Rootabaga Stories

Rootabaga Stories

"Rootabaga Stories" (1922) is a children's book of interrelated short stories by Carl Sandburg. The whimsical, sometimes melancholy stories, were originally created for his own daughters. 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" filled with farms, trains, and corn fairies. 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 books narrative feel and fantastical nature.

"Rootabaga Stories" was followed by a sequel, "Rootabaga Pigeons", published in 1923. A collection of previously-unpublished stories was published as "More Rootabagas" in 1993 with illustrations by Paul O. Zelinsky.

A vinyl LP of Carl Sandburg reading some of the stories, "Rootabaga Stories as told by Carl Sandburg" was released on Caedmon (TC 1089) in 1958.

External links

* [http://books.google.com/books?id=te8NAAAAIAAJ Rootabaga Stories] at Google Book Search
* [http://www.carlsandburg.net/ CarlSandburg.net: A Research Website for Sandburg Studies]
* [http://www.sfsite.com/08a/rs157.htm Review of the book]
* [http://www.josephperry.net/rootabaga/ Online adaptation of the 1922 edition including illustrations]


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