Book with a female emerald green gypsy/witch/fairy called Esmeralda or similar, illustrations included small little Hedgehog or Mole animals dressed in elf style red hooded tunics and green legging with elf shoes. Set in Enchanted forest setting. May have been British, read in Australia early 1970’s
Reminds me of the clumsy but friendly witch Esmeralda in the British magazine “Seven” (so called because each issue had 7 stories, 7 puzzles, and maybe more. She had a cat named Rufus.
A bit of information from a source close to “Look and Learn” magazine:
“I can’t help with ‘Seven’ or ‘Esmeralda,’ unfortunately, as they’re not
titles we own. What I can say is that both titles were published by John
Gresham in the early 1970s and Esmeralda was bought up by IPC Magazines so it could be merged into an IPC title (the idea being that the merger would bring a few readers with it and remove a rival title).
” ‘Seven’ ran for 16 issues between 20th February 1971 and 5th June 1971 and was then relaunched as ‘Esmeralda.’
” ‘Esmeralda’ ran for 33 issues between 12th June 1971 and 29th January 1972 and was incorporated into Bobo Bunny on 5th February 1972.”
Also:
“I imagine that all the stories in ‘Seven’ and ‘Esmeralda’ were especially created for those papers.”
Thank you for the leads! The clumsy witch and the cat named rufus sound familiar, but I could have sworn it was a hardback, then again it may have been an annual…
I have tried searching the internet based on the information provided, but can’t seem to find any images that would help in determining whether this item is solved.
Any suggestions where I could locate some images?