I had (in the 60s or 70s) a collection of horse stories. One was about a Native American young man named (I believe) Johnny, who was a handsome man who was “lame” (walked with a limp and was self conscious about it). He had a horse he named Bay-ee because the horse was sort of copper-colored like a penny. He won some sort of race with the horse. Would love to find this story again.
I’m looking for the title of a dystopian middle grade or YA book I read in the late 1970s or early 1980s. An orphaned girl (tween or early teens) and her younger brother live with their aunt and uncle in an apartment building in a big city. (Maybe in the UK? I have a vague feeling that some things didn’t seem familiar to this midwestern suburban kid.) The uncle is mean and doesn’t like having them there. There’s a disaster of some sort and the uncle flees with his family, leaving the niece and nephew to fend for themselves. There’s no power or water and when they run low on food they leave the apartment. The girl fills a canteen or bottle with water from the toilet tank, saying she was grateful that at least her uncle wouldn’t let her aunt use the cleaning pucks that turn the toilet water blue. Later there’s some sort of charismatic leader and evil government. I don’t even remember if it was a particularly good book. It just occurs to me sometimes and I’d like to remember the rest of the story.
I’m looking for a picture book that I cannot remember the name or author of. The story depicts a group of forest animals that spend time around a fairy (or heart of the forest). A depressed, skinny witch lives in the belly of a giant sharp tooth beast and has a black bird for a companion. For whatever reason she wants to have this fairy and keep her in a cage close to her heart, so she has the bird go fetch the fairy. The forest becomes dark and the animals of the forest seek out the help of another large animal to help them. This other large animal (an owl or wolf I think?) blows winter over the dark forest freezing the beast, the witch, and the fairy. Because the beast is unable to eat and the witch is unable to move the animals wander in to find them covered in frost and free the fairy to be with the forest again. I also think the beast was so big she had a house inside of it. Beyond that I forget what follows. Thank you for listening!
Sometime in the period 1984-1988, when I was a child, my summer reading subscription (Weekly Reader?) sent me a novel about a girl who lives alone with her mother in a country house. One hot summer day she escapes her chores in the cellar where there is an old-fashioned cistern (unlidded concrete cylinder built into the floor). She climbs it to lie on the rim, but then falls in and remains trapped for hours because her yelling is unheard by her mother vacuuming two floors above. That’s all I remember!
I am looking for a children’s book that I remember, featuring anthropomorphic oil pastels or chalks as characters, set in a cafe or restaurant where they spent time. It was somewhere between a “picture book” and a “chapter book” in terms of length and balance of illustrations vs. text — some pictures but mostly text, I think. In fact, I wouldn’t swear that it was intended for children, but it was appropriate and comprehensible to an elementary school student. The tone was somewhat serious and melancholic, with bohemian themes. The cafe may have closed or changed hands, or a character may have stopped coming or left town. It would have been published before 2002.
A picture book, mid century American, 40s-60s possibly.
A man lives out in the woods, it’s winter. I believe there is something about pancakes. He has to go outside to do something, he takes out his winter coat which has been eaten by moths. At one point he runs into a bear, but his gun powder has gotten wet so it doesn’t work. He ends up tying the bears tail in a knot, which gets caught between trees and the bear is running so fast he jumps out of his skin. The man wears it as a coat and goes home to eat said pancakes.
I am looking for a book series that I read as a child in the 1990s (the series was not new at that time). These were chapter books. The protagonist, as I remember it, was a red-haired boy with freckles and a big toothy smile. He was on the cover. The book series was funny and followed this boy’s antics (not magic) at home and in his neighborhood.
I’m trying to find the name of a book I read when I was a kid, what I can remember of the story is:
A group of friends set off on an adventure. Along the way they find a magic carpet or rug that when rolled out, magically produced a feast. They then came upon a cat that when stroked began to purr and pearls popped out of its mouth. The third magical item the found was a stick or switch that they didn’t know what magical purpose it had.
An unscrupulous inn-keeper saw them using the carpet and the cat and stole them. He didn’t know what the switch did either but figured it must do something. He found that, when he stole it, the magic stick beats dishonest people until they confessed their crime.
That’s all I can recall – if anyone can solve the puzzle and let me know the title and who wrote it, I would be most grateful.
Not exactly a children’s book, nevertheless it is one of the earliest books I remember reading, and it was certainly the first mail-order book I ever bought.
I heard this book being offered on the radio on a Gillette commercial, probably on a sports broadcast of some sort, sometime after the 1955 World Series had been played and probably before the 1956 baseball season was well underway. So sometime between late fall 1955 and early summer 1956. I would have been 7 years old at the time. I convinced my dad to write a check for $1 and send off to Gillette for the book. Received it shortly thereafter and spent a lot of time reading it in my misspent youth.
I can’t remember the exact title. Years ago I would have guessed it to be something like “The Gillette 1955 World Series Record Book”, but that is incorrect. There was a series of miniature books (3″ x 4″) published under the names “The Gillette 195x World Series Record Book” for 1953 and 1954. It was not in that series.
This book was almost certainly published by A. S. Barnes and Company. It was bright green hardcover (I don’t think it ever had a dust jacket) that was physically about the same format as their hardcover books “The 1955 Baseball Almanac” (Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 55 7189, dark green hardcover with dust jacket) and “The 1956 Baseball Almanac” (Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 43-5554, dark blue-green hardcover with dust jacket). In fact, 70-80% of the content was extracted from those two volumes, whence my inference that it must have been published by A. S. Barnes. The sections of the Baseball Almanacs that were repeated or similar in that book included ball club data (including all the ball park diagrams), how to keep score, and the rules of baseball.
In thickness, the 1955 World Series book I am looking for was about the same as or a little thinner that the 1956 Baseball Almanac and not as thick as the 1955 Baseball Almanac.
One major difference between the 1955 and 1956 Baseball Almanacs is that the 1955 version includes a section of photos in the middle of the book (including Willie Mays’ spectacular catch in the 1954 World Series). The 1955 World Series book I am looking for also had a photo section of highlights from the 1955 World Series. Specific photos that I recall were Jackie Robinson’s stealing of home in Game 1, Irv Noren’s shoestring catch in Game 5, and portraits of Casey Stengel and Walt Alston.
I’m also imagining that the 1955 World Series book I am looking for contains more descriptive material on the pennant race and the World Series and less material on club rosters for the upcoming season than the Almanacs.
A reflection on poverty. A single white mother with a son, under age 10, in gritty Oakland, CA. I feel like the title was similar to “How We Live Now” (yes Trollope’s title).