Another road-trip formula, with odd creatures going to Emerald City, and then escaping the Emerald City to find Glinda because the EC has been overrun. By girls. 
 And that's where my feelings get complicated. General JinJur is sick of men running everything and women doing all the housework, so she amasses an army of girls and storms the Emerald City. Under her direction, they overthrow the Scarecrow (who, as we recall from the first book, was left in charge after the Wizard's departure) and free the women from their domestic drudgery. Suddenly the women can sit around and gossip while the men cook, clean, and care for the children. Yay feminism! But the army that storms the Emerald City does so with knitting needles (because girls) and for the purpose of taking the emeralds from the sidewalks, steps, and other architecture (because pretty baubles). Once the army is run back out of Emerald City, the women go back to the domestic duties because they were all tired of eating the men's cooking. 
 Uh. 
 However (and here be spoilers) the mission to track down the witch Mombi to find out where she's hidden Princess Ozma (the rightful heir to the Emerald City throne) ends with the discovery that Tip, the boy leading the whole adventure, is actually Ozma enchanted to look like a boy. I'd have loved to have followed up on this a bit, but themes of transgenderism weren't really prevalent in 1904 when the book was written. To its credit, Tip is never presented as effeminate in any way, and his discovery that he's actually a girl is strange and baffling to him. 
 My issues with this are really stemming from a far more socially-aware time than the one in which it was written, and the child and I had some good conversations about sexism while reading, so there's that. Otherwise, it was an enjoyable book, funny and full of adventure, though Baum's inability to just SAY anything (he interjected, he questioned, he returned, he said adverbially) did grate on the reading-aloud nerves.