Author Archives: admin

322O: Girl Makes Best Friend, Gets Matching Puppies

1 Reply

Best Friend(s) - title, I think, children's book. I read it about 1960. 3-6th grade reading. Girl's mom is her schoolteacher and she gets called teacher's pet. Grandfather lives with them and she has a great tree house. Half-French girl moves in next door and they become best friends. Archenemy is Millicent. End of story the girls get "matching" puppies. Remembering where it was in library, the author's name began with A-H. Hardcover, minimal illustrations. I think the phrase, "no more sense of time than a cricket" was used.

322N: Aliens Use TV For Mind Control (Solved)

8 Replies

Seeking a Kid's Book, I believe I read it in the early 80’s. About aliens invading and a group of friends trying to stop it? Or kids who had a machine that allowed them to make people think aliens were invading via TV. . . sort of a kid's War of the Worlds. Or kids get a machine from aliens to control people via the TV. May have had some device for mind control like TV or remote control. I think it took place in a big city. Had a cartoon-like cover. . . there may have been similar illustrations throughout the book. It was for kids 8-12 range I’d guess. I know it’s not the book series “Tripods”, for younger kids than that. I was young when I read it. . it's driving me nuts!!! Thanks

322L: Historical fiction for teens, set in 1800s or early 1900s

Leave a reply

I purchased this book in the late 1970s or early 1980s. It was about a girl who started out very poor, but whose father somehow struck it rich (gold?). I don’t seem to remember a mother. The MC made friends with a girl who was from a proper family. Maybe they met at boarding school. The MC fell in love with the friend’s brother but it was always intimated that she might be too “new money” to be suitable for him. The MC also befriended a colorful actress named, Florie or Flossie. Her advice was to be flashy and I seem to remember the phrase “plenty of ooh la la”. But gradually the MC realized that the actress might be a bit gauche. One main struggle was the MC trying to seem well-bred and not like new, flashy money. I remember scenes of the MC being fitted for and purchasing new, elegant clothes.

322K: Math History For Children

Leave a reply

[author role=”private”]Toby Holtz, tholtz@barnard.edu[/private]

This was a large format hardcover book from 1950’s (maybe 1960’s). Cover had picture of yellow pyramid(s) against blue sky, with drawings of Egyptian, Greek, Renaissance mathematicians. Inside had chapters about math and science (astronomy, physics, etc.) through the ages, i.e. early man looking at stars, Egyptians building pyramids, Greeks measuring land, medieval development of arithmetic, Renaissance architecture and Galileo’s physics and Newton’s calculus applied to science, etc. Pages had text and colored drawings as illustrations, and some portraits of mathematicians. Maybe title was “Lore and Legend of Mathematics.” The name “Langston” may be one of the names of one of the authors. It may have been a type of Golden book. (There was another, similar book about the history of music, with a gray cover showing a drawing of a brown violin and a gold colored brass instrument.)

322J: The Mountaineer Children (and Dog) (Solved!)

4 Replies

Title: The Mountaineers – A children’s book from the 40’s
I am not sure that this is the correct title, as I have been unable to find it though any searches.  However, the book had a wonderful illustration on the cover of a number of children and a large dog climbing a mountain or hill.
I don’t remember much about their adventures, but the book was re-printed in the 70’s with the same cover illustration.
Thanks.

322I: Peter Rabbit, candy in the sky and other stories

Leave a reply

I am looking for a children’s anthology that likely contained a Peter Rabbit story and one about a boat sailing on a chocolate or candy bay. I remember vivid images of candy hanging in the sky. I believe it was the last story in the collection. I was born in 1986, and the book was hand-bound with thick ivory thread.

I submitted my original request back in 2011, but the Peter Rabbit information is new based on the illustrations in a book that I just found. F397 and B763 were the previous inquiries.

322H: “Peter, Please, It’s Pancakes”

2 Replies

I enjoyed this book beginning in about 1955 but had two older sisters (the oldest born in 1946) so it could have been purchased as early as that.  It was a hard-covered book and had stories for children of different ages.  Each story had, under its title, a number of asterisks (I think one through six) equal to the age of the child it was appropriate for.  For example, ******  was a story for a six year old.  The only title I remember from the book is “Peter, Please, It’s Pancakes”.  I would love it if you could identify this book!

322G: Ocean Adventures in Octopus Town (Solved)

3 Replies

I want to help my wife find a book that her mom used to read to her. Mom says it was a paperback picture book and the pages had metallic highlights so they sparkled. The cover had the main character on it, a young girl who had long brown hair and eyeglasses and she was surrounded by seaweed.
In the story/poem the girl falls into the ocean and encounters a variety of sea creatures as a result.
Some lines and plot points from my wife and mother-in-law’s memories:
“…and arm in arm we danced way down, until we reached octopus town. And there we saw one hundred more, eight hundred legs, one hundred heads, dancing in their seaweed beds”.
A line toward the end of the story describes something involving a dense school of sardines or mackerel as “bits of silver hit like hail”
In the end, the main character is being chased by a shark and wakes up, falling out of her bed.
Thank you so much!

322F: Town Loses Color

Leave a reply

I am looking for the name of a book, these the facts that I remember: 

Circulation early 1960s

Picture book

Subject- town loses color and becomes black and white due to bad behavior, color comes back when sun shines through the tear of a boy producing a rainbow.

Length was perhaps 20 pages

Detailed illustrations

Please let me know, I'd be so grateful.