Sky Island

A little girl (Trot) and her friend (Cap'n Bill) team up with a young boy named Button-Bright. Button-Bright had found a magical umbrella in his attic. He meets the kind girl and sailor and they are transported to a different world in the sky where he and his friends face many dangers.

By : L. Frank Baum (1856 - 1919)

01 - A Mysterious Arrival



02 - The Magic Umbrella



03 - A Wonderful Experience



04 - The Island in the Sky



05 - The Boolooroo of the Blues



06 - The Six Snubnosed Princesses



07 - Ghip-Ghisizzle Proves Friendly



08 - The Blue City



09 - The Tribulation of Trot



10 - The King's Treasure Chamber



11 - Button-Bright Encounters the Blue Wolf



12 - Through the Fog Bank



13 - The Pink Country



14 - Tourmaline the Poverty Queen



15 - The Sunrise Tribe and the Sunset Tribe



16 - Rosalie the Witch



17 - The Arrival of Polychrome



18 - Mayre, Queen of the Pink Country



19 - The War of the Pinks and Blues



20 - Ghip-Ghisizzle has a Bad Time



21 - The Capture of Cap'n Bill



22 - Trot's Invisible Adventure



23 - The Girl and the Boolooroo



24 - The Amazing Conquest of the Blues



25 - The Ruler of Sky Island



26 - Trot Celebrates Her Victory



27 - The Fate of the Magic Umbrella



28 - The Elephant's Head Comes to Life



29 - Trot Regulates the Pinkies



30 - The Journey Home


Trot, a little girl who lives on the coast of southern California, meets a strange little boy with a large umbrella. Button Bright has been using his family's magic umbrella to take long-range journeys from his Philadelphia home, and has gotten as far as California. After an explanation of how the magic umbrella works, the two children, joined by Cap'n Bill, decide to take a trip to a nearby island; they call it "Sky island," because it looks like it's "halfway in the sky"—but the umbrella takes them to a different place entirely, a literal island in the sky.

Sky Island is another split-color country in Baum's fantasy universe, like the Land of Oz. Divided in two-halves, blue and pink, Sky Island supports two separate races of beings, the Blues (or "Blueskins") and the Pinkies. The two halves are separated by a region shrouded in fog, which both peoples are reluctant to enter. The three travellers land on the blue side of Sky Island, which is a grim country ruled by a sadistic tyrant, the Boolooroo of the Blues. In Sky Island, as in Oz, no one can be killed or suffer pain, but that doesn't mean one is safe: the Boolooroo's method of punishing disobedience in his subjects is to slice two of his victims into halves using a huge guillotine-type knife, and then join the wrong halves back together, creating very unhappy asymmetrical mixed people. This is called "patching." The Boolooroo threatens to do the same to his new visitors; meanwhile he steals the magic umbrella, keeps the visitors imprisoned, and gives Trot as a slave to his daughters, the Six Snubnosed Princesses (named Cerulia, Turquoise, Sapphire, Azure, Cobalt, and Indigo).

The three protagonists manage to escape from the Blues; penetrating the Great Fog Bank that separates the island's halves and meeting its strange inhabitants, they reach the pink side of the island. The Pink Country is a much friendlier and more relaxed place than the blue side, with cheerful residents. In contrast with the Blues, the Pinkies are ruled by a queen, who is required by law to live very modestly, in poverty, in order to assure that her authority to rule will not cause her to become arrogant. The visitors get a better reception, since they are rather pink in color themselves, albeit of a sadly wan and pale shade. Unfortunately, however, the laws of the Pink Country regarding strangers are ambiguous, and the Pinkies interpret them to require that all strangers must be thrown off the edge of Sky Island. At the edge of the island, just as the Pinkies are about to fulfill the law, Polychrome, the daughter of the rainbow who already knows Button Bright from The Road to Oz, descends from the rainbow to rescue him and his friends. She helps Tormaline, the Queen of the Pinkies, to re-interpret the law in a way which allows the strangers to stay. Polychrome also discovers another quirk in the Pinkies' law: whichever person in the kingdom who has the lightest skin shall be Queen. Since Trot's skin is paler than Tormaline's, Trot becomes Queen of the Pinkies. (Tormaline is delighted to yield to Trot and become an ordinary citizen free from the requirement of poverty).

Trot then uses her new power as Queen to mount an invasion of the Blue Country in order to recover the magic umbrella from the Boolooroo. Cap'n Bill gets captured in battle, and the Boolooroo vows to patch him immediately. The only available "patching partner" is a goat, so Cap'n Bill faces the terrifying prospect of becoming a human/goat patch. Trot must enter the Blue City to rescue him, using a ring of invisibility to conceal herself. Ultimately, with help from a Pinkie-witch, and a friendly Blueskin citizen (there is one), and the goat itself, she manages to rescue Cap'n Bill, and captures the Boolooroo. With the Boolooroo removed from command, the blue army stands down, peace is declared, and Trot becomes "Booloorooess" of the Blues as well as Queen of the Pinkies. The three travelers then return home, more than a little relieved at their escape from Sky Island.

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