Books with author Maud and Miska. Petersham

Excerpt from The Story Book of Iron and SteelAt first iron and steel were very expensive because it took so long to get the iron from the ore. In Sparta iron was even used for money. Alexander the Great plundered iron as well as gold from India. Only six hundred years ago, iron pots and pans were classed among the royal jewels.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

Carl Sandburg had three daughters and he loved telling them irrepressible, zany tales. He disliked the European fairy stories that involved kings and princesses and thought American tales should be more relevant to the world around his children, but of course made rather fantastic. So the stories are populated with trains on zig-zag tracks, skyscrapers, animals wearing bibs, corn fairies, not to mention the Village of Cream Puffs which floats in the wind. They have become firm favourites for gen

Rootabaga Stories is a children's book of interrelated short stories by Carl Sandburg. The whimsical, sometimes melancholy stories, which often use nonsense language, were originally created for his own daughters. Sandburg had three daughters, Margaret, Janet and Helga, whom he nicknamed "Spink", "Skabootch" and "Swipes", and those nicknames occur in some of his Rootabaga stories. The "Rootabaga" stories were born of Sandburg's desire for "American fairy tales" to match American childhood. A large number of the stories are told by the Potato Face Blind Man, an old minstrel of the Village of Liver-and-Onions who hangs out in front of the local post office. His impossibly acquired first-hand knowledge of the stories adds to the book's narrative feel and fantastical nature.Excerpt:"Gimme the Ax lived in a house where everything is the same as it always was. 'The chimney sits on top of the house and lets the smoke out, said Gimme the Ax. The doorknobs open the doors. The windows are always either open or shut. We are always either upstairs or downstairs in this house. Everything is the same as it always was..."