The book I’m looking for was a children’s book probably published in the 1950s, although possibly going to back to the ’20s or so (no later than the early 1960s and I’m pretty sure it belonged to one of my parents when they were children, both born in 1949). I believe it took place somewhere in England or in Europe. Our copy did not have the dust jacket so I don’t know what was on the cover other than it was a green hardback. The most distinctive feature was a neighborhood map on the inside cover, probably in orange.
The plot concerned the kids in this neighborhood. I believe there was a new family moving in from America, and the kids played cowboys and Indians and built a teepee in a front yard (I remember learning that the British word was “garden” for yard from this book). And if I remember correctly, there was something beyond the neighborhood on the map, like a meadow, forest, or some kind of land over a fence or boundary line that the kids would go over to play.
I’m a librarian and I have searched WorldCat a lot for this book, and have also contacted the Library of Congress, the NYPL and the British Library with no luck. I have a feeling that a word related to the neighborhood was in the title, something like “Street,” “Lane,” “Road,” etc. so I have searched those kinds of words a lot but nothing pops up that looks familiar. Several times I have thought that it was something like the Mulberry Street or Primrose Lane books but those don’t have the right plots. Or maybe the title had something to do with whatever the kids called their little group– maybe something American Indian related.
Thanks for your help! I don’t know why I am so fixated on this…
Not quite as described, but throwing it out there: The Happy House Children Again, by Enid Blyton.
Thanks for this suggestion! It didn’t seem quite right but I started researching other Enid Blyton books and I think it may be The Boy Next Door. I ordered the 1956 edition and will see if it has the map.
I think this could be an Enid Blyton book called These Dreadful Children. An unruly family move in next door to a prim and proper family. They play cowboys and Indians. It certainly does sound like an Enid Blyton book.
I wonder if this could be one of Mabel Esther Allan’s long series of ‘Wood Street’ books? I don’t recognize the specific book, but the series is about a ‘gang’ of friends in a poor neighbourhood in Liverpool, and your description sounds like the sort of thing that could happen in these books. The same author’s ‘Pine Street’ series is also a possibility.