Along the Saltwise Sea: 12/05/22

Along the Saltwise Sea by A. Deborah Baker (2021) is the second book in the middle grade fantasy series, The Up-and-Under. Avery and Zib are still trying to get to the city by way of the Impossible Road. When they stop to rest and quench their thirst, they are sidetracked by a wishing well. Can they find their way back to the Impossible Road?

These Up-and-Under books are short, even by historic page counts. They are just shy of two hundred pages. Baum's original Oz books come in around 260 pages. I point this out, because Baker's series seems most influenced by the wordplay logic of Oz.

The children in Baum's books have agency, even if they are captured or enslaved by witches. They also manage to get to their stated goal even with numerous detours within the bounds of a single book. Avery and Zib have so far gotten pretty much nowhere on an uncooperative road and now are forced to work for a pirate captain.

Although Avery and Zib are the stated protagonists and they are ultimately the ones trying (sort of) to get to their respective homes, their presence in the Up-and-Under seems to be a vehicle for telling the stories of the full time residents. In the Oz books, meanwhile, there are books where no one from Earth visits (The Marvelous Land of Oz (1904), for example

As the focus of the novel is on the Pirate Captain's story, she becomes the traveler in terms of the road narrative spectrum. She and her mysterious prisoner are Scarecrow and Minotaur travelers (99). Their destination is the wildlands (99), meaning the high seas. Their route is an offroad one (66) via the ship.

The third book is Into the Windwracked Wilds (2022).

Three stars

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