Reading The Speckled Rose of Oz Aloud to My Kids

"The Early Days of Oz" was a series of books from Books of Wonder back in the 1990s, all written and illustrated by Donald Abbott, chronicling, well, what it says in the title. There were six, two of them being prequels to The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, and the other four set in the gap between Wonderful Wizard and Marvelous Land, when the Scarecrow ruled the Emerald City. I assume this was all mostly because Abbott's illustrative style (at least in these books) is very imitative of W. W. Denslow. As a kid, I owned the two prequels, but just one of the interquels, The Speckled Rose of Oz. I am not motivated to pick up the other interquels (Magic Chest, Father Goose, and Amber Flute), but I was willing to read the one I already owned to my kids in the gap where it takes place.

The Speckled Rose of Oz
by Donald Abbott

Published: 1995
Acquired and previously read: late 1990s
Read aloud: April 2026

Rereading it, I feel validated in this decision because it is, quite frankly, awful. There are probably some ingredients here for a good Oz adventure, but the plot is terribly constructed. At its beginning, the Scarecrow, the Tin Woodman, and the Cowardly Lion are judging a flower competition. (Abbott always calls the latter simply "Lion" because he's no longer "cowardly," which I guess makes sense, but is not really consistent with any of the following books.) One of the entrants is Sir Gyle, who turns out to be the brother of the Wicked Witches of East and West out for revenge, and who attempts to assassinate the Scarecrow wirh a fire-breathing flower. Then all the flowers of Oz begin to disappear, because of an evil living tree called Poison Oak. You might think these two things are linked... but no, it's a complete coincidence! The three friends of Dorothy travel to stop Poison Oak, secretly being harassed by Sir Gyle. On their way, they bump into Lady Minerva Moonstruck, the daughter of the Old Man in the Moon, who is searching for her missing husband. When they find Poison Oak, they defeat him quite easily, but then his pet spider turns out to be Lady Minerva's husband, who also wants to take over Oz... but don't worry, they don't need to do anything interesting or clever, because she turns up and recaptures her errant husband. The threesome then has to go back and defeat Sir Gyle.

None of it is interesting or clever. I did like the idea of Sir Gyle (I'm always down for peeks into the lore of the wicked witches), but reading it right after Wonderful Wizard, where this trio is clever, kind, and brave when they have to do things, the contrast here is stark, given they mostly bumble their way around and accomplish everything either by accident or with the assistance of Glinda. Abbott is a very sloppy plotter; there's a particularly bad bit where the Lion falls into a chasm, the Scarecrow and the Tin Woodman go on without him, and the Lion catches up to them a bit later, and we learn that in the same amount of time they walked to Poison Oak's cottage, he landed in an underground river, was carried away by it for miles until it flowed to the surface, and then somehow tracked the other two to the cottage.

At least it's short, and at least the pictures are nice. My kids were, as always I suppose, entertained well enough, but I'm pretty sure a couple days after we'd finished it, had already forgotten its insubstantial happenings.

Continuity note:

At the beginning, Gayelette is mentioned as one of the participants in the flower competition. Gayelette is the sorceress mentioned in Wonderful Wizard as binding the Winged Monkeys to the Golden Cap. She was never mentioned again the Famous Forty, so it's weird to me to imagine her as someone still alive in the present day of Oz, as opposed to being a distant historical figure.

Reading Ages of Oz: A Dark Descent Aloud to My Kids

The second Ages of Oz book is also the last, though it clearly wasn't intended to be the last, as it ends on a cliffhanger. It picks up right from the end of the first: having defeated the Wicked Witch of the South and liberated the Quadling Country, Glinda and her friends are attacked by the combined forces of the other three Wicked Witches. They fend off that assault, but end up separated: Glinda goes off on her own to learn more about magic from the person who trained her mother, while Locasta and the others go on their own quest to liberate Locasta's brother, who is working for the Wicked Witch of the North.

Gabriel Gale's Ages of Oz: A Dark Descent
by Lisa Fiedler
illustrated by Sebastian Giacobino

Published: 2018
Acquired: December 2025
Read aloud: December 2025–January 2026

I happen to also be watching the Star Wars movies with my kids, and I realized reading this book that it very much takes its structure from The Empire Strikes Back. Glinda has the Luke subplot: splitting off from the others, meeting a seemingly decrepit old person who turns out to be the wise mentor they were seeking, the mentor turns out to have a personal link to them, once their training is done, they must rush off to help their friends who have ended up in danger. And, like I said, the whole thing ends on a cliffhanger, and it's kinda similar to ESB as well, as it's one where someone close to hero is missing and in danger. (Though the circumstances are very different, and the hero does not learn that they are related to any of the villains.)

