Author Archives: admin

312J: Medieval Castle (Solved)

5 Replies

Children’s fantasy adventure with magic model boat and Ramses II I’m looking for a children’s book. Set in Britain, I think in the 1930s, and written then. Basic plot starts with a boy discovering a strange ‘antiques’ shop in a seaside town. In it is a model boat / ship, I think of a Viking longboat, which he acquires. Boat becomes a means to various time travel adventures to the past for boy and his family (brother & sister, or were they cousins?) which an adventure in ancient Egypt that involved rescuing Pharaoh Ramses II from an ambush by the Hittites at the Battle of Kaddish, visiting a medieval castle and later bringing back the daughter of the castle to ‘modern’ England – she is terrified by a motor car she thinks is a dragon. One other plot point. The boy tries to find the shop again once he discovers the boat is magic but cannot. But some time later does find it and knows he has to give up / return the magic boat model. I know I read it as child (1950s) but only came to mind when I came across a little Viking longboat model in a curio shop. Nice model, but not magic! Many thanks for any pointers.

312I: Missing Man

1 Reply

I’m looking for a fantasy book I read in the 80’s or 90’s. I believe the author was a woman. The story was about a man that is pulled into a fantasy world by a broken down cripple, to impersonate a guy that disappeared. There’s a stone that’s embedded into his skin, with memories. He has to convince an old wizard, and a beautiful woman. He also has to confront a bad guy. In the end, it’s revealed that the broken down guy is the missing guy, and that he was corrupted and broken by the evil guy.

312G:Bad Colors

Leave a reply

It’s from the first person point of view of a teenage girl. She has gone through some trauma; perhaps her dad has recently died? There’s some kind of new situation in her life. I think she’s living with her aunts? She was raised by New Age-y, witch-y types. It’s a realistic novel. Her immediate family are these flakey hippies, who have brought her up to be very superstitious. I think they read Tarot or some kind of divination for a living. She is beset with some problem; maybe she cuts herself? Over the course of the book, she learns to extricate herself from their superstition and magical thinking. They have a particular fixation on colors, with certain colors being good or bad luck. Yellow is very bad; it can’t be mixed with black. Purple is very significant & has to do with spirituality. The book ends with her on a therapist’s couch and she notices right away that it’s one of the “bad” colors, but then she reminds herself that that’s OK, that she’s going to dispense with this OCD-like fixation on the “right” color patterns & not be bound by her family’s backward ways.

312F: Rattle Windows And Shot Down Chimney’s

2 Replies

I remember looking at this book in the mid 80s, so it was probably published around that time or before. It was a large book and, as I recall, every page was completely filled with a full-colour image of many inventions/contraptions, all set in context. I don’t recall there being any narrative.
 one page showed a house with all the rooms in view. Each room had things going on all annotated with detailed little notes. I remember the bathroom had a special invention that allowed a cheeky child to lie in a bath without getting wet. Built into this contraption was a hidden computer game console which allowed them to secretly play games (to me this dates the book in the 80s). To emulate the sounds of him bathing, another contraption stood near by called the “bath-farter” or something.
Another page showed a huge wheel of mischief rolling down a street with arms extending from it. These arms could rattle windows or throw sot down chimneys. Again – the wheel was annotated with many notes

312E: A Boy Living In A Village

Leave a reply

I read this book sometime in the 80-84 time frame, possibly slightly earlier and no later than 1985.
I only recall that a boy was living in a village and he was training at various occupations – mining chalk (?) possibly from some chalk downs, studying astronomy and such things.
He at some point runs away or gets away and falls into some sort of underground crypt where he encounters the remains of some warrior lying there with a green stone axe on its chest.
He takes the axe….and that’s the last I remember.

312D:In Heaven Before Birth

Leave a reply


I have been trying to remember a picture book I read to my children back in the mid 1990s. My son now has a child and wants to find that book. I am pretty sure it is a Japanese folk tale ( but maybe Chinese?) .  The story is  about a deformed scholar who is hired to tutor the beautiful young daughter of an important rich person.  There is a myth that before a baby is born, they know the person who they are matched to be with, their “soul mate”. But before a baby is born one of the angels will press a finger to the middle of the upper lip ( hence the dent in our lips)  causing the baby to forget all memories of this person.  then they search during their lives for that one person.
Apparently in heaven before birth, the deformed scholar was a handsome baby and the young girl was the one with deformities . For some reason… ones I cannot remember, he switches with her so she will be beautiful and he will carry her deformities. They end up falling in love down on earth. This was such a lovely book that both my children remember even 20+ yrs later

312C: Missing Pearls

4 Replies
Children search for missing (pearls?) from necklace on beach to save mermaids. I would have read this in the early 70s to 80s, and it very likely could have been a 2nd hand book. Some children are searching on a beach for the missing (I think pearls) from a necklace. The necklace needs to be complete to save (possibly) mermaids from something. I remember rockpools being involved. This has been bugging me for years, and I’d be so grateful if someone could solve it for me.

312B:Island Of Mozambique

Leave a reply

This children’s book I used to have was this paperback book about two brothers who live on the island of Mozambique. Its a fairy tale story that take place in the modernize world early 1900s. One i thing i remember is this particular scene from the book. The brother kills a snake with a machete that is trying to kill his brother and his brothers wife in bed. When they wake up the brother in bed accuses the brother with the machete of trying to kill him. When the brother with the machete explains what really happened he turns into stone. Its a really beautifully illustrated book and uses a lot of deep blues and greens. I bought it in Boston around the late 1990s.

312A: Jeremy Rabbit (Solved)

5 Replies

{private role=”author”]Mary Anne Smith,rejoicingmary@yahoo.com[/private]

I’m looking for a small children’s book (like a Golden book but I don’t remember if it is a Golden Book). It may have been titled “The Animals’ Christmas” or “The Christmas Star”, or something else.
The main character is Jeremy Rabbit. There is also a squirrel. They decorate a snowy forest fur tree for Christmas. The squirrel says to “Look up! Look up!” to see that a star from the sky has settled in the top branch of the tree.

I read this book to my sons Jeremey and Justin (I called the squirrel “Justin Squirrel) when they were young. Jeremey was killed awhile back and I’d love to find this book for his daughters.
Thank you for any help you can offer.