Category Archives: Solved

309J: A picture of mother (Solved)

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8
There is a book from my childhood that I think about often. I would be forever grateful if you could help unite me with it. I don’t have a title for you, but here is what I know:
1) It is a picture book for children.
2) I read the book as a child in the early 80s.
3) Plot: It is a book about a child (might be an animal child, not sure) that wants to make a picture of his mother. He starts out making the picture on his own and feels he needs advice, so he  takes it to different animal characters to see what they think. Each animal looks at the picture and makes a suggestion to change it somehow to reflect a feature of that animal (for example: the elephant suggests that the nose be lengthened). By the end of the book the picture has a variety of different features that look nothing like the mom.
Sadly, I cannot remember much else. I have tried to imagine the title and the best I could guess at is “A Picture of Mother” or something of the sort. But I could be way off.
This books stands out to me now as a message about trusting your own judgement in creating art (or writing) and not allowing yourself to be so easily influenced by the opinions of others. Let your work be your own. I’m not sure if that was the message it had intended to give, but it comes to mind now as I pursue my own writing career. I’d love to have this message bearer as a tangible reminder of this lesson.
Please help me, for you may be my only hope. Thank you for your time and effort.

308X: A blue lion in the tree (Solved)

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1

I’m trying to find a book from my childhood (1980s). It is basically a picture book about a kid in bed looking out a window and seeing different animals in a tree. I remember a snake and white owl on two of the pages. I don’t remember the rest, maybe a bear and a lion. Some of them were different colors too like blue. I believe it went something like “I look out the window to see a blue lion in the tree”.

Thank you for your help.

307I: Boy and Agoraphobic Sister Orphaned in NYC (Solved)

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I am looking for a fiction book I read as a child, probably in the 1970s, about a brother and sister living in New York City (possibly Soho?).  They are left alone and their parents do not come home, so the brother learns to scrounge food on the streets.  His sister is afraid to go outside.  The boy meets a children’s book illustrator in another building, who begins using him in her drawings.  She takes him to the beach (the Rockaways?) in her convertible, and I believe she eventually adopts the boy and girl.

307H: Children’s book with moveable character on a string (Solved)

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3
Last summer, I bought my son a new children’s book which contained several characters which dangled from the book on strings – the concept was that you could move the characters in between pages so they could give “hugs” to the other characters. I bought it because it reminded me so much of a book I loved as a child. When I brought the new book home, my sister had the same reaction: “this is making me think of a book from when we were growing up!”
The best clues I can come up with:
– I was born in 1984 and my sister in 1980 (we also have a younger brother born in 1987).
– Our grandma loved to give us vintage books, so it may have been even older, though I suspect it was from the 1980s.
– There was one character on a string, sturdier than a single sheet of paper but not as thick as a board book. The string–about 6 inches long–was glued into the binding of the book. The concept was to move the character from page to page and bring him throughout the story of the book. He was probably about 2 or 3 inches tall.
– The book had interactive elements – for example, I remember vividly that you could somehow insert him on a slide, and he could “ride” down the slide as you pushed the little character along the page.
– I think the character was an animal (a bear? A weasel? Something brown?) but my memory is so faint on this that it may very well have been a human.

306W: Animal figurines come alive, children’s book (Solved)

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It was a book that my 5th grade teacher read to us in 1996-97 in Missoula, MT. There were magical rules to when the animals can come out of the china hutch. It’s really hazy, but I do remember that one of the main characters was a dog and something tragic happens to him. I feel strongly that the book had a red, white, and black cover. Something makes me think it has something to do with ‘Valentine.’ Maybe it’s a character’s name? It was probably a chapter book. I think the figurines where porcelain? It may also be set in the Victorian era, or other era I would have considered old timey as a child. The memories of this book are very visceral and strong but not detailed. It made me cry. Please help!

306O: Crushed Toys (Solved)

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Hello, I remember a set of books (we had 2 but there may have more to the set) they where hard back and about 2in thick. Plain cover with no illustrations, short stories with just a title on the cover. Each story was about 10-15 pages long and had a illustration at the beginning of the story. I remember one illustration with a car that was 1950’s looking. One story was about a kid leaving his toys (toy cars maybe) in the driveway and dad came home and ran them over. I really don’t remember any other stories from the books. I think the covers where dark blue or grey. The stories where life lessons and not really fantasy, no talking birds or stuff like that, as far as I remember.

305O: A jewel from the ruins (Solved)

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I read a hardback book, in the ’70s, about a girl on a coast, Ireland or Britain, who finds a piece of jewelry, a ring or broach or a necklace (in the ruins of an ancient building maybe?) She has dreams that reveal the life of the girl who had the piece a long (centuries?) time ago. The dream girl was maybe Spanish.

There were dolphins, and an island that figured very large in the story.

It didn’t seem like a new book at the time. Looking back I would guess that it was written after ww2. It had a sad tragic feel to it.

Does this ring any bells?