Category Archives: 1940s

315I: The Marvelous Train Trip

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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

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I’m looking for a vintage, illustrated children’s book that I believe was made in the 1940s or 1950s. In the story, a little boy (just one boy–no siblings or friends) somehow is invited to a fairy wedding and he dances and parties the whole night with the fairies, elves, goblins and toads before he has to go back home. Other details that stand out: he slides down a tunnel to get to an underground area where the “fairyland” is (my mom remembers this tunnel as starting at the base of a tree); he fills a jar with fireflies to make a lamp when walking through a dark place; at some point, either an elf or a toad or a fairy (some magical creature) is caught in something and he helps him escape and is rewarded by being a guest to a party/wedding (I think maybe the caught creature was the groom?); there is a cute little blushing bride who I believe is a fairy or something–I think the party was her wedding, but I’m not sure. My mother also remembers there being a lot of red-capped mushrooms throughout the book. Thanks!

311P:Going Fishing

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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

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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

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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

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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.

309S: Miguel, The Dirty One

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The book I am looking for is/was a children’s book that I loved as a child. I was born in 1955 so I am guessing the book was published in the 1940s or 1950s. I checked it out, with the help of my mother, from the Pittsburg, California Public Library. I think I remember that the cover of the book was red and the illustrations were in black and white.

It was about a little Hispanic boy, Mexican, I think,  who hated to take a bath. His family and village all must convince him to take a bath for some special celebration. I think the name of the book was the boy’s name, maybe Miguel, The Dirty One.

 

309M: White sheep in a green field

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I do not know the author or the name of the book but it was published about 1947or 1948 It was the same time I read Elizabeth Enright's "Four Story Mistake."


It was about a girl who had very little in common with the kids in her school and had few friends and believes it will be worse now that she has moved. She is standing on a bridge in the new town and down at a field when a boy joins her and says "white sheep in a green field, doesn't that remind you of "Kim". That was just what she was thinking and she makes her first of many friends in a school that shares her interests.