The story begins when the Scarecrow goes to search for his family roots and discovers that he is the Long Lost Emperor of the Silver Island -- and how he was rescued and brought back to Oz by Dorothy and the Cowardly Lion. Really! In another life, the Scarecrow was the Long Lost Emperor of the Silver Island. . . . Maybe he was. Who knows? Maybe not. But in retrospect, this is the first Oz book that actually shows us death, albeit of a peculiar sort: before the Scarecrow was reincarnated as the fluff-headed fellow we all know and love, he was the Emperor of Silver Island. Which was underground. -- Exactly beneath that cornfield where Dorothy first found him. But there are pictures of the place and the pictures don't look dark enough to be set in a kingdom made of caves. . . . Hrrrm.

Author Biography

Lyman Frank Baum (1856 - 1919), better known by his pen name L. Frank Baum, was an American author chiefly known for his children's books, particularly The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. He wrote thirteen novel sequels, nine other fantasy novels and a host of other works (55 novels in total, plus four "lost works," 83 short stories, over 200 poems, an unknown number of scripts and many miscellaneous writings). His works anticipated such century-later commonplaces as television, augmented reality, laptop computers (The Master Key), wireless telephones (Tik-Tok of Oz), women in high risk, action-heavy occupations (Mary Louise in the Country) and the ubiquity of advertising on clothing (Aunt Jane's Nieces at Work). Ruth Plumly Thompson (1891 - 1976) was an American writer of children's stories, best known for writing many novels placed in Oz, the fictional land of L. Frank Baum's classic children's novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and its sequels. An avid reader of Baum's books and a lifelong children's writer, Thompson was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and began her writing career in 1914 when she took a job with the Philadelphia Public Ledger; she wrote a weekly children's column for the newspaper. She had already published her first children's book, The Perhappsy Chaps, and her second, The Princess of Cozytown, was pending publication when William Lee, vice president of Baum's publisher Reilly & Lee, solicited Thompson to continue the Oz series. (Rumors among fans that Thompson was Baum's niece were untrue.) Between 1921 and 1939, she wrote one Oz book a year.