Children's Literature

Rootabaga Stories (Illustrated Edition)

Crazy Funny Tales for Little ChildrenBy Carl Sandburg, Miska Petersham

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Length3h 4m

About this audiobook

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..."

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Audiobook details

GenreChildren's Literature

Length3 hrs 4 mins

Narrated byListen with 1,000+ voices

FormateBook with Audio

Publish dateJun 24, 2019

LanguageEnglish

1Rootabaga Stories (Illustrated Edition)

18How the Hat Ashes Shovel Helped Snoo Foo

2I Three Stories About the Finding of the Zigzag Railroad, the Pigs with Bibs On, the Circus Clown Ovens, the Village of Liver-and-Onions, the Village of Cream Puffs

19Three Boys With Jugs of Molasses and Secret Ambitions

3How They Broke Away to Go to the Rootabaga Country

20How Bimbo the Snip’s Thumb Stuck to His Nose When the Wind Changed

4How They Bring Back the Village of Cream Puffs When the Wind Blows It Away

21V Three Stories About Three Ways the Wind Went Winding

5How the Five Rusty Rats Helped Find a New Village

22The Two Skyscrapers Who Decided to Have a Child

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6II Five Stories About the Potato Face Blind Man

23The Dollar Watch and the Five Jack Rabbits

7The Potato Face Blind Man Who Lost the Diamond Rabbit on His Gold Accordion

24The Wooden Indian and the Shaghorn Buffalo