KidLit Forum

ROOTABAGA STORIES by Carl Sandburg

How They Broke Away to Go to the Rootabaga Country

-words in this story (all those that sound at least strange) are intended to delight rather than to instruct
-the story can be a good material to teaching word games, logical games(“My first boy s my last and my last girl is my first and they picked their names themselves”), spelling games(“They are going to Kansas, to Kokomo, to Canada, to Kankakee, to Kalamazoo, to Kamchtka, to the Chattahoochee”), tongue twisters(“Baby pickers on baby stilts were picking baby balloons”, “pigs, pastures, pepper pickers, pitchforks”), alliteration (“ pfisty-pfoost, pfisty-pfoost, pfisty-pfoost ,”)
-all these give the impression that the story takes place in an amusement park or at the fair, where there are different kinds of games to play: the railroad can be the rollercoaster, there are balloons, clowns, stilt walkers, etc.
-the tongue twinsters, alliterations, assonances (“hooted and tooted”) are used to emphasize the atmosphere of a playground that sometimes is understood only by children.
-Characters in Rootabaga stories are named after their first words, their jobs and occupations, their looks, the lines they repeat all day due to their jobs: Gimme the Ax, Please Gimme, Ax Me No Questions, Wing Tip the Spick, Potato Face Blind Man, Any Ice Today,etc.


Just for fun
After reading The Two Skyscrapers Who Decided to Have a Child I played a little bit with numerology.
Here it is was it came out of it:
-to me it seems that the story resembles somehow to the Twin Towers is New York that were attacked in September 2001, the 11th
-The Rootabaga stories were published in 1922
- If we add up the numbers: 11.09.2001 we get number 5 (1+1+9+2+1 = 14 = 1+4 = 5)
1922 = 1+9+2+2 = 14 = 1+4 = 5
-In numerology number 5 is said to be the prevailing number in nature and art and symbolises Fire and the Stigmata
- Could Sandberg’s story be a premonition? (unlikely, but again... who knows)

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Monika Bandi