Other editions of book Rootabaga Stories

Welcome to Rootabaga Country--where the railroad tracks go from straight to zigzag, where the pigs wear bibs, and where the Village of Cream Puffs floats in the wind. You'll meet baby balloon pickers, flummywisters, corn fairies, and blue foxes--and if you're not careful, you may never find your way back home!These beautiful new editions retain the original illustrations by Maud and Miska Petersham, and feature gorgeous new jackets by acclaimed illustrator Kurt Cyrus. Carl Sandburg's irrepressible, zany, and completely original Rootabaga Stories and More Rootabaga Stories will stand alone on children's bookshelves--when they aren't in children's hands.

The whimsical, sometimes melancholy stories, which often use nonsense language, were originally created for his own daughters. Gimme the Ax decided to let his children name themselves. "The first words they speak as soon as they learn to make words shall be their names," he said. "They shall name themselves." When the first boy came to the house of Gimme the Ax, he was named Please Gimme. When the first girl came she was named Ax Me No Questions. And both of the children had the shadows of valleys by night in their eyes and the lights of early morning, when the sun is coming up, on their foreheads. And the hair on top of their heads was a dark wild grass. And they loved to turn the doorknobs, open the doors, and run out to have the wind comb their hair and touch their eyes and put its six soft fingers on their foreheads.

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 generations of children. This edition of Rootabaga Stories features the original black and white illustrations by Maud and Miska Petersham.

Welcome to Rootabaga Country--where the railroad tracks go from straight to zigzag, where the pigs wear bibs, and where the Village of Cream Puffs floats in the wind. You'll meet baby balloon pickers, flummywisters, corn fairies, and blue foxes--and if you're not careful, you may never find your way back home! These beautiful new editions retain the original illustrations by Maud and Miska Petersham, and feature gorgeous new jackets by acclaimed illustrator Kurt Cyrus. Carl Sandburg's irrepressible, zany, and completely original Rootabaga Stories and More Rootabaga Stories will stand alone on children's bookshelves--when they aren't in children's hands.

American author and poet Carl Sandburg (1878-1967), best known for the poetry that attributed to two of his three Pulitzer Prizes, also wrote histories, biographies, novels, and children's stories. Born in Illinois, Sandburg spent most of his life in the Midwest before moving to North Carolina in 1945, where he lived till his death. In the early 1920s Sandburg began writing children's stories for his three daughters, beginning with his "Rootabaga Stories", one of three collections of stories set in the small towns and farms of the American Midwest. The stories were widely read and enjoyed for their unique nonsensical style and distinctly American feeling. Sandburg wanted to create something different than the traditional European fairy tales, explaining that he was "tired of princes and princesses and I sought the American equivalent of elves and gnomes." He certainly succeeded with "Rootabaga Stories". The beautifully nonsensical writing, illogical grammar, and fantastical settings set the stage for such me

Joyous, humorous, poetic, and always uniquely American, Carl Sandburg's Rootabaga Stories are an important part of our children's literary legacy. In inimitable prose, Sandburg created Rootabaga Country-where the railroad tracks go from straight to zigzag, where the pigs have bibs on, and where the Village of Cream Puffs floats in the wind-and populated it with baby balloon pickers, flummywisters, Poker Face the Baboon and Hot Dog the Tiger, the White Horse Girl and the Blue Wind Boy, corn fairies, blue foxes, and many more fanciful characters. Rootabaga Stories, Part One is irrepressible, zany Americana-an anthology to delight admirers of Sandburg's genius.|

Rootabaga Stories, first published in 1922 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. He felt that the European stories involving royalty and knights were inappropriate, and so set his stories in a fictionalized American Midwest called "the Rootabaga country" with fairy-tale concepts such as corn fairies mixed with farms, trains, sidewalks, and skyscrapers.With its wonderfully quirky stories, Sandburg's work continues to enchant generation after generation of children.

Welcome to Rootabaga Country—where the railroad tracks go from straight to zigzag, where the pigs wear bibs, and where the Village of Cream Puffs floats in the wind. You'll meet baby balloon pickers, flummywisters, corn fairies, and blue foxes—and if you're not careful, you may never find your way back home! This part one of the Rootabaga Stories retains the original illustrations by Maud and Miska Petersham.