This isn't a complaint per se, though I feel like once I noticed the similarities they were hard to ignore. Both of the Ages of Oz books have a certain derivative vibe; in addition to the Star Wars parallels, they also comes across as Oz for the Harry Potter generation, with their emphasis on riddles and artifacts and sometimes overly complicated exposition. I found myself wishing the characters were doing things that were actually clever more often, and less figuring out weird riddles with arbitrary answers; I wish also there was more emphasis on the importance but also difficulty of bravery and teamwork here. 

The end is pretty good, though, and I did like the subplot about Locasta's wayward brother.

Even moreso than in the first book, there's a decent amount of that "joining the dots" thing prequels often do. Glinda meets the Nome King, for example, and we find out how he ended up with his Magic Belt. Fiedler does a good job of capturing the personality of Roquat as he was in Ozma of Oz, and we even get an appearance from Kaliko. (Why are the Nomes under Oz, though?) We also find out how the Golden Cap ended up in the hands of the Wicked Witch of the West, even though the Winged Monkeys originated in the Gillikin Country (as chronicled in Wonderful Wizard, though there are some inconsistencies with what the King of the Winged Monkeys told Dorothy). 

On the other hand, there are ways the join is not very obvious. Why is Mombi not the Wicked Witch of the North, but some kind of overlord, disembodied Krumbic witch? Assuming that Locasta is indeed the Good Witch of the North, it's not clear how the statement from Dorothy and the Wizard that "a good Witch had conquered Mombi in the North and Glinda the Good had conquered the evil Witch in the South" is going to be fulfilled. And if this book takes place a century before the arrival of the Wizard, why do Glinda and friends defeat the first two Wicked Witches in quick succession, and then the others not at all? If Locasta is the Good Witch of the North, why is she an old lady when Dorothy arrives in Oz, but Glinda just a young woman? These aren't criticisms per se, but it's hard for me to intuit where future installments in this series would have gone, had they happened.

I really don't buy, however, the involvement of a young Nick Chopper in these events. Why, in Wonderful Wizard, did the Tin Woodman never say, "Oh, I used to hang out with Glinda and her family?" And why is Nick's rival for Nimee Amee's affections a musician, and not a soldier?

Overall, this one had some interesting moments but I also think I found it less engaging than A Fiery Friendship. I do continue to wish there was more emphasis on the characters: Shade is still a weird blank, and Ben's commitment to the cause in Oz seems very random, and I want more of the "fiery friendship" between Glinda and Locasta the title of the first book promised us. On the other hand, my kids definitely enjoyed this, and if there were future installments, I would definitely read them. My older kid, in particular, was very disgruntled to learn there was no resolution to the cliffhanger ending forthcoming. Over seven years later, it seems unlikely there will be more... although I guess maybe the rights will have reverted to "Gabriel Gale" and he could maybe self-publish a followup or something.

Reading Ages of Oz: A Fiery Friendship Aloud to My Kids

This book is the first of a two-book series (though clearly intended to be longer) that's a prequel to the original Oz books. I forget how I first heard of it, but I was intrigued enough by what I read about it to add it to my list of apocryphal Oz books I was going to read to my kids.

Gabriel Gale's Ages of Oz: A Fiery Friendship
by Lisa Fiedler
illustrated by Sebastian Giacobino

Published: 2017
Acquired: October 2025
Read aloud: October–December 2025

A Fiery Friendship takes place during the eighteenth century, during the time where Oz was divided into four quadrants, each ruled by one of the wicked witches, who had deposed the rightful king of Oz (here called "King Oz," not Pastoria, as he was in Marvelous Land and Lost King, though this is consistent with what we were told in Dorothy and the Wizard). Glinda is a young girl, living with her mother, about to come of age; what she doesn't know is that her mother is a sorceress and a member of the resistance against the wicked witches, nor does she know that she herself is in possession of magical powers.

The book is apparently the brainchild of "Gabriel Gale" (this is a pseudonym for George Makrinos), but actually written by children's author Lisa Fiedler; unlike most canon-consistent Oz continuations, it was published by a major publisher (Simon & Schuster). Its target age seemingly skews a bit older than the original books; it's more at the level of the early Harry Potters. It was plainly intended as a longer series than it ended up being (I'll discuss that more in my next post), and I wonder if it would have fared better if it had been published now, not 2017, when it could ride Wicked fever. (Seems to me someone should have republished it last year.) 

