I read a book as a young teenager in the late 1950s entitled Roommates; it was about two girls who bonded as roommates. The book was touching and so poignant that I realized the potency of literature then. I believe the first name of the author may have been Rosemary. I probably borrowed the book from the Brooklyn Public Library.
Please help me find a childhood book probably written in the late 50s 60s or early 70s. Similar to The Secret Garden, it was a weird tale of a boy named, I believe, Micah who gets lost in the woods and he’s gone for such a long time he has to learn to survive eventually he finds an old moss covered skeleton that he befriends similar to that movie “Castaway ” where Tom Hanks befriends a basketball. Anyways, the boy is all alone. I think he builds some sort a little hut and learned to survive on his own. I think, he’s about 12 or so and eventually someone finds him like a little girl or something and he tries to introduce her to the skeleton and she freaks out and runs away so the boy’s left alone again in the forest with his skeleton friend and I don’t remember the dénouement but it’s kind of sad. Eerie yet beautifully written and haunting tale. It wasn’t very long but I think I was about 10 when I read it and it transfixed me.
Looking for paperback science fiction collection of short stories (probably from about 1958-65) with a story about plants and trees being able to cry out (at a pitch not audible to humans) when they feel pain. A scientist, who devises a way to convert the sounds to those audible to humans, goes mad when he is able to “hear” the effects of mowing a lawn.
The book I am looking for is something like Rocking Horse Christmas. It is a children’s book, many pictures in color, there is a snow storm, a dad driving home, and some writing. It was published in the early 1950s I imagine.
This is a child’s book circa 1950s about a bird who is trying to bring twigs into his/her birdhouse to build a nest. The twigs don’t fit in the small birdhouse door because the length of the twigs is too long to fit in the oval entrance. The bird finally realizes that the twigs can be brought in by turning them to go straight in. The bird then screams Wowee Kee Flowee! Of course, I might not have the entire story correct since it has been over 60 years since I read it, but I will always remember Wowee Kee Flowee!
This was a hardcover chapter book I read in the ’60s. Don’t know when it was published, but it felt like contemporary writing, though the story was set in the early 20th century. No illustrations. A very young man lives with his mother in a small town- the nearest city is Spokane, I think. Possibly his older brother is missing. He goes to the ice cream parlor and has a pineapple ice cream soda. There is some sort of quest, some railroad tracks. He fights a cougar or puma, and is wounded, and emerges scarred but triumphant. He gets the girl.
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.
A boy opens his eyes and begins to see Not a book, but a short story I read in 1959 in sophomore English, a slight “a-boy-goes-on-a -journey” kind of story and the first piece of literature in which I recognized myself and one that I still recall with goosebumps. I think it was named “Dell,” the name of an adolescent boy living on a Midwestern farm. He is awakened one summer night by distant honky-tonk music coming through his bedroom window, a foreign intrusion into his otherwise quiet life. Arising, he goes outside looking for its source. Following the sound, he crosses several dark fields, climbs a small hill and looks out in the distance to see, far away but close enough to clearly discern a highway truck stop, ablaze with tall lights and neon signs, like a light-bomb on the black prairie floor. Some rigs are parked, their radios blaring; others are pulling out into the night with the shafts of their headlights illuminating their journey into the darkness, going—where? That’s what Dell wants to know, with an immediacy, an insistence previously unknown to him. From that story to a degree in English several years later. It was my “first step” in the journey and I would love to recover it if possible. Any help would be sincerely appreciated.
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.