I owned this book around 1950 when I would have been 7 or 8. This was a thin book of a somewhat large format (8 x 10?), with dark blue cloth covers. The book was primarily text, with occasional full-page lithographed full color paintings. I am pretty sure the title contained the words “Cliff Dwellers”. It was about the “Anasazi” Indians of the Southwest (probably based on Mesa Verde), and was a fictional story involving two children (twins?) and their daily lives, finding water, helping harvest corn, and, what I most remember, negotiating the ladders to and from their cliff dwelling. I’ve searched the LOC on-line catalog, WorldCat, and Abebooks.com, with no success. Hope someone remembers this book.
Stump the Bookseller
New format, same book stumper solving.
Children of the Cliff? https://archive.org/details/childrenofcliff00wilerich
One of these?
“Lucy Fitch Perkins (1865-1937) was an American children’s book author and illustrator, famous for writing the “Twins” series of books. She wrote books giving pictures of child life in other countries, and then, for the benefit of American and foreign born children alike, she also wrote books which gave some idea of what had been done for this country by those who had founded and developed it. Her books include: The Dutch Twins (1911), The Japanese Twins (1912), The Irish Twins (1913), The Eskimo Twins (1914), The Mexican Twins (1915), The Cave Twins (1916), The Belgian Twins (1917), The French Twins (1918), The Spartan Twins (1918), Cornelia (1919), The Scotch Twins (1919), The Italian Twins (1920), The Puritan Twins (1921), The Swiss Twins (1922), The Filipino Twins (1923), The Colonial Twins of Virginia (1924), The American Twins of 1812 (1925), The American Twins of the Revolution (1926), Mr. Chick: His Travels and Adventures (1926), The Pioneer Twins (1927), The Farm Twins (1928), Kit and Kat (1929), The Indian Twins (1930), The Pickaninny Twins (1931), The Norwegian Twins (1933), The Spanish Twins (1934), and The Chinese Twins (1935).”
Hah-Nee of the Cliff Dwellers?
Oh my God! Today is my birthday and my girlfriend has been trying to locate that book for weeks based on my faulty memory of the title. It was the first book I ever fell in love with. I used to love going to my local library so I could visit my favorite book. I remember mainly for the lush illustrations and the boy’s relationship with his grandfather who dies in the course of the story. I remember Hah-bee wondering about his grandfather’s spirit in the afterlife.
Thank you for remembering the right title. Just found it on Abe books. What a birthday!
Something by Ann Nolan Clark? I couldn’t find anything with Cliff Dwellers in the title, but she does have some books about cliff dwellers.
Thank you all very much for these suggestions. Children of the Cliff, 1905 is way too early. My book was at a higher reading level, and had full-page, full-color lithographs of paintings of the cliff-dwellings and mesa country. Lucy Fitch Perkins’ Twins books are also too early. We actually did have some of those in our house, and I remember them (The Eskimo Twins, The Mexican Twins), but these were normal-sized, thicker books, and were “old” books (I think they were my father’s childhood books). My cliff dwellers book was a “new” book (probably published 1948-1950) and was a larger format, thinner book–similar in format to The Little Prince, which we also had. Hah-Nee of the Cliff-Dwellers, 1956, is too late–by then I was into model airplanes and Elvis Presley.
The Ann Nolan Clark suggestion is very intriguing–this looks very promising, but alas, I couldn’t find anything by her that fits my book. There is a fair amount about her online (Wikipedia, etc.), and I think her books are well known and seem to be available (Abebooks.com, etc.), but nothing matching my book. Reading her biography, I *wish* she were my author!
Have you also searched bookfinder.com? it’s quite a bit broader than abebooks.com…
Could this be one of Sonia Bleeker’s books? She wrote several books in the 1950s, which gave semi-fictionalized accounts of the lives of various groups of Native Americans. I don’t recognize this particular topic among them; but I’ve only ever seen a couple of her books.
Thanks for this idea. I’ve looked over her books on [an online bookseller] and Goodreads, and didn’t see one that fit. They look like non-fiction books, whereas my cliff-dwellers book was definitely fiction.
Perhaps it is Lolami the Little Cliff Dweller (Bayliss). She also wrote a simplified version call The Little Cliff Dweller, A Story of Lolami. A sequel is called Lolami in Tusayan. Hope this helps!
Hah Nee of the Cliff Dwellers 1956 mary and Conrad Buff – I
loved that book as a child and was trying to find it on Amazon as a gift for a child.
It was Hah-nee of the Cliff Dwellers. I loved that book as a kid. ❤️