I am writing a memoir and am trying desperately to identify a children’s picture book that would have been published around 1948 – 1953. It is a story about a little zebra that gets lost. The only vivid image of it I remember is the little zebra encountering a senior Zebra who was wearing reading glasses on his nose. The elderly zebra helps the little one find his mother (I think).
I do not remember the title except that I’m sure Zebra was in the title. It is a picture book.
Back in 1952 or 1953, when I was 4 or 5 years old, I adored a book we took out from the Brooklyn library. I cannot remember much except that there were illustrations of a fisherman with nets full of bright colorful fish. It’s not Scupper the Sailor Dog. I was a bookseller for over 20 years and I was never able to track down this book.
My grandfather read this book to me over and over, probably around the early 1950s, so it may have been published as early as the 1930s. It was a children’s picture book, and all I can remember is the last page read, “And The Sun Came Up.” That phrase was most probably used throughout the book. I loved it and have looked for it all these years, at antiques stores, rummage sales, etc. I would love to know the title and see if it is still around somewhere, so I can read it to my own grandchildren.
I have no idea about the title of this book. It is one I read (and owned) in my childhood. I think it was sent as part of my subscription to a children’s book club–perhaps Children’s Literary Guild. Probably I encountered it between 1940 and 1946. Plot was about a child–I think a boy–living rural, who went to a visiting circus. There he encountered animals who he could somehow make small and take home with him.
This is a book from my childhood that I have thought and talked about often.
The year was 1949-52. Not sure!
The book had several short “stories” for young children. The one I keep remembering was a story about how letters/numbers became upset when they were written backwards! For example, the #3 was hurt or angry when a child wrote it backward. He wanted to be written correctly. The numbers we’re living and capable of feelings. Any thoughts/ideas?!?!
Thank you!
I am looking for a children’s book . . .
Title: (not sure) The Weiry Wax Alternate spellings: Wiery, Weary Wacks
Approx publication dates: older! I read it sometime between 1945 and 1950. It could have been a 1930s publication. I’m born 1941. Been seeking this book for 60+ years, for my grandchildren, and myself. Contemporaneous with PING, the Chinese duck and the junk boatman. I mean, I was reading these books at roughly same time. Also that Brownie book, of 1930s or ’40s. Barbar….that era.
Description: children’s book, roughly that picture book format/size, glossy cover, with the 30 or so pages of text and art.
The main characters, I believe on the cover, were the Weiry Wax (or ___ Wacks, or Weary ___), but I think the spelling was like a ‘weir’ (low dam) They were roundish, something like a mummer meets a sea urchin. Black. A coal-black snowball, with spines.
I’m reminded of them whenever I see the soot sprites in Miyazaki’s TOTORO–the little black dust balls. These guys were bigger than that, but not more than knee or waist high on a child.
I can’t remember the other characters….was there a human? don’t know. It’s just that the Weiry Wax themselves scared me mucho, but they weren’t too evil, I think, and I came to be fond of them. Wanted one for a pet. (They may have been dreadful: I was a weird kid, only child, active imagination.) Pretty sure they had eyes, like the Miyazaki sprites, and not much else. Stubby legs/feet maybe. Like a Shmoo, but definitely in the dark part of any shmoo universe. I don’t think they were there to help. Guess they lived in a forest. They might have carried a staff or spear, ergo hands/arms.
Probably a British children’s book, the main character is a cat called “Powderpuff Percy.” I read it in Hungarian translation in the late 1930’s or early 1940’s.
This book must date back to the 1940s. I remember finding it at our summer home in NH, where there were all kinds of odd books for young people about.
It is a picture book. The illustrations are similar to pen-and-ink drawings that have been colored in, quite bright, beautiful sense of line.
The story is about a girl (and her brother) in a northern country (Scandinavia?). In the winter (Christmas?) they decorate sleds with strings of colored tassels for some procession. The girl cleans house for an old woman who makes her the tassel string. The girl gets caught in a terrible snowstorm on the way home and takes shelter in the root-hole of a much loved ancient oak tree. (The oak tree is a character in the story too.) This is where she is found.
I have never encountered this book anywhere else. It doesn’t ring a bell with anyone I have ever talked to.
Thanks for your suggestions!
I lived in Quito, Ecuador from 1950 through 1952, and remember reading a book about an orphan boy, possibly on crutches, who lived in colonial Quito. The illustrations were in black, white and yellow (I think!)
Children’s book, enjoyed in ’60’s but probably from ’30’s or 40’s, possibly English. Included a story about young brother and sister in a churchyard (castle yard?), playing with a ball. The brother (possibly named Roland) went to retrieve the ball when it went over a fence, but forgot to go “widdershins” and was taken by a witch. The little girl goes in search of her brother. (It is possible the girl was taken and the boy went to save her, but I remember it as the girl.) Illustrated with sweet old-fashioned colored drawings.
The story “East of the Sun, West of the Moon” may be in the same collection, or may just have been in the same bookcase.