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116A: 1970s Kite History and Making Book

This was a small hardback, maybe 3 by 5  inches, printed in colour, with a history of kites and then a long section on how to make them. The spine may have been red in colour. Single clear memory: in the opening chapter there was a panel from the TinTin story showing Tibetan monks flying kites.

115B: Boy and Mountain Lion book – Solved

I’m looking for a book that I read as a young boy but whose name now eludes me. I have no recollection of the title but can provide some detail regarding the story and the cover art (at least the version I had).

 

The story is about a young boy who moves with his family (father and mother) from a city to a country farm/ranch, despite his initial misgivings. One of the first thing he experiences is a hunt for a mountain lion which has been killing livestock in the area. He sees a mother mountain lion killed and then two cubs thrown to a pack of dogs. Later, he finds a female, runt cub in the mountain lions’ cave (she was too weak to come out and, therefore, escaped notice). He takes her home and secretly raises her. I am fairly certain that he calls her “Beauty” but I am not 100% certain. The book continues with the boy raising the cub to young adulthood, including teaching her how to hunt. Near the end of the book, the father is injured and the mother is somehow incapacitated so the boy (and his secret mountain lion companion) have to walk several miles to town to get a doctor/medicine. Finally, the boy needs to release the mountain lion back into the wild. The book ends with their separation.

 

I believe the book was published by Scholastic Reader and would have been published sometime in the 1970’s (I think). The cover has artwork that shows the young boy crouching up on a rock to feed or pet the mountain lion who is standing on the top of the rock.

 

115A: Children’s book of colourful rooms

I am chasing the name of a children’s picture book that we borrowed from a library in the late 90’s.  The book involved a girl who was in a room and was trying to decide on an outfit for the day.  Each double page spread involved a different coloured outfit and the room transformed to contain multiple objects that matched the colour of the outfit.  On each page was a chameleon to find as well.  Finally the girl decides on a multi-coloured outfit. 

Unfortunately I cannot recall the author’s name but recall that the title may have ended with the word “day”.

114C: Elephant Graveyard

 A children’s picture book I had when I was young. ( I was born in 1975) It was a heart-wrenching story about elephants.. It focused on the fact that elephants morn their dead. I believe the elephant heard was returning to a graveyard where one of their group had been been buried.

114A: Girl acts crazy to avoid suitors

Romance about a young girl that is tired of having suitors bother her so she decides to act crazy. She keeps pet chickens and takes them on walks with a maid walking in front feeding them.  She ties ribbons on them to match her clothes supposed to be quite funny. Older book

113C: Puppy at bedtime, asking about where he lives

My girlfriend is looking for a children’s picture book.  She would have read it as a child, in the early 1990s, so if I had to guess, I’d target the publishing of the book in the 80s, but it could be anything pre-1995. She says it was about a young dog (she’s 99.9% sure it was a dog) being tucked in at night, and he asks his parents about where they live (she even thinks the title of the book may have been something like “Where do we live?”).   His mom/dad told him about their street, then their city and planet. The artwork showed the other families in the book as anthropomorphic animals, and they all had unique houses (fish families had fish bowls, rabbit family had a hole in the ground, etc).  The houses stood out to her, but may have only been artwork, may not have been noted specifically in the story.  She believes the puppy may have been named Walter, or something similar.  I know this isn’t a lot to go on!