Author Archives: admin

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.

330O: Stone Forest

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I thought this was in the title, but have had no luck. Set in Western Australia, for some reason a teen ends up surviving on their own (maybe a girl) and before rescued burns wood for a fire which actually turns out to be the petrified remains of shipwrecked sailors from the Batavia or other Dutch (maybe) craft involved in spice trade to Indonesia. I really just remember that the key protagonist thinks she’s hallucinating when spirits appear in the smoke. Can’t remember why he/she is alone, maybe family break down or similar. Presume “stone forest” refers to Bungle-Bungles of the Kimberley region of northern Western Australia. Fairly modern, so maybe published in the 1980’s?