Author Archives: admin

134A: Burgundy tooled leather children’s storybook set sold w encyclopedia 1950s

The books were regular sized, approximately 8.5 x 11″ and were numbered. Maybe 8 to 12 of them? Illustrations were art deco or art nouveau (I get them confused). Not lots of vivid colors. Heavy black lines/white/gray/yellow/rose colors. Each book had stories and poems. I am not positive that they came with a set of encyclopedias, but that is my general recollection. I could have been World Book or Encyclopaedia Britannica, since we acquired both around the same time. Any ideas?

133G: The Blue Chest

I am looking for a children’s book written between 1940 and 1965, for ages 10-12 years old. It is the story of a family that moves from a house to an apartment, I believe in New York City, and the children find a hidden room in the apartment behind a blue or pink chest. It may had a few illustrations in it. Also, the mother sews their clothes and makes matching outfits for the boy and girl. I read this book just when I moved to a new school, in 1967, and really hope to find it!

133F: Garbage spaceship

Hi! I’m looking for a children’s book – LIkely from mid to late 80’s.  It was hard cover with beautiful full page illustrations.  It was something about a boy who built a spaceship out of garbage – I remember a barrel being the fusalage – there was also a monster that was built out of garbage.

 

133E: Clickety Clack Train Book 1960-70s

Children’s book about a train. Published 1960-70s. Rhythmic/rhyming book with verse” Clickety clack, clickety clack…..train going (a)’roud the track” It is NOT the book by Amy and Rob Spence. It was definitely published before I was born in 1978.

Additional Details:  Approximate number of pages are less than 15; the colors within the book are reds/yellows. The verses were very rhythmic…you could almost sing them. It is also NOT the “Little Engine That Could” book.

 

133D: Thanksgiving(?) Children’s Picture Book from the 60s or 70’s

I remember a getting a book out from the school library in grades 4-6 (1967-1970), though it might have been an older book even then. Don’t remember much about it except it took place in the fall, I’m thinking around Thanksgiving? and it may have had a mix of humans and animal characters in it. The reason I say this is I distinctly remember on the last page that a little girl goes back to someone’s “ house” that may have been  in a tree stump? and had coffee and pumpkin pie. Definitely not “Cranberry Thanksgiving”, but had the same cosy, New England, kind of feel to it.

 

133C: Child creates mini world

Christian children’s book about a boy who finds a machine that lets him make a mini world and 2 beings. They have 4 arms each and one jumps off the edge of the world and the boy saves him. He shrinks himself to tell the being but they don’t believe him and throw him over thinking he will be saved to.

 

133B: Little Round Man Saves Children (solved)

I am looking for a book with a story that my brother and I used to read in the 60s. We think it was called the Story of the Little Round Man. This funny round man lived in a ball-shaped house that could roll around very fast. In the story he saves some children wandering in the woods who find some beautiful shoes which, it seems, someone has left there for them to try. Tempted, they do try them on, but the shoes immediately force them to follow them all the way to a cave where a bad witch lives. They are her prisoners! The Little round man has to find a way to be directed to the witch’s lair. He puts on only one of the magic shoes, and, asking his rolling house to follow him, controls the shoe enough to discover where the witch lives, and can plan the escape of the children. The house is left outside the entrance and is spotted by the witch. Intrigued by the house, she steps inside, but the Little round Man jumps out from hiding, bangs the door shut, and orders the house to move as fast as possible with the witch inside (she’s all bones and angles), until she relents and accepts to save the children. I think the illustrations were black and white but can’t be sure.

 

132B: Boy looses marble on family sailboat, finds it as an adult when same boat washes ashore

This was an illustrated children’s book I had as a child in the mid sixties about a young boy who goes sailing with his father and looses his favorite marble in the cabin below.  Years later as a young man, and with a child of his own, he discovers a shipwreck and finds his marble then restores boat

 

132A: Girl being stirred in a pot (solved)

 

Bought this around 1986 (6th grade book fair!) and cannot remember the title or main character names. Loved the story though, and hope I can find it for my daughter.

The hardback cover was green, and the picture was of three girls singing and stirring a fourth girl in a pot.

The story was of a girl in her early teens at summer camp. She ends up feeling saddled with another girl who is strange and a little disgusting – the weird girl borrows a barrette from the main character and uses it to clean her toenails.

There is a talent show (depicted in the cover art), and the weird girl is the one in the pot.

The main character ends up tossing the weird girl out of a canoe, and leaves her bobbing in the lake. She tries to make up with her before they leave camp, but the weird girl yells at her in the cafeteria.

The main character goes home regretting what she did, and tries to think of some way to make amends.