Author Archives: admin

350Q: Book with Tape Picture Book of Planetary Explorers

From early-mid 1980’s(?), book + tape children’s read along picture book. Brother and sister(?) visit all the planets in the solar system along with a ‘captain’ astronaut guy. There’s a part about each planet. There is music and sound effects in the production. In one part the captain almost dies on a space walk and the kids save him. I’ve been looking for this for decades now.

350M: Boy Trains With Magic Sword

I’m looking for a book I read sometime between 2005-2011. The cover was mostly blue and had a sword hilt on it I think. In the book a kid from our world somehow goes to another world. In this other world, the people fight with swords that the blade only actually exists if you believe? Little hazy on that part. I remember a scene where the main character loses a foot race to a younger kid from this other world. The people train using the swords by swinging them at giant boulders. The sword blade can heal any wound when pressed against it unless it’s caused by that type of sword. Might have had Christian themes. When in our world the main character was attacked by some sort of invisible monster that can’t be seen. Somebody saved him using one of the magic swords.

350K: Battle of Trafalgar

Sometime in 1960-62 I took an English History course in college. We were assigned reading for extra credit. I read a book about the Battle of Trafalgar, which I remember as riveting. I specifically remember a fulsome description of life aboard the battleship, including descriptions of how food was prepared, how surgery was performed during the battle, and other daily concerns of the sailors. I do not think this was a biography of Lord Nelson, rather a blow by blow of the lead-up to the Battle and the Battle itself. Clearly it had to have been written prior to 1960. I would really like to find this book.

350J: Witch keeps girl’s lover in birdcage

I’m looking for a darkly illustrated children’s book, probably published in the late 80’s/early 90’s.

There was very little text and mostly illustrations. The story involved a girl whose lover(?) is taken away by a witch. She goes to the witch’s lair and there are many birdcages with owls in them. Her lover(?) is also being kept in a birdcage when she saves him.

The pictures had a very dark colour scheme with a gothic/art nouveau art style, similar to Kay Nielsen but darker. I remember being fascinated with this book as a child as the content was so dark compared to my other books. I’ve been trying to locate it for years but cannot remember even slightly what the title was.

If it helps, I suspect the author was European given the content, so the original book was probably published in Finnish, Danish or German.

350I: Boy raised in India starts hunger strike with classmates in US (Solved!)

I remember a fiction book from when I was a kid about a boy who was raised in India by his father. But when his father died (and there was a part where I remember the boy going out on the river to dump his father’s cremated ashes), he ends up having to move to the US to live with his grandmother (I think). He was probably middle school aged? He struggles a bit to fit in, but then when his grandmother’s house ends up being threatened by a new highway going through, the boy convinces several of his classmates to come over to the house and they start a hunger strike that ultimately results in the house being saved. Some of those details may be a little shaky, but that’s more or less what I remember. Thanks for any help!

350H: Story Sound Bites

I am searching for the title of a children’s book published in the 1990s that had push buttons (powered by a battery).  There were story sound bites on each button.
There was a female villain who said “I get what I want.”

I recall cartoon illustrations. Similar to The Magic Schoolbus type of illustrations maybe? … In the boys’ memory, the book was 101 Dalmations. We did have that push-button book, too; but that wasn’t it. Robert was so sure it was the Cruella DeVille button, that he looked it up (https://disney.fandom.com/wiki/101_Dalmatians_(Golden_Sound_Story)), but her button is a car engine. And I remember enough to recall it wasn’t a Disney movie/book. It was … I think a little White girl. On a farm? The villain was a White woman, too, similar to Cruella DeVille.

I searched your archives without luck.