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Sara Richard Comes to Court For The Royal Book of Oz

Published Sat, 31 Aug 2019 11:00:48 -0500

Nate Murray writes,

The Royal Book of Oz is the fifteenth book in the Oz series. I didn't know there were so many books in the series when the team at Clover Press decided to create this beautiful new edition with updated artwork by Sara Richard and an afterword by Eisner Winner, Eric Shanower.

The book is special not only because it is part of the source material for the "The Return to Oz", the Oz movie that terrified me and gave me years of nightmares as a 10-year-old, but also because of the story of its creation. I could explain but Eric is much smarter than me; please see this excerpt from our edition's afterword.

Let's take a walk down memory road:

When L. Frank Baum, author of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and its sequels, died on May 6, 1919, his two final Oz manuscripts remained unpublished. The Reilly & Lee Company of Chicago, Illinois, publishers of Baum's best-selling Oz series, brought out The Magic of Oz in 1919 and Glinda of Oz in 1920. But they saw no reason to stop publishing new Oz books simply because Baum was gone. The logical step was to find another author to write new Oz books. But who?

Though Reilly & Lee was a Chicago firm, partner William F. Lee lived in the Mount Airy neighborhood of Philadelphia. In the newspaper pages of the Philadelphia Public Ledger, Lee came across the weekly Sunday children's page written by Ruth Plumly Thompson, filled with her rollicking verse, riddles, stories, and imaginative columns. She struck Lee as the right choice as Baum's successor. In 1920 Lee visited Thompson to ask if she were interested in continuing the Oz series.

Ruth Plumly Thompson was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on July 27, 1891, the second of four children. When her father took the job of night editor of The New York Times, the family moved to Brooklyn, New York. When her father suddenly died in 1895, the family moved back to Philadelphia. Thompson's mother entered the hotel management business, first in Philadelphia, then in Atlantic City, New Jersey.

Young Thompson regularly thrilled her sisters and brother with stories she made up. At age fifteen she was selling her stories, verse, and advertising ideas to St. Nicholas, the premiere children's magazine of the day. St. Nicholas made her an honorary staff member at age sixteen. At the same time she was selling writing to other publications. – Excerpt from Eric Shanower

What other publications? Well, as they say in bad commercials, you'll have to buy the book to hear the rest of this story!

Ruth Plumly Thompson went largely uncredited for this book for a long time, and it's our honor to celebrate her and Oz with an incredible new edition of her first book in the Oz series. Thompson would go on to write 20 more books in the Oz series, meaning she created more than Baum by the end of her career.

This campaign features the book and a bunch of other fun perks, like retro lunch boxes and my favorite, a set of enamel pins featuring a green glitter treatment. Clover Press has taken every step to make this a fun trip back down the yellow brick road! We hope you join us!

You can find this campaign and any future ones on CloverKickstarter.com.