A male youth does an errand for Mom but does it wrong, and on each subsequent errand he follows the advice she had given him the previous time.
Ex: He is carrying a cat to give away, but it wiggles free from his hands and scurries away.
Mom says, “Next time, put it in your hat so it won’t jump free. “
So his next errand is to take a pound of butter to market. He puts the butter under his hat. But it melts.
“Next time,” mom says, put it in your pack. So the next time, he is carrying something that cannot survive in his pack, but he puts it in the pack.
Great drawings, delightful in the 60s when I read it.
I don’t know your version, but the original story is Epaminondas by Sarah Cone Bryant.
If it was from the 60’s, try the version written by Eve Merriam and illustrated by Trina Schart Hyman. If the illustrations are burned into your brain, I guarantee it was Trina’s amazing work.The Art of the Picture Book has extensive photos of that particular edition here http://theartofchildrenspicturebooks.blogspot.com/2014/02/epaminondas-illustrated-by-trina-schart.html Have fun.
That link shows the pictures that I remember from having the book in the late 60’s (via either Lucky or Scholastic book order), but it was a reprint issued under the title of “That Noodle-head Epaminondas”—same author and illustrator, though.
This sounds exactly like a book my sisters and I had in the 1960s. It is called The Adventures of Silly Billy, but I don’t know the author’s name. There is a series of books called Wonder Books Easy Readers, and that is one of them, along with another one that I still have. Published by Wonder Books in NY.