💚🟨 YBR | MONDAY, OCTOBER 5, 2026
FIRST PORT: THUMBUMBIA
The Royal Flotilla lies ready in Loland.
The hulls are provisioned.
The stores are aboard.
The lines have been checked.
The crews have had their shore leave.
At dawn, we sail.
For several days we thought our next great Storytime voyage might carry us toward Jinxland.
Then Yew called.
Both remain on our charts.
Both deserve more than a hurried visit.
So we have placed them carefully upon the shelf, not abandoned, simply waiting for their proper hour.
Because another course has appeared.
One that has been waiting for us much longer.
Thumbumbia.
A small kingdom in one of L. Frank Baum’s lesser-known fairy tales, Thumbumbia might easily be treated as a curiosity.
We do not intend to treat it that way.
In Baum’s The Runaway Shadows, the shadows of the young Prince of Thumbumbia and Lady Lindeva flee from the castle and run toward the Forest of Burzee.
That single trail changes everything.
Because Burzee is no ordinary forest.
It is the ancient woodland of Baum’s The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus, home to Ryls, Knooks, Nymphs, Fairies, and the great Ak, Master Woodsman of the World.
It is where the infant Claus was raised.
And beyond Burzee lies the Laughing Valley, where Claus made his home, created toys, and began the work that would eventually make him Santa Claus.
Baum himself built the road.
We have simply noticed where it goes.
So tomorrow the Royal Flotilla does not sail toward one isolated destination.
It begins a passage.
Thumbumbia.
Burzee.
The Laughing Valley.
Santa’s world.
Christmas.
And eventually, the road back toward Oz.
This voyage may carry us all the way to the New Year.
And that is exactly what we want.
We have spent much of this year learning how to sail.
Now Storytime begins to stretch its legs.
Or perhaps, considering the circumstances...
its sea legs. 😹
We will move slowly.
We will distinguish what Baum gave us from what OZ~QZ adds.
We will revisit old characters, old kingdoms, old roads, and old questions.
We will invent where there is room to invent.
And we will leave the seams visible.
Because this is not an attempt to rewrite Baum.
It is an act of exploration.
L. Frank Baum gave us an enormous canvas.
Ruth Plumly Thompson expanded it further.
And we may spend years wandering through it without reaching the edges.
That is a very good kind of problem to have.
So tomorrow morning, when Loland falls astern and the wind catches the sails, the logbook will not read:
DESTINATION: THUMBUMBIA
It will read:
FIRST PORT: THUMBUMBIA
Because somewhere beyond that first harbor waits Burzee.
And somewhere beyond Burzee...
Christmas.
The Royal Flotilla sails at dawn.
💚🟨⛵⛵⛵⛵🌲🎄♾️