Prequels are, of course, always a tricky business. If the prequel shows you everything you expected to see in the way you expected to see it, what's the point? But if the prequel doesn't fit what you learned, then why bother? There's a tightrope you need to walk. (I've been showing the Star Wars films to my kids, and it's been interesting to note how the references to Anakin and the Clone Wars don't always exactly work out in retrospect.) In particular, a prequel by other hands can be even more fraught, because it can feel less like an organic extension of what you read before and more like a later author "imposing" their vision on the canon of the earlier one. (I think this happens a lot in, say, Asimov fiction, where people who write prequels like to pin down things Asimov left vague and probably were better left vague.)

Sometimes I think what this book does works, sometimes it does not. I liked the concept, for example, that the Silver Shoes were one of four magical instruments, each originally owned by King Oz but later taken by the wicked witches: Silver Mask, Silver Gauntlets, and Silver Chainmail. I like that Gale/Fiedler delve into what Oz was actually like under the wicked witches, something we've never seen in any other Oz books, and that they give each one a distinct approach and personality. I liked the addition of a "Road of Red Cobbles" as a counterpoint to the "Road of Yellow Bricks"; there's a cute prophecy about a "gale" being the key to restoring normalcy to Oz.

On the other hand, instead of being the Wicked Witch of the North, Mombi is the "krumbic one" (a krumbic witch appeared in Glinda, but what this meant was not really explained), a powerful disembodied spirit that controls the other witches—how we might get from here to Marvelous Land is not really obvious, though I suppose the books might have gotten there eventually had there been more of them. I think what bothered me most was Gale's attempt to impose his own cosmology on the Oz universe, such as calling the land "Lurlia." A young Nick Chopper, half-tin, turns up here, and this felt like somewhat overegging the prequel pudding.

In terms of the actual happenings, the book is okay. Glinda finds out she has a magical destiny, her mother is kidnapped, so she must go on a quest with some other kids to save her: Locasta, a sparky Gillikin; Ben, an American colonist transported to Oz; and Shade, a mysterious sneak. As the title suggests, a focus of the book is supposed to be the friendship between Glinda and Locasta (Locasta is the name Baum used for the Good Witch of the North in the first Oz stageplay but not the actual books), but I didn't find this very effectively handled. Basically they argue a lot but then at the end they are best friends. I don't think either Locasta's sarcastic streak or the eventual "friendship" (by book two, they are supposedly best friends) came across strongly.

I liked the idea of Ben, but to be honest, it's not very clear why he gets so invested in the fate of Oz; I think including a visitor from the "real" world is a classic Oz trope that I wouldn't expect to see in a prequel book, and paralleling the American colonists' fight for independence to that of the Ozites is an eat idea, but we never get scenes from his perspective. Shade is incredibly underdeveloped, and in a weird way; the characters walk back and forth across Oz with her but never just ask her what her deal is!

There are some arresting sequences, especially the "trapestry," which is pretty creepy. I really like the idea of "Illumina," the sword of smarts that Glinda wields. On the other hand, the book is a bit overly reliant on riddles as a plot device; too many times the characters come up with seemingly arbitrary answers to weird problems. I would have liked to have seen a greater emphasis on genuine bravery and courage when it comes to the difficulty of doing what's right. (It seems to me that Glinda throws off an entire childhood of propaganda far too easily.)

There's also too much "lore." In addition to the four silver artifacts, there's four spirits, four gifts, a slew of heroes from Oz past and present, some mild time travel, and lots of visions of the past. It's too much to keep track of, it bogs the story down too often, and most of it is not really relevant to the story we're reading about. I felt like this lost my kids when reading it aloud, even my seven-year-old, who is good about tracking this kind of thing and typically very into it. Overall, they both seemed to enjoy it well enough (they love anything with gems, and there are some magical ones here), though my five-year-old did moan about halfway through it, "Dad, when are we going to read a book where Glinda is a grown up!?"

Reading The Living House of Oz Aloud to My Kids

Having enjoyed Paradox in Oz, my kids and I went straight on to Edward Einhorn's other Oz novel, The Living House of Oz. This is a sequel in that sense that it follows up some characters and situations from the earlier book: just like in Paradox, a bit of the action takes place in Tonsoria; Tempus the Parrot-Ox puts in a brief appearance; one of the characters comes from the same dark, alternate Oz that Ozma journeyed to in Paradox. But it's not a sequel in the sense that it's the same thing again. Einhorn isn't invested in solving Oz continuity discrepancies this time (not that he was particularly interested in doing so the first time around, to be honest... though he does explain one discrepancy he didn't squeeze into Paradox).

