Category Archives: 1950s

291Q: Selfish Girl Loses Candies and Finds New Friends (Solved)

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This book would be from mid-late 1950s. Color illustrations throughout, done in a painterly style. A girl (with pigtails?) named (Belinda?) gets some money somehow. She sneaks off to the penny candy store to spend it and doesn’t want any of the other children to see her. In the old-fashioned candy store, they wrap her purchases up in a brown paper cone. As she runs home to avoid the others, the candies fall out one by one. The neighborhood children pick them up and return them to her. She learns about selfishness and makes new friends. I think she is wearing an old-fashioned coat with muff. I tried to find this book when my daughter was little, to no avail.

291O: Cap’n Patchy Rat

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Captain Patchy Rat, as I recall from my very early youth, is the story of the rat who organized a swashbuckling rebellion against the tyranny of the Pied Piper of Hamelin. Illustrated. I recall an eye patch, of course, a pirates sash with rapier brandished. The book dates to 1950 era.

Have not been able to locate with desultory inquiries.

Would like to locate before all my grandchildren are too old for it.

291I: WWII drawings and cartoons

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This was a large (maybe a foot tall) book of drawings from the WWII era that belonged to my father, a WWII veteran. I think some of it was actual cartoons with dialog but what I remember most was wordless cartoon-like sketches/line drawings. There was (I think a full page) drawing of a bunch of soldiers in a huge room full of cots, with high ceilings and tall windows The soldiers were mostly half dressed, some playing cards, some sleeping, some (I think) cooking over little stoves. The general feeling was of a room in a huge mansion in Europe taken over to house soldiers. It was an amusing image but had no words. Another wordless picture was a line of army vehicles driving along a road with lots of people on the roadside including at least one man wearing a turban and a loin cloth and (I think) nothing else squatting at the side of the road. It felt like India. I looked at this book dozens of times over 50 years ago (it was old then and falling apart), but those are the only two drawings that really remain in my memory. I think, but I’m not at all certain, that the whole book was the work of one artist. I think, but again am not at all sure, that it was a paperback.

I would so love to see this book again, to have it. It fascinated me then and has haunted me for years. I’ve tried other on-line forums with no luck.

290M: Discoveries in grandma’s house

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I checked this book out of the library numerous times between 1964 and 1966. I don’t think it was new at that time. A little girl and her family relocate to a home that used to belong to her grandmother/great-grandmother. While remodeling the house, a door that had been covered over was discovered. The hidden room had apparently been used as a hiding place during Indian raids. There is also a large, hollow tree in this story. I cannot recall if a leather trunk with the grandmother’s initials in nail heads, was found in the hidden room or the tree, but inside is a beautiful doll with beautiful clothes. One outfit was definitely an elegant riding habit. It is possible that the little girl was named after the grandmother so had the same initials as those on the trunk.

I hope this rings a bell with someone. I have tried, unsuccessfully, in the past to discover this long lost, well-loved treasure from my youth.