The book I cannot remember is from late grade school or Junior high (7th grade). It was a spaceship, I think in the backyard with a strange builder or helper to the kids building or traveling on it.
It was a collection of horror stories for children I think and one of them was a lady with a burned or scarred face who possibly came out of a painting. She was called Rhoda or Roda or something like that. It had these simple ink illustrations and I remember that one.
It had another story where a boy (I think) was hiding and heard the ghosts of some body snatchers - it may have been a retelling of Burke and Hare.
I’m English if that helps and I think I would have read this sometime in the 90’s.
Sorry, that’s so vague but those are the two that I think I remember.
Looking for a beautiful line-drawn picture book from earlier than 1975, about a witch and her daughter who live beyond the seven valleys and the seven seas. The daughter witch is selfish, and does not come home to her mother on time. Her mother sends her away until she can do a selfless favor for someone, while disguised as a regular girl. She is dropped off outside a village. Eventually, she finds a little boy who is also being punished, and helps him peel mounds and mounds of potatoes. She falls asleep doing this, and her mother comes to collect her. Ends with a line something like, "but she could never stand the sight of another potato."
Seeking an older (ages 10-12) children’s book about a boy who works on his family fishing boat named “Gretchen” - describes how they catch the fish (bonito) and sell it on the pier. Don’t remember much else about the plot.
Trying to find a science fiction book. I think a detective ends up finding a slug-like alien inhabiting a human. Somehow discovers it’s kind and doesn’t want to hurt humans, it had to do it in order to live, possibly after crash landing on earth. Normally they are symbiote with another alien species mutually beneficial. At the end of the book, I think she (detective) lets it into her head to save it. Think sequel?
Looking for children’s book that my wife had as a child. She was adopted, but remembers this book from her birth mom. She is wanting those memories back. Can you help?
This is a children’s book with illustrations, circa 1970-1980. A family of beavers who wore red jumpers, I think. One of their activities in the book was making pancakes and flipping them with their beaver tails.
I think this was an English mystery or part of one, maybe from the Golden Age of mysteries (Christie, Allingham, Sayers?) where a City man leaves his home to go to work, is seen by a tradesman at one end of a block, but never reaches the other end and is never seen again. Much publicity about his disappearance. Years later, someone — perhaps a young relative — finds him as part owner of a small circus in France, with his partner the neighbor woman with exotic snakes whose high brick wall in the middle of the block he vaulted over to live with her.
Hello. Looking for a book that my daughter and I read about 4-5 years ago when she was 10 or 11. The story involves a feisty girl who is about that age and is orphaned. She tries to stay at home with her brother but a policeman and a Catholic nun come to take her away. She hits the nun or a priest. She is taken to an orphanage and always believes her brother will come for her. She does see him again but he unable to provide for her. At some functions for the orphanage, she meets a beautiful young woman who is engaged to a handsome, rich man. The orphan’s spirit and determination catch the eye of this woman and somehow they become friends. In the end, the lady inherits a farm out west and breaks her engagement. She takes the orphan with her and they travel west.
Collection of magical and wacky short stories for children, I believe it was an anthology of different authors, but I’m not sure. The edition I read in the 2000s had a cover illustrated with dancing pumpkins entwined with various characters from the short stories. It was old, maybe 70s or 80s? One story was of the pumpkins, someone tended them too well and they danced around the town causing havoc, another involved too much bubblegum. The only story I remember in detail was one of an author who wrote comedies. Everyone loved them, but he dreamed of writing tragedies. Whenever he tried submitting tragedies to his publisher, he was turned down. Being the father of two boys, he can’t afford to stop writing his jokes. These two boys also wanted a swimming pool. One night the author threw his tragedy out the window, and the pages floated to the mountains. The next few nights he heard crying coming from the mountain – and finally he went to investigate. There he found a griffin, crying over a few pages of his manuscript. Griffins, apparently, love tragedies. So the author offers to write him more, and give dramatic readings, and the griffin brings his friends, and their tears flow down the mountain, and become a natural swimming pool for the author’s boys, who become the best swimmers at their school.