Where is Grandma’s House (this may be the title, or similar). A little boy is looking for Grandma’s house. He goes to many places looking for her. This children’s book is illustrated with full-page paintings or lithographs with unusual “noise” in all of the colors: many tiny particles of different colors within each main color, as though covered in non-shiny nano-glitter or mini-crystals of multicolored salt.
A fighter pilot crash-lands on an island and is sucked into a whirlpool of sand, finding a civilization deep inside the Earth. He is imprisoned there and manages to escape with a few others after a long time. When he describes what happened, no one believes him.
Back in 1952 or 1953, when I was 4 or 5 years old, I adored a book we took out from the Brooklyn library. I cannot remember much except that there were illustrations of a fisherman with nets full of bright colorful fish. It’s not Scupper the Sailor Dog. I was a bookseller for over 20 years and I was never able to track down this book.
Young Adult Horror Anthology
Paperback about 5 in. x 7 in. x .25 to .50 in. thick
Read between 1989-1993
The book included multiple legends, such as a traditional re-telling of the Warsaw Golem and the Wendigo. I would guess it was written in the 80’s because it already had creases and tape on the spine when I read the book. The cover contained a boy sitting in a chair, whose hair was standing up on end, with a monster behind him; reading a book with the exact same cover, which had the exact cover, etc. I remember it being similar to Bruce Coville and Beverly Cleary and R.L. Stine books, though I think this book was written prior to Stine. It is not any of the “Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark” series.
The main story I remember is set in a western town, possibly a cowboy/farmer town. It centers around a young boy who is mistreated by his older brother. They both work as farmhands and the older brother fall asleep under a tree. The young boy sees this baboon-looking creature with long hair sneak up behind the brother and attack the brother.
This baboon creature, who I remember as a witch with long hair and red skin for some reason, rides on the brother’s back and sucks his life force out. When the younger brother tries to help, the witch sinks her claws deeper into the brother’s back. No one notices this creature but the young boy I think.
Eventually, the brother gives up and commits suicide by throwing himself over a cliff. The boy looks down as the witch lets go of the brother. She looks up at the younger brother and starts to climb up the cliff’s side as she tells him to wait because she is coming for him.
Any ideas?
I am looking for a book that, of course, I lent to someone and never saw again. It was an alphabetic listing of poetic forms drawing from cultures all around the planet. I really need the book for a writing group I do with children.
Any ideas?
Thanks so much.
Science fiction short story where one planet maintains control of another by elevating some people to power on the subject planet. These elevated people have hereditary obsessive compulsive disorder which sets them apart from the common people and also disables them from actually leading their people who are then subjected to producing for the benefit of the alien overlords. The main character’s obsession is to follow a wood grain pattern. It takes her all day and she is exhausted from it. Somehow she meets a commoner and discovers that she might live a different life. I’ve tried very hard to find the story but no luck so far.
It is a kids cardboard picture book that each time you turn the page all the objects are in a different shades of a single color and one object is of a different color. There are words on the pages like rhymes that highlight the object that is of a different color (for example a gray umbrella among a bunch of yellow items). The title might have rainbow in it. On the cover I think there are circle cutouts that get wider and wider that hint at the colors featured.
A book or possibly short story about 3 elves and a hole in the wall that speaks to them.
This story was read to the class by my third grade teacher at Hubbell School in Des Moines, IA, in 1949. I remember that we were entranced by it and insisted on making it into a drama. For our play the “elves” dressed in red long johns and the boy (Kenneth Brown) who devised the “hole” was cast in that role. I would be grateful if someone could direct me to it because I don’t remember the story and would like to see whether, as an adult, I can fathom what it was that charmed us so.
A boy opens his eyes and begins to see Not a book, but a short story I read in 1959 in sophomore English, a slight “a-boy-goes-on-a -journey” kind of story and the first piece of literature in which I recognized myself and one that I still recall with goosebumps. I think it was named “Dell,” the name of an adolescent boy living on a Midwestern farm. He is awakened one summer night by distant honky-tonk music coming through his bedroom window, a foreign intrusion into his otherwise quiet life. Arising, he goes outside looking for its source. Following the sound, he crosses several dark fields, climbs a small hill and looks out in the distance to see, far away but close enough to clearly discern a highway truck stop, ablaze with tall lights and neon signs, like a light-bomb on the black prairie floor. Some rigs are parked, their radios blaring; others are pulling out into the night with the shafts of their headlights illuminating their journey into the darkness, going—where? That’s what Dell wants to know, with an immediacy, an insistence previously unknown to him. From that story to a degree in English several years later. It was my “first step” in the journey and I would love to recover it if possible. Any help would be sincerely appreciated.
Here is what I’m trying to find: A children’s picture book, I believe mostly black and white line drawings, of a boy who wakes up to find a box in his backyard, which he climbs into using a ladder. Inside the box is another box that he also climbs into, and so on and so forth.