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309R: She unknowingly falls in love with her brother

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A homeless man kidnaps a baby for ransom. She’s sick. He breaks back into house to steal her medicine. Her parents die before paying ransom. He raises the baby as his own. He becomes wealthy. She grows up thinking she is his daughter then falls in love with her bio brother. The kidnapper takes his own life confessing all in his suicide note. More details below.

The kidnapper was homeless and sleeping on a bench. He had covered himself in newspapers to keep warm. One of the newspapers he was using to cover himself had a story about a kidnapping for ransom.  He got the idea to do the same (kidnap a baby for ransom). So he takes a baby and then hears on the news that she is sick and will die without her medicine. Despite the risk, he breaks back into the house and steals her medicine.

Meanwhile the police find a baby and call the parents to come to the police station to find out if it is their baby. On the way to the police station the parents are in a car accident and die.

The man doesn’t return the baby to her relatives but instead moves to another country and raises her as his daughter. She believes she is his daughter. The man works very hard and becomes fabulously wealthy. The girl grows up and falls in love with a boy. The man is very protective and does a background check on the boy and discovers that he is the girl’s biological brother.

The man cannot bring himself to face the girl, so he kills himself, leaving behind a letter where he tells her the truth.

The book was read pre-1973ish. And to up the difficulty a notch: she would have read it in Spanish, so maybe it was a translation of something English, maybe not.

309Q: The lonely star

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I remember this book from when I was little. I can’t remember, author, title, country of origin, date published, etc. But I know it exists because recently I saw a sign for a paint store in Mexico that had the main character of the book as the logo. So of course now I’m on a mission to find it.
The book had a color scheme of only black, white and red, similar to ‘Harold and the Purple Crayon’, but red instead of purple. The main character was in the shape of a star. Could’ve been a ghost? It lived in a big lonely mansion. It discovers a paintbrush and a can of red paint. It begins painting red spirals. First on the walls, the curtains, the furniture and then on animals and trees. So it gives a deer longer spiral red horns and a bird longer spiral red feathers. It gives trees longer spiral red branches and flowers more petals. I was born in 1982 and I must’ve come across it when I was about 8-10 years old, at the time I lived in Mexico, but I believe it was in English.
I appreciate your help and hopefully this helps shed more light on the mystery.

309P: Mother mallard and her ducklings

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Mother Mallard builds nest and hatches a number of ducklings (all with human names). They then face the perils of nature. I remember one disappearing from the nest. (fox).  The smallest one and last in swimming line suddenly disappears underwater (snapping turtle).  The book is probably from the 50’s.  It is a realistic story and I had a love/hate relationship with it.  I threw it out when I was in college (too bad).  I would like to find it again.

309O: Historic Jesus by two anthropologists

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Sited on NPR with interview of authors between 10 and 15 years ago (?).  They describe Jesus in he context of the Roman political power and the strain on the economies via taxes etc. and how Jesus was a counter culture.  Also, I remember they assert that it was highly unlikely that anyone was allowed to remove his body from the cross and they describe the sect of Christians who lived in Jerusalem who saw Jesus not as divine but as a prophet and how they were all killed off in the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans.

309N: Warsaw Ghetto and Auschwitz Survivalist

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True story about a young (12-14 year old) Jewish boy who uses his wit, street-wise and athletic abilities to keep one step ahead of his Nazi captors in the Warsaw, Poland ghetto.  For a while he is able to secure items for people trapped in that prison-like environment by sneaking out of the ghetto and returning unnoticed.   Eventually he is sent to Auschwitz concentration camp.  He escapes by hiding in a railway car leaving the site with packed clothing.  He goes back to Warsaw to warn others about conditions at Auschwitz and joins the Jewish fighters in the ghetto uprising against the occupying German army.  He again is sent to Auschwitz and escapes a second time by hiding under a truck leaving the prison.  He survives World War II and ultimately publishes the book about his exploits only after his wife perishes in a house fire.  I do not know the name of the book or the date of publication.

309M: White sheep in a green field

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I do not know the author or the name of the book but it was published about 1947or 1948 It was the same time I read Elizabeth Enright's "Four Story Mistake."


It was about a girl who had very little in common with the kids in her school and had few friends and believes it will be worse now that she has moved. She is standing on a bridge in the new town and down at a field when a boy joins her and says "white sheep in a green field, doesn't that remind you of "Kim". That was just what she was thinking and she makes her first of many friends in a school that shares her interests.

309L: How human beings “diversified”

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I am hoping to find a book that my father read to me when I was about 5 years old. After that, I remember reading it myself for years. This was a very long time ago…probably 1948 or so. No, I don’t remember the name of the book or the author but I can still visualize the black and white line drawings. The book told the story of how human beings “diversified” and the different races and ethnic groups evolved as they traveled across the Earth over centuries. The groups of people were called by various nonsense names….as I recall, there were names like Goopledops but that’s about as close as I can get. I know it was a hardcover book. I wonder if anyone remembers it. Thank you.

309K: Turn back to the front and read it again!

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I grew up in the mountains of Virginia.  In my three room country school, there were very few books, but there is one I remember very fondly and would love to have a copy of it.   I don’t remember the title or author, but I would have read this around 1946 or 1947.   Here is a gist of the story.  A family lives very happily in a tiny, tidy one room house.  One day they decide that their house is too small so they begin adding rooms onto the one room.  They continue to add so many rooms (one behind the other) that they seldom see their family members.  I believe that the house became such a curiosity that train tracks were built along side the house so tourists could see it.   The family members navigated this long house on roller skates.  One day the family happened to meet together in one of the many rooms and decided that they were much happier in their one room.  So they proceeded to tear down all of the added rooms until their house was back to the one room.  Here is the part that intrigued me and the reason I believe I still remember it.  On the final page, it said.  “If you want to see what this family did next, turn back to the front of the book and read it again!”

309J: A picture of mother (Solved)

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There is a book from my childhood that I think about often. I would be forever grateful if you could help unite me with it. I don’t have a title for you, but here is what I know:
1) It is a picture book for children.
2) I read the book as a child in the early 80s.
3) Plot: It is a book about a child (might be an animal child, not sure) that wants to make a picture of his mother. He starts out making the picture on his own and feels he needs advice, so he  takes it to different animal characters to see what they think. Each animal looks at the picture and makes a suggestion to change it somehow to reflect a feature of that animal (for example: the elephant suggests that the nose be lengthened). By the end of the book the picture has a variety of different features that look nothing like the mom.
Sadly, I cannot remember much else. I have tried to imagine the title and the best I could guess at is “A Picture of Mother” or something of the sort. But I could be way off.
This books stands out to me now as a message about trusting your own judgement in creating art (or writing) and not allowing yourself to be so easily influenced by the opinions of others. Let your work be your own. I’m not sure if that was the message it had intended to give, but it comes to mind now as I pursue my own writing career. I’d love to have this message bearer as a tangible reminder of this lesson.
Please help me, for you may be my only hope. Thank you for your time and effort.