Author Archives: admin

334K: Evolved Rats Vs Devolved Humans In Once Radioactive City

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When I was young, 12 maybe, I checked a book out of the local library, reading it several times, which initiated a life long live of post apocalyptic fiction. In the book a young boy about my age lives with a tribe outside the ruins of a large city that might have been Chicago. The tribe is at the hunter gatherer level of technology. And his main weapon is a spear. The city itself is a blast zone/dead zone no one is allowed to go in because it is supposedly radioactive. I don’t remember why but he heads into the dead zone and discovers the radiation is no longer deadly. But living in the ruins are a race of evolved rat beasts that are six feet tall, stand on their hind legs, and are spear wielding. The rat beasts come after him and he has a series of near misses until he escapes the dead zone and is rescued in a big showdown between the human tribe and the rat tribe, being saved by the adults whose rules he defied. The book had large-ish print and excellent pen and ink drawings sprinkled throughout. I went back to the library that I got it from but the destroyed my old library card and no longer have the book. It would have been published in the 1950’s or first part of the 60’s. Any help finding it would be greatly appreciated.

 

334H: Colorful Shoes With Special Powers

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My brothers and I are trying to find a book from when we were kids. It is about a group of kids who find shoes. They bring them to their tree-house and each box of shoes is a different color. The shoes give them special powers, I think the red ones made you fast. I think one pair gave the wearer the ability to jump really high. We have looked online with no success.

334E: Argyle Socks For Birds Unravels Business Plans (Solved!)

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This is an illustrated children’s book about a little Scottish boy (possibly named Angus) who makes friends with a sparrow in the winter. The boy’s family owns an argyle sock factory. The poor little sparrow is so cold outside in the winter, it sits shivering on a tree branch, switching from one foot to another in an attempt to stay warm. The little boy has the “perfect” solution to this problem: make his little bird friend a wee pair of argyle socks.

Well, the little sparrow is so chuffed about his own new cozy warm socks, he goes to the other birds in the trees to show them off. Soon, all the birds think they too should have a pair of lovely warm argyle socks, and so either the boy or the bird decides to go into the factory (full of huge spools of wool yarn), and make thousands of pairs of wee birdie socks.

In the morning, the boy’s family comes to work, but alas, there is no more yarn left for their business. They will be ruined! So, feeling bad for taking advantage of the little boy’s kindness, all the birds unravel their socks, and reassemble the giant spools of yarn. The factory is saved! Afterwards, the birds get to live in the factory rafters, where they are always warm, and don’t need socks.

The book may have originally been brought back by a relative from the UK (they’ve since passed), but it was read in Kentucky if that helps pinpoint the origin.

Thank you for your help.

334C: War of the Seasons, as the Seasons Pass

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Hello, I hope you can help me find this book for my dad! The book is a picture book (which my parents gave me) for children and is about the passing of the seasons, especially winter and summer. I do not remember much text, there may not have been any. The drawings are page size (the book was hardcover and large) and beautifully drawn and very detailed, some with a view of what happens on the surface as well as underground. The drawings show the retreating winter in spring, and the advancing winter in the autumn. Winter and summer are represented by large armies of creatures (dwarfs?) and animals battling each other. I vividly remember a (cute) rodent pulling a sort of oversized triangular spiral drill (with a handle) in a tunnel. A large tree behind which armies gather. The summer army bombards the winter one with some objects (flowers?). The images are very natural, no machines. It is not a violent battle, more symbolic, there were flowers, nuts, trees. In the spring, winter is retreating, and in the autumn summer is on the back-foot. The scenes were spring-like and autumn-like respectively, with the parts of the scenery representing summer and on which the summer army was gathered being more lush than the parts representing winter, which were more harsh. I cannot recall a plot or story line other than this recurrent passing of the seasons. I do not remember a protagonist, there may not have been one. I do not think there were many pages, perhaps a dozen or so. I read the book in the mid to late eighties in Germany. There may have been two editions, one in German and the other one in English. The book may have come to Germany from the UK/Ireland. I have reasons to believe that the original was in English. It somehow was a very special book, to me anyhow. Thank you for your help!

334B: Teen romance, wheelchair, wheelchair basketball (Solved!)

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Read this the summer of '72 in Santa Maria, California. It was a library book. A girl in a wheelchair and her older sister are shopping and the chair gets 2 flat tires. A young guy (ex-Army, I think) with a prosthetic leg helps them get home. He and the older sister date, but he steps on her foot as they dance. He plays wheelchair basketball, his chair tips and he's standing upright for a second, then face-plants and everyone laughs. I know this isn't much to go on, but it's all I've got.

334A: High school romance, heirloom chickens (Solved!)

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I read it sometime in the early 70's. All I remember is that a girl is in science class and the teacher is talking about how certain breeds of chickens are gone because they've been cross-bred out of existence. The next day, a male student brings in cages filled with the birds that the teacher said were extinct. The girl is impressed by the boy and asks to see more.

333Z: Australian Teenager on the Road, Searching for Biological Mother (Solved!)

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In the first half of 2002, I got most of the way through a self-contained YA mystery series. I think there were ten books in total, each about 100-120 pages, probably published recently. I was attending a Canadian high school at the time and discovered the series while volunteering at another school’s library. I read all but the last one (I suspect the school year ended before I had a chance to borrow that one). I’d like to know how the series concluded, but every attempt I’ve made at finding these books online has hit a dead end. I either find nothing, or I find an earlier online description of the series that I wrote in 2015.
The protagonist is a young woman from Australia (as I recall), about sixteen, named something like Blake or Blaine. The series has her name in the title along the lines of ‘The Blake Journals’ or ‘The Blaine Files’ or the like. The first volume opens with her leaving home in a carefully thought-out plan to run away. She disappears in the middle of the night, grabs her possessions, and takes to the road on some kind of motor scooter or moped. We eventually learn that her goal is to locate her biological mother, who vanished years ago. As I recall, there’s very little in terms of action-adventure: this is more about a quiet and painstaking solo quest.
The books’ cover images were nearly identical. They all had the series title in large yellow-and-black typography, staggered a bit for a vintage-typewriter look to convey mystery/edginess. If I had to guess, a publishing house cranked these out in a short period of time as a one-off, but clearly the series intrigued me enough that I read about 90% of it, and now I’m finding it tantalizing.