''Rootabaga Stories'' (1922) is a

children's book Children's literature or juvenile literature includes stories, books, magazines, and poems that are created for children. Modern children's literature is classified in two different ways: genre or the intended age of the reader. Children's ...

of interrelated short stories by

Carl Sandburg Carl August Sandburg (January 6, 1878 – July 22, 1967) was an American poet, biographer, journalist, and editor. He won three Pulitzer Prizes: two for his poetry and one for his biography of Abraham Lincoln. During his lifetime, 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.

Development

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 The Midwestern United States, also referred to as the Midwest or the American Midwest, is one of four census regions of the United States Census Bureau (also known as "Region 2"). It occupies the northern central part of the United States. I ...

called "the Rootabaga country" with fairy-tale concepts such as corn fairies mixed with farms, trains, sidewalks, and skyscrapers. 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 firsthand knowledge of the stories adds to the book's narrative feel and fantastical nature. In the Preface of the little-known ''Potato Face,'' Sandburg wrote, "it is in Rootabaga Country, and in the biggest village of that country, the Potato Face Blind Man sits with his accordion on the corner nearest the post office. There he sits with his eyes never looking out and always searching in. And sometimes he finds in himself the whole human procession." Sandburg went on about the storyteller, "In fact, he sometimes indicates that when he needs an animal or fool not yet seen or heard of, he can make it for himself and give it a character so it is real to him, and when he talks about it and tells its story, it is like telling about one of his own children. He seems to love some of the precious things that are cheap, such as stars, the wind, pleasant words, time to be lazy, and fools having personality and distinction. He knows, it seems, that young people are young no matter how many years they live; that there are children born old and brought up to be full of fear; that a young heart keeps young by a certain measure of fooling as the years go by; that men and women old in years sometimes keep a fresh child heart and, to the last, salute the dawn and the morning with a mixture of reverence and laughter."

Sequels

''Rootabaga Stories'' was followed by a sequel, '' Rootabaga Pigeons'', published in 1923. A little known volume of Rootabaga stories called '' Potato Face'' was published in 1930 by

Harcourt, Brace and Company Harcourt () was an American publishing firm with a long history of publishing fiction and nonfiction for adults and children. The company was last based in San Diego, California, with editorial/sales/marketing/rights offices in New York City an ...

. It was not illustrated. A collection of previously unpublished stories was published as ''

More Rootabagas More or Mores may refer to: Computing * MORE (application), outline software for Mac OS * more (command), a shell command * MORE protocol, a routing protocol * Missouri Research and Education Network Music Albums * ''More!'' (album), by Booka ...

'' in 1993 with illustrations by

Paul O. Zelinsky Paul O. Zelinsky (born 1953) is an American illustrator and writer who illustrated Children's literature, children's picture books. He won the 1998 Caldecott Medal for U.S. picture book illustration, for ''Rapunzel (book), Rapunzel''. His most popu ...

Recordings

vinyl LP The LP (from "long playing" or "long play") is an analog sound storage medium, a phonograph record format characterized by: a speed of rpm; a 12- or 10-inch (30- or 25-cm) diameter; use of the "microgroove" groove specification; and a ...

of Carl Sandburg reading some of the stories, ''Rootabaga Stories as told by Carl Sandburg'' was released on Caedmon (TC 1089) in 1958; the cassette version is Caedmon CDL 51089. Contents: *"How They Broke Away to Go to the Rootabaga Country" *"How They Bring Back the Village of Cream Puffs" *"How the Five Rusty Rats Helped Find a New Village" *"How Six Pigeons Came Back to Hatrack the Horse" *"How the Three Wild Babylonian Baboons Went Away in the Rain" *"How Six Umbrellas Took Off Their Straw Hats to Show Respect" *"How Googler and Gaggler, the Two Christmas Babies, Came Home" There are two other recordings of Rootabaga stories by Sandburg, ''How to Tell Corn Fairies When You See 'Em and Others of His Rootabaga Stories'' (Caedmon TC 1159) and ''Rootabaga Stories Vol. 3'' (Caedmon TC 1306). Podcast The Folktale Project also tells renditions of Rootabaga tales.

Illustrated editions

* , illustrated by Rosanne Litzinger, 2008.

References

External links

''Rootabaga Stories''
irst printing, October 1922e-text at

Project Gutenberg Project Gutenberg (PG) is a Virtual volunteering, volunteer effort to digitize and archive cultural works, as well as to "encourage the creation and distribution of eBooks." It was founded in 1971 by American writer Michael S. Hart and is the ...

''Rootabaga Stories''
(Harcourt, Brace, 1922) at

Google Books Google Books (previously known as Google Book Search, Google Print, and by its code-name Project Ocean) is a service from Google Inc. that searches the full text of books and magazines that Google has scanned, converted to text using optical c ...

Carl Sandburg discography
pictures of Caedmon TC 1089 LP covers, front and back
CarlSandburg.net: A Research Website for Sandburg Studies

(Harcourt, 2003) by Georges T. Dodds at SFsite.com
Online adaptation of the 1922 edition including illustrations

LibriVox audio recording (Public Domain)

Formats and Editions of ''Rootabaga Stories''
at

WorldCat WorldCat is a union catalog that itemizes the collections of tens of thousands of institutions (mostly libraries), in many countries, that are current or past members of the OCLC global cooperative. It is operated by OCLC, Inc. Many of the OCL ...