The Living House of Oz by Edward Einhorn
illustrated by Eric Shanower

Published: 2005
Acquired: July 2023
Read aloud: August–September 2025

Here, he's interested in doing two things, I would say. The first is providing a "traditional" Oz quest story in the mold of Patchwork Girl, Rinkitink, or, of course, Wonderful Wizard: in order to protect and/or return to their family, a child protagonist is forced to set out on a dangerous journey. The main character here is Buddy, who lives in the mysterious Living House, where every piece of furniture is alive... and so is the house itself! He lives with his mother, a sorceress, and like many young protagonists, yearns for adventure.

The second thing Einhorn is up to here is interrogating some aspects of Oz; specifically, Ozma's ban on magic practiced by anyone other than herself, the Wizard, and Glinda. Is this actually just? Is it right to ban people from doing the thing they're good at because it might hurt other people? Einhorn follows up various aspects of several of Baum's Oz books, most notably Emerald City (the Phanfasms reappear), Patchwork Girl (the little-used Emerald City jail and its mistress, Tollydiggle), and Glinda (the Flatheads and the Adepts at Magic). This kind of thing can feel gratuitous in the hands of later authors, but because it's all in service of one central idea, the return appearances by stuff from earlier books feel quite organic.

Like Paradox, the book has two sub-adventures, but I thought that structure worked a bit better here. In the first, the Living House comes to Tonsoria, in the Gillikin Country. Buddy goes out to explore, but ends up kidnapped when he's at the wrong place at the wrong time, along with Ayala, the princess of Tonsoria (who was a minor character in Paradox). He works to free himself while his mother, Mordra, also works to free him. It turns out that in Tonsoria, there's a guy who really like making wigs, but people in Tonsoria like doing their own hair, and so he thinks if he kidnaps the ruler, he can force everyone to wear his wigs. It's goofy but fun; Tonsoria, with its squabbling advisors and cute animal (the flutefly) has a touch of the Ruth Plumly Thompson about it (in a good way), but the whole adventure also reminded me of John R. Neill's Oz novels. Though they were never great, what I liked about Neill's Oz novels (particularly Wonder City and Scalawagons) is that I think they capture what living in Oz must be like. It's just nuts, weird things are happening all the time. Einhorn does the same thing here. Sure, the cranky old man who owns a wig factory is going around kidnapping people? Why not? It provides a bit of diversion. Will he be punished? Well, not much, and not if he says he's sorry, because people need to learn from their mistakes. And besides, life in Oz would be dull if things like this didn't happen.

This half is basically just an excuse for the second half, though. With Mordra drawn out of the Living House, she attracts the attention of Glinda, and is taken back to the Emerald City for trial. Buddy, though, thinks Ozma is likely to treat his mother unfairly, and so sets out on a quest to rescue her, with several misadventures on the way; this culminates in a reveal of Buddy's true parentage and a moment of supreme temptation for Buddy, who must learn to do the right thing. More than any Oz author other than Eloise McGraw, I would say, Einhorn is interested in the psychology of his child protagonist. The entire book hinges not just on an act of heroism by him, but him learning how the world works. It's a great moment, very well done.

Other than that, the second half of the book is just full of nice touches. More than most of Baum's imitators, Einhorn has a great sense of humor, with inspired jokes. I particularly liked the Flathead whose head is so full of information about carpentry, he doesn't know any words that begin with X, Y, or Z, so he has to contort his sentences around saying you and your. But he also can't say extra... because he's not a very good speller! The trial of Mordra is also hilarious; the Scarecrow is assigned as prosecution... but they decide it's unfair to Modra if her defense lawyer is less smart, so he also serves in that role, arguing against himself. They're the kind of jokes one could imagine Baum writing, but he never did.

My kids particularly loved the Earl of Haberdashery, the living hatstand in the Living House, who occasionally accompanies Buddy on his adventures, and is always telling lies about things he knows and places he's been and deed he's accomplished. He's the kind of delightful, kooky character who fits right alongside all the other weirdos of Oz without feeling derivative of them. And it all pays off with an amazing moment in the end where he comes through when it's clutch.

Plus, we have of course excellent illustrations from our man, Eric Shanower. Overall, this is an excellently done Oz book; had it been one of the "Famous Forty" it surely would have been in my top ten at least. I liked Paradox a lot, but this beats it for me. I'd happily read more Edward Einhorn (I gather he has a couple short stories, which hopefully we'll come to), but it's been twenty years since this book, so perhaps he's said all he has to say about the world of Oz.

