-published A Refugee in Oz (2010).
Sky Pyrates over Oz by Sherwood Smith |
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| Published: 2014 Acquired: September 2024 Read aloud: May–June 2025 |
The first book took place on the ground, the second under it. The third, naturally then, takes us up into the sky. Like Trouble, Sky Pyrates uses a specific Baum novel as a clear jumping-off point, but in this case, not an Oz one: rather, it's Sky Island that inspires this book. Though Dori and Em never go to the Sky Island in this book, they do meet one character from it, and interact with a whole archipelago of islands that float above and around Oz.* It's an evocative setting, and it's Smith's most Ozzy one so far (I didn't find Unicorn Valley in Emerald Wand very interesting and Trouble Under stuck to preexisting locations from the canon). Raggedy-Baggedy, the island of living stuffed people is fun, but my favorite was the land of the winged cats who live in a cloud castle—like Baum always did with animals, Smith does a good job of making them cats in personality and tone. I also enjoyed the titular sky pyrates. Not pirates, but pyrates—swashbuckling adventurers who help those in need in the sky.
The book also delves into an aspect of the Baum canon I don't think anyone else ever has. On Baum's map of Nonestica that first appeared in Tik-Tok of Oz there was the "Kingdom of Dreams," a location he never mentioned in the text of any of his books. Smith makes it into a creepy mysterious place, home of the Nightmare Sorcerer who's behind the strange clouds. But she doesn't spoil all the mystery, establishing that the Nightmare Sorcerer is an interloper in the land himself, thus leaving open what it might be like without him. I think it was well-handled over all.
I also think the sisters are bit more active in this one than in the previous books, solving problems on the various islands they visit. As someone who very much enjoyed the group problem-solving aspect of Oz novels, I was appreciative of this. The sisters are whisked to Oz with their dad, but Smith has his transformed into a (non-talking) dog in short order, meaning that though he contributes, the sisters' choices still drive the narrative. Unfortunately, I did find that as the story came to an end, things kind of got too big for the girls to handle, and Glinda and to lesser extent the sky pyrate captains very much took over while the girls watched. It's a tricky thing to do in an Oz book, I think—make a threat big enough to be exciting, but not involve people like Glinda and Ozma in the resolution. (I also didn't feel like Glinda's defeat of the Nightmare Sorcerer was very climactic; why not do that back at the beginning of the book?)
I found the wrap-up to the whole trilogy decently satisfying, though there were still some threads left open. We know what happened to Dorothy, but I didn't really get why the sisters thought they were related to her. It seems to me there's a clear space for a fourth book, still: the girls themselves flag this up when they point out at the end they didn't have an underwater adventure yet, which would tie into the subplot of Dori meeting a mermaid in both Emerald Wand and Trouble Under. Furthermore, the book ends with the girls' dad knowing they've travelled to Oz, but their mom still in disbelief. Surely that was the direction of the possible fourth book: their mom being dragged along this time and learning that magic is real. Though how would Rik have fit in? The end of the book also promises he and the other Nome boys will join the sky pyrates and possible learn some discipline. On top of all that, this book briefly introduces another American kid book drawn into Oz, a deaf boy named Liu, and Dori and Em speculate it would be fun to go on an adventure with him as well. So there are lots of possible directions for more! I would read them; I feel like these books were on an upward trajectory.
My kid said they liked it. I think they were particularly into the sky cats.
Kim McFarland's illustrations are... okay. Like with William Stout's in the first two, there's not many of them, and like with those, they're often portraity instead of dynamic. But I wonder if that was a deliberate choice in trying to match the first two books. We do learn from the cover that Dori and Em are Black (this was not clearly indicated in the previous books' pictures, nor stated in the prose), which I think makes them the first Black children in any Oz book I've ever read. I don't think McFarland is as good an illustrator as Stout though, even if I wasn't very into his portraity style. Hers is more... DeviantArt, I guess?
Oh, one other thing. There's a bit (clearly inspired by Ozma of Oz) where the characters have to find a transformed Dorothy in a storeroom. When they are looking for her, they first find a phoenix who bursts into flames and then flies away. Glinda says it's nothing to do with their adventure, but someone else's—either an end or a beginning. I am guessing this is a tie into another Sherwood Smith book, but don't know which one! She did write a book called The Phoenix in Flight, but I think that's sf. She later wrote a quartet of novels called The Phoenix Feather; was she anticipating that?
Back in July 2021, I read The Wonderful Wizard of Oz aloud to my kid. They were almost 3 at the time... now they're almost 7, and we've read sixty-two of them! We've read every one of the Famous Forty, plus all the "Borderlands" books and any Oz novel by a Royal Historian and/or with some kind of imprimatur from either the Oz Club or the Baum Trust. I was optimistic when we started, but would never have guessed we'd be going four years later at a rate of fifteen per year! Of course, they don't even remember those early books directly anymore, though the first seven or so they've re-experienced a couple times via various adaptions (movies, audiobooks, the Shanower/Young comics), so they know what happened in those ones. But I think there's a big wasteland of memory from Tik-Tok onward; I'm not sure when you reach a point where they clearly do remember the books again. Are they the only kid in the world whose conception of Oz is primarily drawn from Oz Club publications? Imagine remembering Ozmapolitan of Oz better than Tin Woodman!
I'm not sure if they so much like it as think that reading Oz books is just a way of life. Maybe someday they will read them on their own, and get to experience those early books for themselves.
Next up in sequence: ???
* I know the purpose of Smith's books was to tie into Baum's Oz books specifically, but I am a bit disappointed we didn't get at least references to some of the many floating islands that Ruth Plumly Thompson introduced in her Oz novels: the Skyle of Un, Umbrella Island, and Kapurta. I guess the grand unified Oz sky island novel remains to be written. (Actually, I think all of the relevant novels were under copyright in 2014, and two of them still are. It's the kind of thing Oziana could do... except that while they have the right to reference all the Famous Forty novels, they don't have the rights to reference Sherwood Smith's!)
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