Rootabaga Stories

"Takes the home-bred American fantasy of The Wizard of Oz even further … An old favorite, which no American child should miss." ― School Library Journal.

"These stories out of the Rootabaga Country… have taken root in American soil — they are here to stay." — New York Herald Tribune.

"Glorious for reading aloud." ― The New York Times Book Review.

In the village of Liver-and-Onions, there was a Potato Face Blind Man who used to play an accordion on the corner near the post office. The sometime narrator of these tales, he transports readers and listeners to Rootabaga Country, where the railroad tracks go from straight to zigzag, the pigs wear bibs, and the Village of Cream Puffs floats in the wind, looking like a little hat that you could wear on the end of your thumb.


Carl Sandburg, the beloved folk chronicler and three-time Pulitzer Prize winner, invented these stories for his own daughters. Populated by corn fairies, circus performers, and such memorable characters as Poker Face the Baboon, Hot Dog the Tiger, and Gimme the Ax, Rootabaga Country is built with the homespun poetry of the American frontier. The stories' inspired nonsense — loaded with rhythm, humor, and tongue-twisting names — fires the imagination and pulls at the heartstrings. This edition features the charming original illustrations by Maud and Miska Petersham.


"The original illustrations by Maud and Miska Petersham, including a colored frontispiece and plentiful black-and white line drawings, form the perfect complement in this very affordable paperback." — The Emerald City Book Review