Family of four traveling in a trailer around the U.S. One place they visited was an Amish community. I read it in the late 1950’s. Geared towards preteens.
227F: Family travels the U.S.
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Category Archives: 1950s
227C: Duck Decoy with a Heart
The story of a carver who made a duck decoy with a heart anchor held by a string. When he’s in the water a fish, or crab or something snips the string and his heart falls to the bottom of the lake. I read it in about the late 1950s. I remember the hunter using the decoy part was disturbing.
Thank you. I hope someone else remembers this book.
227A: A scary little pony (Solved!)
1950s-1960s children’s book, maybe Rand McNally/Tip-Top Elf publishing by what I remember of the binding, The Little Pony Who Could Say Boo! or Would say Boo. A Pony who loves to sneak up and scare the barnyard animals but told to stop then saves them all.
226G: Children in Paris
1950/60s Children in Paris adventure. Involves model Eiffel Towers that are real gold and the release of birds in the Paris bird market.
226E: Adventures in science (description updated)
My husband is always talking about a series of books he read as a boy (born 1957), probably from school or city library. He remembers them being called “Adventures in…” followed by some sort of science title. The protagonists were two boys, one or both pre-teens. They would travel with their father and have what I guess were all science adventures (there could have been others, like mathematics, but my husband remembers only the two that were science oriented). The two he always talks about are the chemistry book (perhaps Adventures in Chemistry?) where the boys went to a laboratory and made toothpaste (he remembers the younger boy tasting the toothpaste and liking it) and a book about model rockets (Adventures in Rocketry, perhaps?). The boys and their dad are driving to a deserted place where they can shoot off their rockets and are stopped by the police who see all the rockets and the rocket motors in the car and are upset; maybe the dad shows them a permit to shoot off rockets or something to let the police know they are no threat. It’s our 25th anniversary coming up and I’d love to dig up one of these books, but I’ve never found them searching online.
226D: Mystery with underwater tunnel
Read this in late 70s from school library, was old book. Paperback in landscape orientation, man looks for clues, crawls through tunnel under lake to island and lighthouse(?). Think it was a ghost?
224G: MAX a chubby cat
My wife’s father read this book with her when she was little, so it must have been published before 1964. Here is what she could recall when I asked her for more details:
“The book title was MAX. But anyways there are no photos of the book covers here so hard to say. This book is an over sized hard cover book (like the I Spy kids books). I remember the cover being yellow and turquoise – the illustrations are hand drawn (the cat is black line drawn) – he is a chubby cat. In one sequence he grabs the hair dryer and is looking at it inquisitively – it turns on accidentally and it blows his hair every which way as he tries to figure out how to turn it off.”
224A: Mystery solved by mosquito spray
My 4th grade teacher in 1958-59 read us a chapter-a-day in a children’s book about a group of kids trying to solve a mystery. While trailing a bunch of crooks, the smell of the kids’ mosquito spray (quinine) gave them away. Calpurnia was the housekeeper.
218B: Church Sexton Saves Jewish Boy
In grade four, possibly grade five, I found a fascinating book in the school library–which means that it was probably published in the early 1950s. I loved this particular book and have been trying to find it for many years. If this isn’t a stumper, I don’t know what would be.
I don’t remember the title or the author or even the names of characters. All I remember is that the story takes place in Norway during World War II and that the protagonist’s father is the village church’s sexton. (That word, “sexton,” was a new one for me.) I think that this boy saves a Jewish boy from the Nazi invaders (and can’t imagine why else the library of a Jewish school would have a book about Christians in its library).
This book has some illustrations. I remember black-and-white ones.
217D: childrens book lost musings: a tree, a river, animal friends
I am looking for a book which was the first full length read I had, which was
in about 1955. I believe the book was written in the 1940’s or 1950’s, not sure.
It concerned a group of creatures, a squirrel, elf, bird, maybe others, who were
comrades, and hung out either by an old abandoned mill, or big oak tree, by a
river or stream.
At the end of the book, something caused this group to break up, and some of the
comrades to have to leave, travel, wander. ( I was shattered)
I have tried ABE books, not much success, just saw you bookstore & service in
Book Review / NY Times, “Authors Note / sarah manguso” Sunday March 8.
The longing she describes about a “lost” chidren’s book is all too familiar to me.
Like most people, I have suffered partings, endings of life eras, but nothing so
deep as the loss of these characters & the world they inhabited.
I think ABE suggested, maybe, Dorothy Clewes as author, but when I reviewed
various contents of books, did not seem right. If any, might be: The Wild Wood 1945,
but I really have little idea.
HELP ! & thanks