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330Y: World Girl History Series, Including Dolls (Solved!)

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I’m looking for an early-to-mid-90s “American Girl”-style series of short illustrated chapter books about girls living in different periods of world history, each with their own 18-inch doll.

I am definitively NOT remembering Pleasant Company’s own “Girls of Many Lands” series. Believe me, that comes up every time I try to Google this series and it’s not the one I’m thinking of.

The line may have launched with one book for each doll, then gone out of business before publishing more books; I only remember the first book for each character, most likely obtained through the Scholastic Book Fair.

The characters and books were, as well as I can recall:
– An English girl in the 1100s who was into falconry. Name may have been Elinor/Eleanor. Vivid recollection of the cover: a blond girl in a dull blue dress reaching out to touch a falcon.
– An African (I want to say Igbo?) girl from the 1400s. Vivid recollection of her helping her older sister put on makeup before her wedding, including interior illustration of her applying the makeup. (I remember being surprised that they had makeup way back then. For some reason, that’s what stuck with me.)
– A French girl in the 1700s who wanted to be a ballet dancer. Name may have been Marie, or Marie-Something, or Something-Marie. Cover showed her dancing on a Parisian street.
– An Irish immigrant girl living in San Francisco in the late 1800s. Name may have been Bridget or some other extremely Irish name. Cover may have featured her holding a book to her chest and gazing meaningfully off into the distance. She had curly red hair because of course she did. I believe she also had a Chinese immigrant friend or potential friend who barely showed up and whom I hoped I’d read more about in later books. Vivid recollection of one scene in which she and another girl bond over how much they loved “Little Women” and cried over “the part with Beth.”

There may have been more; those are just the four I remember. On the last page of each book was a perforated card with a photograph of the dolls on it. You could tear out the card and send it away with a check to order a doll. They looked very much like American Girl dolls, so much that even as a child I could tell right away, “Oh, these people are totally ripping off American Girl.” But I could forgive them because hey, history’s a lot bigger than just America! Someone’s gotta fill that niche!

Any help would be much appreciated. Thank you!

330X: Wealthy Uncle Watches Orphaned Siblings Take Care Of Elderly Stockman “Uncle”

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I discovered your website when googling several key words of the book I am seeking.  Someone else had also looked for it but I couldn’t find your answer to them.
The book is about four orphaned siblings who move from Britain to Australia as their guardian is an unknown great-uncle.  The young people are Alice, Betty and Sigismund plus another brother whose name I can’t recall.  Due to a case of mistaken identity they end up caring for a weak, elderly stockman in the outback as they think he is their uncle.  Their actual uncle is a neighbouring wealthy grazier who watches over them from a distance but wants to get a sense of their characters and ability to cope with adversity.  He has a grandson, Gene, who befriends the teenagers.
I believe it is set in the late forties or early fifties.  The copy I read was a slim green book without a dust jacket.  It was quite an old looking book in the library of my small prairie high school in Manitoba in the mid-sixties.

330V: Children’s Book, Poor Artistic Family, Toilet Paper Drawings

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I have vivid memories of a children’s chapter book I got out of a Canadian library or school sometime in the mid-’90s. It was about an extremely poor family, a mother, a father, and a daughter who lived in a RV or mobile home or carriage or something; when the daughter registers for school, she says she has no address or birthplace because she was always moving.

They are so poor they can’t afford paper, and so the mother or father, a very talented artist, makes lots of drawings on toilet paper.

There are lots of comic-like drawings—I remember one which had a fork and peas in two panels, the first captioned “unsteady fork, steady peas” and the next with the peas falling off labelled “steady fork, unsteady peas.”

At one point, the daughter gets a letter sent to her with a drawing (reproduced in the book)—right side up it looks like a toucan, upside down it’s a man sitting on a toilet.

330U: Alligators (And Other Disappointing Pets)

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I think it’s called something like “Alligators Don’t Make Great Pets,” and it has silly descriptions and illustrations of many animals that would not make good pets. I think the child might choose a dog at the end? I checked this book out from the library in the mid-1980s. I’ve been searching for this book for years and would LOVE to find it. Hope you can help.

330S: Boy Bitten By Burro, Burro Arrested

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My grandmother used to read to me an illustrated children's book - hardback- small book - (about the size of Peter Rabbit). The plot was about a little boy who tried to give a cute burro a carrot but he got bitten by accident. The police came and arrested the burro. She read it to me in the early 1960’s but the book seemed pretty old. It may have been from the 1930-1940 time period. I want to read it to my grandsons! Thank you!

330R: Blue Kitten Wins First Prize

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I remember having a book as a little girl that was either a Little Golden Book or similar to, about a family that found a little dirty stray kitten. They took it home and gave it a bath and were surprised to find it was a white kitten. Then the kitten jumped out of the sink and fell into a tub of blueing, dyeing itself pale blue. They put a ribbon on it and it won first place at the pet show. Thank you.

330Q: Enchanted Cat Saves The Night – Short Story (Solved!)

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I’m looking for a short story about an enchanted cat, that might have been in an anthology of Halloween stories, possibly published in the mid to late 60s. It might have been set in colonial times. The cat’s human companion is unaware of his magic powers until there’s a crisis in the town. The cat goes out to save the night, then comes back, drained of magic, and his last words as the glow fades from his eyes are the instructions to be sure to provide fresh cream (or was it milk?) every day. Thanks so much if you can help me find this!

330P: Randy Judge Gets Sentenced In Court After Seaside Holiday

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Looking for a book by a British author. A man tells his story to somebody else. He was in a high position (judge?). Holiday at the seaside. While lying in the dunes, sunbathing, a group of adolescent girls approach him and watches (tease?) him. One of the girls visits him at his lodge, and a sexual relationship ensues. The parents of the girl find out about it, and he has to appear at court and gets sentenced; jail? At any rate he loses his position.