Author Archives: admin

349Z: Shadow people in the backyard of a big house

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Around 1975 my teacher read the class a story about a family that moved into a huge house.  Their children discovered a family of shadow people living in the backyard.  The living children can see the shadow people because of their size – the shadow people can only be seen by living people whose size is smaller than their own.  I couldn’t get the concept of the book and my teacher, whom I adored, was a large woman so she used herself as an example of why the living adults in the big house could not see the shadow people.  I have fond memories of the feeling the book imposed but that is all I can remember of the book.

 

349Y: Boy wants a sled for Christmas, but doesn’t get it

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I’m looking for a children’s picture book. It’s about a boy and his mother. Christmas is getting close. As they go about their days, they frequently pass by a store window, where the boy sees a sled he wants. I think it’s a red Radio Flyer type steel sled with rails. He wants it really badly. The story builds toward Christmas, but on Christmas morning he doesn’t get the sled he wanted. I think there may be some other, cheaper, sled under the tree. But it’s not the one from the window. I feel like it implied that the single mother just couldn’t afford it. I remember it being a sad book. This book always used to make my mom cry when she read it to us. Things have improved for us all now, and I’d love to find her this memory.

349W: Cat Cat Lives on C Street?

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My favorite childhood book was I believe called (Cat Cat Lives in C Street). I can see the illustrations and the book cover in my mind. I can even remember some of the story lines. The family got other pets and Cat Cat kept trying to get rid of them. I have searched the internet high and low and have yet to find anything.. so I thought I’d see if I can stump you… The illustrations were black and white from what I remember and the cover was olive green with Cat Cat on a porch in front of C street.. just loved the story, a great childhood memory. Thank you for your help

349V: Spun around and upside down

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I am trying desperately to find a beloved book from my childhood.  I do not remember the name, but I do remember a few details.

It had to be spun around and upside down as it was read; the characters were on some sort of adventure.
The characters to best of my memory were pink or purple blobbish type things…
It was a hardback book
I was born in 1967, so this could have been a 60s or an early 70s book.
I have looked and looked for the book to no avail.

349U: Specific Edition Flower Fairies of the Garden

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I am looking for the specific edition of a book I read repeatedly as a child. It was a Cicely Mary Barker book, pretty sure it was Flower Fairies of the Garden. It was a small book, with a mostly white cover. I’m not sure the cover illustration. It had to have been published before 1992. It might have been part of a set. The first poem in the book was The Forget-me-not Fairy that begins something like “Where do fairy babies lie/til they’re old enough to fly/here’s a likely place I think/midst these flowers blue and pink”. Other fairies in this edition included Scilla, Geranium, and Sweet Pea. I have purchased at least five different printings of this book, and none has included the forget-me-not fairy. Can you help?

349T: Rich boy repairs exotic bird’s broken beak with soap

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The story is of a wealthy little boy who seems to be without parents.  There is a butler.  He receives a gift of an exotic bird (parrot/macaw/toucan?) who injures his beak and the boy fixes it with a bar of soap.  A heavy-set woman visits who I believe is an opera singer.  The illustrations are pen and ink with some color, but my overwhelming memory of the book is that it is basically in black, white and red.  All the characters, as I remember have large ovoid heads and small bodies.
I bought this book for my son in the early 2000s.  

349R: Travelog about Mongolia and Siberia with a female shaman

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The shaman woman told the author was identified as a shaman when a child because she did everything backwards, sleeping all day and staying awake all night. The author visited her in her remote tent in deep forest. Another girl they met was pleased to have won a prize for her poem about pine needles being her pillow and the forest stream being her wine. I think her poem started with “I am a girl of the Tuva”. It may have been about living in the Taiga? I think it was written in the 1990s. I read it in the first decade of the 1990s. I borrowed it from Plymouth Library in England.

349Q: The Four Elementals and the Earth Children Raised in World with Magic

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The book was a children’s/YA book published sometime between 2005 and 2012. It was meant to be a quartet. I know 2 came out and I was curious if it was ever finished.
It had two main characters, a boy on earth who was disabled because he born on a world with magic. And a girl who is from earth but was raised in the world with magic, she’s the only one who can’t use magic and is immune to it.
There are evil magicians who can travel between the worlds, but doing so damages the worlds. The two main characters can move back and forth together but it damages the worlds. They’re told the only solution is to seek help from each of four elementals, societies of magic creatures that, if all four can be convinced to help, can make a bridge between the worlds in a safe way. Both of the main characters have to go to their birth worlds or it’s bad for the fabric of the universe or something, and this can only be accomplished with their help. The bad guys use dark magic and want to hunt them down. The boy struggles to learn the magic of his birth world. The first book dealt with the water elementals and the second with the earth elementals, I think. I think the name of the magic world started with an F
There’s a scene where the girl is on earth for the first time while they’re on the run and they go to a McDonald’s and she experiences a soda for the first time. I think her name starts with a K (Kira?)and the boy’s might be Marcus.

349O: Children Look for Missing Mother, Who Got in Accident

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A young mother leaves her children to go for a romantic night away with her boyfriend. She realised her mistake and rushes home but is in an accident.
The children are unaware but continue going to school pretending all is OK. They go on a school trip near the location of her night away and look for her. They also have an accident  and all are reunited at the hospital.