Author Archives: admin

192C: little girl travels back in time and meets older ladies in a Victorian style house (Solved)

8 Replies

1970s or 1980s children’s book or possibly short story, little girl travels back in time and meets older ladies in a Victorian style house and era, they use a warm brick called a “pig” between her blankets to warm her feet on cold nights. The ladies seemed strange to me at the time but I can’t recall why. She might have gone through a secret door in her own house to get to them but I’m confusing it with Coraline and Narnia perhaps!

192B: “Cook spaghetti! Make popcorn!”

1 Reply

I’m looking for a children’s fiction book that my father used to read to me in the 1980’s. It’s about an alligator or crocodile lady who is dressed in women’s clothes. She has three parrots/birds and they are always telling her what to do. They say, “Cook spaghetti! Make popcorn!” At the end of the book, her house overflows with popcorn. It would mean the world to my father and I to be able to find this book and read it together again! Thank you!

192A: Where’s Charlie (We think)

3 Replies

It is a hardback children’s book that we read to our now 36 year old son in the late 70’s to mid 80’s.

It is about a little girl who has a pet mouse. One day she could not find him. Page after page, room after room she lloked for him; in the stove, refrigerator, closets, microwave, etc. . . . . NO CHARLIE! she finally found him asleep in the be in her doll house.

Please confirm the title and author for us so we can purchase them.

191H: alligator or crocodile lady who is dressed in women’s clothes

6 Replies

I’m looking for a children’s fiction book that my father used to read to me in the 1980’s. It’s about an alligator or crocodile lady who is dressed in women’s clothes. She has three parrots/birds and they are always telling her what to do. They say, “Cook spaghetti! Make popcorn!” At the end of the book, her house overflows with popcorn. It would mean the world to my father and I to be able to find this book and read it together again! Thank you!

191G: Scary UFOs, Nice Paintings (Solved!)

4 Replies

The book I’m after was a spooky children’s book picked up at a R.I.F. book fair in the early 80s. It was from a UK line of books and I believe was titled, simply, “UFOs.” It was perfectly square, tiny (a bit larger than a piece of toast), softcover, short (maybe 24 pages or less), and had realistic and creepy paintings of supposedly true UFO case files. Lots of art, light text. The cover was entirely midnight blue, and either had no art at all, or perhaps just a small clip of art from within, probably a “grey” alien face if anything. I had another book from the line that I believe was called “Dinosaurs,” and followed the same format, but had a vivid green cover. It was definitely an entire line of small books. Oh, and I remember the UFO book was the first place I ever heard of the Men in Black, though they seemed a lot creepier in the book than in the movie. I think the entry on their mysterious origins (it was acknowledged no one knew if they were extraterrestrial or government agents) mentioned one of them putting his fingers in a cup of coffee as if he didn’t understand it. Or something like that!

191D: traveling poet who sells his rhymes (Solved)

2 Replies

The book is about a traveling poet who sells his rhymes. He meets a king or ruler of a town who wants everything to be the biggest and the best. So king is building a hill bigger than any hill, but the hill collapses every day. The colors on the book were very muted so I think it was pre-1980s. I think a part of the book was “the sun is a sun a star is a star i am who i am you are who you are” and something about walking on his feet and following his nose. I would be forever grateful if you could find the name of this children’s book!

191C: Dirty Little Pig ?

1 Reply

This book was probably published between 1942-1965. It was about a family that lived near train tracks so that the soot covered everything in the house, including the family. The doctor was sent for and I remember he looked everything over and said, “Hmmmmm” which I thought was funny as a small child. The illustration I remember was of a pig sleeping in an open dresser drawer. I seem to recall the illustrations were not in color but more like sketches. I have searched for this book for 10+ years. Nobody has ever heard of it.
Also, if this helps, my mother belonged to something called the Junior Literary Guild and many of my books as a child were JLG books. Maybe this one was as well. My older siblings thought the book was called The Dirty Family or the Dirty Little Pig or that “dirty” was a part of the title.