Author Archives: admin

147B: Heavily Illustrated book of North Ameriacan Wildlife

I am looking for a book that I read in my elementary school library when I was a student in the first half of the 1970’s. It was a heavily illustrated book of North American wildlife. I don’t remember the title or the author, but I have photocopies of several of the drawings. I liked the book enough to make copies of the illustrations, but unfortunately none of the pages have text on them to help identify the book. All the illustrations were full page with a single animal. Given that the image of the grizzly includes a frontiersman/mountain man, I searched for things like Davy Crockett, Hugh Glass, Louis and Clark, etc. without any success.

I also tried a google image search. The image of the grizzly returned 2 hits, one of which was in Japanese.

Help is greatly appreciated.

147A: 1950’s book…COLONIAL GIRL TURNING SPIT, ROCKING BABY IN CRADLE

I read this book in the 1950’s…it was purchased I believe during a vacation on Cape Cod. It was the story of a family from the perspective of the daughter. She helps her mother with the chores, sweeping with a corn broom, turning the spit and tending a cauldron and fire while rocking the baby in a cradle.The book describes their clothing…both their everyday working clothes and their dress clothes that they change into to meet this important person the whole community is waiting for…Peter Stuyvesant…Governor of New Amsterdam.
The illustrations were done either in colored pencils, water colors or pastels…not quite sure which after all this time.
Thanks for your time and efforts.

 

146C: children in a large family

This book focuses on the children in a large family and centers around a young girl, maybe 12 or 13, and her best friend.  One of the chapters in the book is titled, The Quarry, where the kids would go swimming every summer.  I beleve someone almost drowns there or is hurt in some way.  Additionally, all of he children are allowed to decorate their rooms using their own themes and the decorating is kept a secret until the great reveal with the entire family going to each room for the big surprise.  The oldest daughter, maybe 16 or 17, chooses a pink theme and paints her entire floor pink.  This oldest girls is a very girly girl and spends a lot of time polishing her nails and sunbathing to get ready for a date with her boyfriend.
I must have been 10 or 11 when I first read this book and my sister was13 or 14.  We used to walk to the library in Brooklyn, NY every Saturday and this book ALWAYS was checked out. 

 

 

145Y: Nonfiction book on racism for preteens

This could easily be post-1990, but not post-2006. It’s a thin hardcover – maybe no more than 60 pages – presumably meant for school libraries. One striking anecdote I remember was about how racism doesn’t have to be taught through words. In it, a white Southern woman, probably born in the 1950s, told how her mother was an impeccable lady and also “quite a racist.” However, the mother never said an unkind word about any person based on that person’s skin color, because “she was too much of a lady for that.” Even so, every time the mother and her daughter went shopping and had to talk to a black cashier or sales employee, the mother used a tone of voice as if she were talking to a silly preschooler. So, wrote the daughter, (not verbatim) “she passed on her racist views to me without a single word being exchanged between us on the subject!”

 

145X: Moon Creatures

I read this book as a child which was in the early 1980s. I remember the ending the best so I’ll start there… a moon creature returns to the moon which appears as the moon should…empty with many craters, but then all the creature’s friends and family jump out of the craters to surprise him with a party. The rest of the story is a bit foggy but I remember that the moon creature was sad or disappointed for some reason and goes down to Earth by traveling on a moonbeam. He has an adventure possibly saving a unicorn from a scary witch that wants to take its magic horn. It wasn’t a long story, just a small story book