I’m searching for a children’s book from the 1940’s or 50’s. I thought it was a Little Golden Book but I don’t think it is now. It was my mother’s favorite. It had a story about a woman taking care of children and I believe she took him into a candy store and there were stars on the ceiling. She broke off 1 of her fingers and turned it into a piece of candy for them to suck on. It’s very bizarre; I remember her reading it to me and she just loved it and I would like to know what this the title of it was so I can find it for her. She used to read me “Little orphan Annie came to our house to stay…” put a candle underneath her face and do this voice. It was wonderful and slightly creepy all at once. She owned a bookstore when I was little so I’ve been reading since I was 3; no TV or video games allowed, but as many books as we pleased, most of them children’s books over 100 years old. Lamb on Wheels; The Adventures of Frog and Toad; everything Mark Twain – I loved his short stories, especially the one with the devil. I was a slightly creepy child. I’m 48 and mom is 71. If you need any more details I’ll try and think of anything I can. Thank you!
Category Archives: 1940s
316B: The mystery of the dead cousin
315W: A lion of a tale
It's a children's book, kind of big, maybe 8"x10", old, probably from the 60's or earlier. Hardcover. There is a lion on the front, I think the cover was pinkish. Multiple stories, one involving a lion that gave his hair to birds and lost it all, so they brought him leaves. I think another was about monkeys. I've been searching for years. Halp! 😀
315I: The Marvelous Train Trip
The book was hardcover, dark blue, large (10″ x 7″) about 1″ thick. The characters in the story: Fritz, a workman who has restored a venerable steam locomotive, a boy who takes the locomotive on a trip across the United States.
The locomotive cannot stop, but can slow down for a variety of adventures, such as traveling through the New York subway, and rescuing people from a forest fire (perhaps inspired by the fire at Pestigo, WI). Upon return, Fritz announces that the “bearings are burned out,” and the final picture shows the locomotive’s diamond stack off to one side, and a deer’s skull and antlers on the wall.
This book was in my Grandmother’s home in Berkeley, California. I would have paded through it when I was six in 1949. I was overseas in the Army when she died. The house, and all the books, were sold.
315B: Little Boy Stumbles Upon a Fairy Wedding
311T:Fly Away With The Wild Geese
Published in the 1940's about a girl who longs to fly away with the wild geese. . . and, finally, does. Small, beautifully illustrated children's book.
311P:Going Fishing
I’m looking for a book from my childhood (1940s) that had many little lessons of various kinds, for instance, one page was about “G,” who liked going fishing, swimming, etc., and felt left out when someone went “fishin’” or “swimmin.”
311K: Poems and Nursery Rhymes
I had a wonderful children’s book (maybe from the 40’s??)
Hard cover, lighter green embossed cover. Larger dimensions than a regular book.
It was not very thick (maybe an inch or two??)
It was filled with fables, short stories, poems and nursery rhymes
I remember It included “Pandora’s box”, a poem about “who loved mother best” and “the land of counterpane” among many others
I lost it many years ago.
I would do love to know what it was called do I might try to find it again...
311G: Jacobites and Second Sight
Hello. I’m looking for a children’s/ young adult novel I found in a school library in 1977. I thought of it then as an “older book,” so I’m guessing the publication date to be between 1945 and 1965. It’s historical fiction that takes place during Scotland in the Jacobite period. The main character is a teen girl who sometimes has visions via the “second sight,” a gift that allows her to help save the prince at the end. It’s not a Sally Watson book.
310X: Cherished books
My father is desperate to find a cherished book from his childhood in Northern Ireland. It was a compilation of poems and short stories published around 1945-1950. He thinks it may have been a War Economy publication. He cannot remember the name of the anthology. The stories and poems he recalls are,
“How Horatius Kept the Bridge” by Macaulay
A tale about Ralph the Rover who removed the bell from the Inchcape Rock
“Rikki Tikki Tavi” by Rudyard Kipling
“Jackanapes” about the boy who became a bugler in Wellington’s army at Waterloo. I think the author is J H Ewing.
“Stratosphere Express”: the tale of a huge, futuristic airliner that flew at 500 miles an hour and 60,000 feet across the Atlantic and, would you believe, was highjacked on its first trip
“Power on Deck” about the young engineering cadet who saves his ship from certain disaster
There was another story about a mysterious seaplane and the three children who put an end to its smuggling activities… with a little help from the Fleet Air Arm
The adventures of Mr. Bumbletoes of Bumbleton, the nursery floor creation who came alive at night with all his fellow citizens.