Error loading page.
Try refreshing the page. If that doesn't work, there may be a network issue, and you can use our self test page to see what's preventing the page from loading.
Learn more about possible network issues or contact support for more help.

Rootabaga Stories

Audiobook
Always available
Always available

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.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

  • Formats

  • Languages

  • Levels

  • Reviews

    • AudioFile Magazine
      Narrator Zura Johnson breathes new life into this vintage collection of interconnected whimsical short stories by famed poet Carl Sandburg. Rootabaga Country is home to denizens with names like Blixie Bimber and Jason Squiff. Residents "snizzle" and "sniffer" and find enchanted "whinchers." Johnson blithely treats nonsense words in the same way she treats actual words, making stories like "How the Hat Ashes Shovel Helped Snoo Foo" seem equally plausible and ridiculous. She creates distinct character voices for the entire population--many of whom live in the Village of Liver-and-Onions. As you would expect from Sandburg, the prose is poetic, and Johnson maintains a fun, upbeat tempo while highlighting the many instances of repetition, alliteration, and rhyme. L.T. © AudioFile 2020, Portland, Maine
    • Publisher's Weekly

      April 1, 2003
      The Classics CornerCarl Sandburg's 1920 Rootabaga Stories and 1923 More Rootabaga Stories are back, in all their goofy read-aloud glory, in handsome cloth and paper reissues with interior illustrations by Maud and Miska Petersham. As the tales begin, Gimme the Ax's family sells everything they have pigs, pastures, pepper pickers, pitchforks and prepares to move as the neighbors speculate: They are going to Kansas, to Kokomo, to Canada, to Kankakee, to Kalamazoo, to Kamchatka, to the Chattahoochee.

Formats

  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

Languages

  • English

Levels

  • Lexile® Measure:1130
  • Text Difficulty:8-9

Loading