Reading Paradox in Oz Aloud to My Kids

My randomizer brings me and my seven-year-old to our next apocryphal Oz book—Paradox in Oz. I know I read this before at some point, but I didn't own it until my sister bought it for me as a present a couple years ago (along with the sequel, The Living House of Oz), and it doesn't appear on my my reading list, which goes back to September 2003, so I must have borrowed it from the library when I was in high school.

Paradox in Oz by Edward Einhorn
illustrated by Eric Shanower

Originally published: 1999
Previously read: early 2000s?
Acquired: July 2023
Read aloud: July–August 2025

The big selling point of Paradox in Oz is that it promises to reconcile disparate elements of Oz continuity. This is a good selling point, sure, but the thing that makes it a good book is that this isn't really the focus. The focus is on fun Oz adventures... but ones of a different sort than you've read before.

One of the things that's interested me about rereading the Oz books as an adult is that there are a lot of elements in them that respond very directly to the historical forces and pop culture of the time they were written... but if you read them as a kid, this is largely invisible to you, because the books are a fantasy world and/or vaguely old-fashioned. For example, L. Frank Baum wrote two different novels about demagogues stirring up previously peaceful groups on a warlike footing during World War I. As a kid, that connection would have never occurred to me. Along similar but not identical lines, Ruth Plumly Thompson's novels often take contemporary pop culture as a jumping-off point; she has two different novels that riff on Hitchcock thrillers, for example. I think not only is this invisible to Oz readers, but it's also often invisible to Oz writers. Many of the post–Famous Forty pastiche writers focus, I think, on recapturing Oz as it was written c. 1900-20, seemingly not realizing that if Baum (or Thompson, or whomever) had continued writing Oz novels up to the 1990s that wouldn't just been doing the same thing over and over again, essentially pastiching themselves, but continually refracting what was going on around them through an Oz lens.

All of this is leading up to me saying that if someone wrote an Oz book now, it would incorporate contemporary culture just as Baum and Thompson did, and in the 2020s, that would be complicated stories of time travel and the multiverse... and in 1999, Edward Einhorn did just that. In Paradox in Oz, the anti-aging enchantment ceases working, and Ozma must travel back in time in order to figure out what the issue is, only she inadvertently changes history, resulting in a new timeline where Oz is a dystopia ruled by a tyrannical Wizard. The book has stuff in it like Ozma doubling back on herself again and again, and Ozma seeing into the cracks in the "Ozziverse" as it starts to collapse around her. For my kids, they know this stuff so well from pop culture that the seven-year-old was predicting turns of events! Einhorn threads the needle of doing something new and fun, while still keeping it recognizable Ozzy. There are no other Oz books about time travel... but he perfectly nails how to write one.

My kids and I particularly enjoyed Tempus, the titular "parrot-ox," who can only do impossible things. (These include being born; they are half-parrot, half-ox, but there are no parrots in Oz!) He says lots of crazy stuff which makes a weird sort of sense. (My favorite paradox, though, was probably the barber who can't cut his own hair nor let anyone else cut it.) The trip to the "dark Oz" is good without going too far; the only complaint I have about it is that it 1) it kinds of peters out, Ozma just leaves, and 2) it seems to me to be a bit more exciting than the trip to Absurd City that follows it. Not that the trip to Absurd City is bad, but dark Oz is more interesting; this means the book has the same problem as Star Trek III or Doctor Who's "The Runaway Bride," in that the most exciting part of the story is done with only halfway in, meaning everything that follows is mildly anticlimactic even when it's well done. The encounter with Tip and Mombi in the past is also interesting, and delves into an area many Oz writers have not done a lot with. I liked Dr. Majestico, and I wish we had seen more of him. (I gather there's a short story Einhorn wrote with him; I'll have to seek it out.)

