Category Archives: 1940s

309S: Miguel, The Dirty One

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

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.

309L: How human beings “diversified”

I am hoping to find a book that my father read to me when I was about 5 years old. After that, I remember reading it myself for years. This was a very long time ago…probably 1948 or so. No, I don’t remember the name of the book or the author but I can still visualize the black and white line drawings. The book told the story of how human beings “diversified” and the different races and ethnic groups evolved as they traveled across the Earth over centuries. The groups of people were called by various nonsense names….as I recall, there were names like Goopledops but that’s about as close as I can get. I know it was a hardcover book. I wonder if anyone remembers it. Thank you.

309K: Turn back to the front and read it again!

I grew up in the mountains of Virginia.  In my three room country school, there were very few books, but there is one I remember very fondly and would love to have a copy of it.   I don’t remember the title or author, but I would have read this around 1946 or 1947.   Here is a gist of the story.  A family lives very happily in a tiny, tidy one room house.  One day they decide that their house is too small so they begin adding rooms onto the one room.  They continue to add so many rooms (one behind the other) that they seldom see their family members.  I believe that the house became such a curiosity that train tracks were built along side the house so tourists could see it.   The family members navigated this long house on roller skates.  One day the family happened to meet together in one of the many rooms and decided that they were much happier in their one room.  So they proceeded to tear down all of the added rooms until their house was back to the one room.  Here is the part that intrigued me and the reason I believe I still remember it.  On the final page, it said.  “If you want to see what this family did next, turn back to the front of the book and read it again!”

308O: A shy lighthouse keeper

I have a library customer searching for a children’s book, but she doesn’t remember the title or plot. She thinks the author’s last name was Harper. It was a hardback picture book about a lighthouse keeper who was a shy man. The cover illustration was of a man in a long yellow rain slicker with a yellow rain hat over his face. It was published around 1948 or so. She said that her grandfather, Alonzo Washington, worked for a family called Harper who ran a publishing business in the Greater Philadelphia (Chester County) area, and one of the family members wrote this book for her when she was a child. She’s positive it was actually published, not a one-off. Her name is Marcilene Brown, if that will help at all. I haven’t been able to find any ties between her “Harper family” and the NYC Harper publishers. I hope you can help solve this mystery! Thank you very much for your help.

 

 

307D: A Poor Mountain Family

I’m looking for a book that was probably published in the 1940s. It had the bluish grey print that I understand was used during WWII. Seems to me it was about a poor mountain family (maybe Appalachia) with, I believe, 12 or 13 kids and all of them had a pet except for the youngest. It was about that child’s wish for his or her own pet. Anybody remember that?