Rootabaga Stories

In a delightfully odd little town where chimneys always puff, doors always open, and windows are forever either shut or ajar, a solitary carpenter named Gimme the Ax raises two children who choose their own names—Please Gimme and Ax Me No Questions. Their world is a rhythm of simple routines, wild‑grass hair and long ears, and the comforting certainty that everything stays exactly as it has always been.

Yet the quiet sameness soon feels too tight, and the siblings, urged on by their father, sell everything they own to buy a ticket that promises a journey “where the railroad tracks run off into the sky.” Boarding a rattling steam train that whistles and chugs toward an impossible horizon, they set off for a place where the ordinary rules no longer apply, hoping to discover what lies beyond the familiar landscape of their home.