As for the continuity issues—Paradox both does and does not explain them. Early in the book, Ozma summons a parrot-ox by thinking of a paradox; in this case, that in Marvelous Land she knew what a horse looked like but in Dorothy and the Wizard, a horse came to Oz for the first time. The book doesn't explain this so much as just draw attention to the fact that this kind of thing happens in Oz a lot: is the Munchkin Country in the East or the West? do people in Oz use money or not? You get different answers to these questions depending on when you ask them. But the novel also indicates that 1) Oz history is changing all the time, and 2) there are many other Ozzes. So any continuity error you think of might be answered in any one of these ways. The book also provides an explanation for why people don't age or die in Oz, when this didn't seem to be the case in early books. (It's somewhat complicated, and has to work around how come the Tin Woodman didn't die when he chopped himself up; it also doesn't totally fit with some evidence here and there that would indicate aging stopped quite some time ago... but the great thing about the book is that it provides for itself an explanation for why its explanations aren't totally consistent!) In some cases, Einhorn doesn't explain so much as just poke fun at, such as when Ozma thinks about what a stupid name "Wantowin Battles" is.

Eric Shanower's illustrations are, of course, as great as always. Tempus is great, and so are all the images we see of the dark Oz. I did think he somewhat fell short capturing the visual anarchy of Absurd City; Einhorn does his best to render a bunch of visual paradoxes in prose, but I wanted the pictures to give us more of these than it did. (It was interesting to realize my kids' understanding of perspective isn't far enough along for them to understand why an M. C. Escher illustration doesn't make any sense.)

Probably the thing that makes Paradox work more than anything else is that, like the other good writers of Oz continuations, Einhorn is an author who happens to be writing an Oz book (e.g., Eloise McGraw, Sherwood Smith), rather than someone who's just writing an Oz book (e.g., Dick Martin, Gina Wickwar). The book is lively and thoughtful and well-constructed.

Reading The Patchwork Bride of Oz Aloud to My Kid—We Begin Our Journey into the Noncanonical!

As chronicled at length here on this blog, my kid and I spent several years reading all the "official" Oz books: the Famous Forty plus other books written by Royal Historians, published by the Oz Club, or authorized by the Baum Estate. This project took sixty-two books and four years.

What next? Well, it turns out my kids literally don't know of a world where you don't read a chapter of an Oz book every other day, so we're turning our attention to the so-called noncanonical Oz apocrypha. We (largely) read the official Oz books in publication order, but I decided to handle these differently. I made a list of all the noncanonical Oz books that either 1) I already owned, or 2) I didn't own but thought sounded interesting, and then used a random number generator to select one. In between them, we'll be reading stories by L. Frank Baum from the Oz Club collection of his complete short stories.

The Patchwork Bride of Oz by Gilbert M. Sprague
illustrated by Denis McFarling

Published: 1993
Acquired and previously read: 199?
Read aloud: July 2025

The first spin of the dice brings us to The Patchwork Bride of Oz, one of the many continuation novels released by Books of Wonder's Emerald City Press imprint in the 1990s. Though at the time I devoured them, in retrospect the quality was... inconsistent at best. This one is surely a case in point. A story of how the Scarecrow and Scraps the Patchwork Girl get married (their flirtation was established back in Scraps's original appearance, but little had been done with it since), it runs a mere three (unnumbered and untitled) chapters across 38 pages; the book is padded at the end with some pictures of Scraps and the Scarecrow by John R. Neill reproduced from other Oz books.

Reading it as an adult, it's pretty bad. Scraps and the Scarecrow only decide to get married because the Love Magnet makes them. Wow, what romance. My kid was pretty confused by this part, and expected it to be undone and/or explained, which is totally reasonable. It is not. They then do get married. The Wogglebug criticizes Scraps's choice of attire, and the Scarecrow can't decide what suit to wear, but otherwise there are no obstacles or plot. The characters live together a little, but then decide that they miss their old lives, so go back to them. The end. 

Like, why? What was the point of this? It reads like particularly bad fanfiction, by someone who doesn't know how stories are supposed to work. Why publish this? I have never read Oziana (the official short story magazine of the Oz Club) but surely it published better work than this.

Going into the "noncanonical" books, I warned my kid their unofficial status meant some might contain things that would go unreflected in others. Once we finished Patchwork Bride, I said there would be no other Oz book where Scraps and the Scarecrow were married. That was okay, they said... this book must just take place after all of those! Already a timeliner at heart.

Incidentally, I was trying to fill out Gilbert M. Sprague's LibraryThing author page and found very little to go on out there. I found obituaries for a couple different Gilbert M. Spragues, both the right age to have written this book, but in neither case was there any good evidence to link them to Oz. So if you know when he was born, when/if he died, where he lived, I'd be interested to hear it. I did find a brief but interesting mention of him on a blog about gay youth in the 1970s, though, where the writer calls him "my friend and sometimes lover Gilbert Sprague (who went on to write two books in the ongoing Oz series, along with editing the monthly Oz fanzine for Books of Wonder)."