This is just a fragment! But if you could help me I would so appreciate it.
I grew up in Australia in the 1960s-1970s, and was obsessed with a picture book that featured the main character finding a tree with a small door at its base. The tree had gnarled/ exaggerated roots. The character went through the door and down a flight of stone stairs into what I remember to be a kitchen/witch’s den, lit up with yellows and oranges from an open fire. I cannot remember what happened next – but obviously it is terribly important if I keep searching for this book! 🙂
It is not the Berenstain’s Scary Tree story although slightly familiar in concept.
Thanks so much
Julia
How about The Door in the Tree by Elizabeth Bram? Here’s the Kirkus review:
Drawn in yellow and white with buoyant, childlike, but slightly skewed simplicity (and just a lighthearted jot of cubism), the matter-of-fact log of a little girl’s journey begins a bit like Alice’s when “”I . . . met a rabbit who showed me a hidden staircase in a tree.”” But unlike Alice’s adventure the rest is all a plotless sightseeing tour, with a birthday party for ducks, people who dance on rooftops, and other “”tiny, tiny”” ones who live underground. Cool and impassive, the little girl collects stars from the sky, skates around the world, and returns home through the door in the tree with the help of a magic wand donated by a tiny witch. Separately, the heroine’s encounters are fairly commonplace as fantasy elements, but Bram’s telling–and picturing–is on a young dreamer’s wave length.
Maybe one of the stories in Enid Blytons “Pixie Tales”?