More Rootabagas - Carl Sandburg, Paul O. Zelinsky - First Edition Children's Books, Kids Books, Fairy Tales, Poetry, Rhymes, 1990s

First edition of More Rootabagas, fairy tales and short stories Carl Sandburg wrote for his daughters. Meet the Spink Bug, Peter Potato Blossom, Silver Pitchers, and Green Hat-Eating Horses.

More Rootabagas, written by Carl Sandburg, illustrated by Paul O. Zelinsky. 1993, first edition. Collected and with a foreword by George Hendrick. Alfred A. Knopf, publishers.

Carl Sandburg, the great Pulitzer Prize-winning poet, wrote Rootabaga Stories for his three daughters with an American sense of place, history, and language that he hoped would be more relevant to American children than traditional European fairy tales. A collection of his Rootabaga stories was published in 1922.

More Rootabagas is a collection of 10 previously unpublished Rootabaga stories, including A Girl Named Silver Pitchers Tells a Story About Egypt, Jesse James and Spanish Onions and How the Caterpillar Told Secrets to a Spink Bug and a Huck.

From the 1993 New York Times book review:

"Poets are used to having their fantasies taken pretty seriously, so it's a wonder they ever get around to writing children's stories. But children make such a lovely audience, taking their own fantasies as seriously as can be, that you're apt to forget what tyrannical critics children are -- worse, by far, than Samuel Johnson at his most petulant. Whether "More Rootabagas" or the original "Rootabaga Stories" will please your own child is a question whose answer can only be determined empirically, by seeing whether the book ends up under the couch, forgotten and unlamented, or is literally rubbed into extinction by nightly readings.

Of course, you can read these tales strictly for your own pleasure, which would not be mistaking their purpose. It seems clear to me that in the "Rootabaga Stories," Carl Sandburg was writing for the children in himself -- not that simpering New Age inner child, so selfish and demanding and, ultimately, tone-deaf -- but for the eternal child, who, when he or she hears language spoken, hears rhythm, not sense."

http://www.nytimes.com/1993/11/14/books/children-s-books-silly-tales-on-little-cute-feet.html

About Carl Sandburg:
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-poets/poets/detail/carl-sandburg

Paul O. Zelinsky, a multiple Caldecott winner, is one of my favorite children's book illustrators. Other books: Rapunzel, Swamp Angel, Rumpelstiltskin, The Wheels On The Bus.

Join Paul O. Zelinsky at Goodreads:
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/64039.Paul_O_Zelinsky

Visit TheCharmedBookshop.com for more first edition children's books.

Condition*: Fine/Near fine. The dust jacket shows mild shelf wear.

*Based on guidelines from the Independent Online Booksellers' Association.