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313Q: Calico Cat and Her Kittens Live in a Candy Store

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I’m looking for a children’s book that I had received in the early to mid 70s. It was a thin illustrated book about a calico cat that had kittens and lived in a candy store. Those are the details I’m completely sure about.

I’m relatively sure that one of the kittens was white or cream colored. It may have been discolored by dust or soot at one point. The kittens were adopted. I’m pretty sure an old man owned the store and he gave the dirty kitten to a sad little girl who loved him and cleaned off the dirt to discover its beautiful fur.

I’ve been looking for this book for decades.

313P: Dinosaur Skeleton Eats Balloons

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I read this book in the 1980s.

Book features a long necked dinosaur skeleton in a museum. A child tries to feed the dinosaur food but it keeps dropping out of his bones. He then fills the dinosaur skeleton with coloured balloons.

Please help I loved this book

313O: An Easter Egg with Another World Inside

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This is an obscure a book that has an Easter theme or at least involved rabbits who produced these really ornate Easter eggs, in which some or at least one of them had another world inside. I seem to recall something about a Grand bunny or master rabbit or similar; but there also seemed to be some kind of theme where a child escapes their current world into one of the eggs (like a pied piper kind of story)

313M: Rhinoceros Escapes from Zoo

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I read this book to my children between 1966 and 1970. The story is about a rhinoceros who escapes from a zoo and two children, a boy and a girl, find the rhinoceros in a park and see to it that he gets home.  My recollection is that the book had a brown cover.  I don’t remember it having a dust jacket, although it may have when it was new.  We must have purchased it at a local bookstore in Northridge, California.

 

313L: Two Ladybugs Make Slippers

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When I was a child, we enjoyed many books from the local library (located at Coventry Rd and Euclid Heights Boulevard in Cleveland Heights, Ohio).

A favorite was about two bugs. I remember them pictured as lady bugs named Pimpernel and Cochineal. Their friend Bagley Beetle was sick and they went to visit him and gave him some slippers they made for him.

Book was probably printed 1930’s or earlier.

313K: Stories From Around the World (Solved!)

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The book I’m looking for was stories for older aged kids than the grade school library I found it in (our librarian wanted to encourage us). The book had a red hardcover, about 16″ x 8″ and was about 2″ thick. It had an illustration from the first story, I think, on the cover. The only story I remember the title for is The Twelve Princesses. It had stories from Europe, the Americas, Asia, Africa and probably more. When us grade schoolers got on the bus with it the older kids tried to borrow it! It was quite a read and some bits of the story lines were, the stairs to heaven with a trapdoor on one of the ends (Japanese), and the man who escaped a pond/water which he had to pass by putting a shell to his ear which had been filled with a love song by his beloved (Malaysia, I think). I wish I had more specifics.

313J: Girl gets carried by big bird to a fantasy land

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Girl gets lifted by a big bird to a far off fantasy land. She has golden blonde hair and brown eyes. All of the people in the new land have white hair and blue-green eyes, and the kids ride to school on six-legged unicorns.There is a wise old woman who grants each person one answer to an important question in their lifetime. This was a children’s book I borrowed from the library in 1972 or 1973.

313I: Seven Soviet Sisters

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This book was a little over my head when I was around 7 (ironically). It was not a Little Golden Book nor a Disney book!

It was a story book or what seemed to be a collection of related stories. An elementary epic?  May be Scandinavian stories rather than Soviet.

The early 1970s edition I had was bright blue and the cover was at least 8 ½ x 11.

There were seven (or only six) sisters. In the picture book version each sister was wearing an ornate but monochromatic dress. I’m thinking they were different examples of the regional dresses worn, or maybe clan-type styles. But with a hippie-vibe art style.

I think each sister was sent out on some kind of unusual coming-of-age search. Or maybe they were kidnapped by seven (or six) different people and each had a story about how they got home.

I was a natural reader, but either the words were a bit too big for me or I was too interested in what they were wearing to remember much of the plot. (That, and home wasn’t peaceful so I was sleep-deprived…so it was a big, wordy, beautiful blur of a book.)

I’d still have the book, but since I didn’t seem to be reading it, Mom gave it away to charity. I still have books that I was given when I was even younger…

 

313H: Monkey Brain Time Travel (Solved)

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I’m haunted by a (probably YA) time travel book I read in the mid 70s. I believe it takes place in England, where relatives are visiting (maybe from America?) their professor/scientist Uncle (?) who has produced a time travel potion. I think one of its main ingredients is monkey brains, but I’m not 100% sure. The serum allows the imbiber to travel back to Middle Age Britain, not sure if it’s as an active participant or as a fly-on-the-wall. Whichever character it is that starts taking trips, soon gets caught up in the people and events of that past. He becomes addicted to it. The danger is that his body stays more-or-less in present day geographically, so when he comes out of the trip he may be standing in the middle of a super highway or some such that wasn’t there hundreds of years ago. I don’t remember the resolution. I just remember loving the imagery and concept. Anybody?