Category Archives: 1950s
359G: Animal that Disobeyed Mother Gets Lost in Forest
I'm searching for a mid-1950s single story children's book about a little animal (can't remember type) that disobeyed mother's instructions and went through the farm fence into the forest, got lost, but finally found its way home. Right hand side pages had single colour pictures. Thank you for any help.
358Q: Strawberry Soda is a Success at Girl’s Party (Solved!)
The book I’m looking for was probably written in the 50’s or 60’s. It’s about a girl who is just encountering feelings for boys. The biggest thing I can remember is she decides to have a party and her parents get strawberry pop and she is afraid it’s going to be the wrong thing and instead, everyone loves it! No clue why I remember this, but there you go. She seems sort of sheltered, but in the end her party is a success and she gets a boyfriend, I think. I wish I could remember more! Hopefully someone else will remember strawberry soda/pop!
357S: NOT “Iron Duke”
Around 1952–54, I read just about every John R. Tunis baseball book I could find. Then, having exhausted Mr. Tunis’s baseball output, I checked a football book out of the library. All these years, I have thought Tunis wrote it, and that its title was Iron Duke. Now I suspect both memories are wrong because …
357Q: Sci-fi book including “Men of Harlech”
357P: Schizophrenic Lady M.D.
Book written in 1950’s, 60’s I think. But remotely possible published as late as 70’s, 80’s. Autobiography (?) by woman (maybe named “Diane”, not sure…?) who suffered schizophrenia (I think, or some sort of mental illness) and became an M.D. despite this.
Probably a U.S. book, but not sure. English language, anyway.
356T: Book of Children’s Stories from 50’s or 60’s
I am looking for an old children’s book of stories. I guess it would be from between the 1950s or 60s. It contained the story of the woman who became a woodpecker who baked pies as well as a story of a man who had to cut a hole in his roof to fit the top of his tall Christmas tree through.
356R: Picture book with a castle maze inside the front and back covers
This book was a discarded library book my grandmother got from a teacher friend. I read it in the early 90s and I think the art looked like something from the 50s or 60s. Not many colors, lots of red, black, white, and grey.
Someone, a knight or a king, got trapped in a castle maze and was there a long time. So long that he grew lots of hair. There was something else in the castle maze too, I think it was the bad guy who trapped him.
I don’t remember many details of the story, just that I felt bad for the person being trapped in there for so long.
The one thing I do remember is the castle maze. It was printed from a birds eye view looking down. The maze took up two pages and showed various stages of a chase taking place through out it. This maze was printed on the inside cover and first page (before the title page) of the book, and in the center of the book, and on the last page and back cover.
356E: Best Cartoons of the World
355Z: 1940s or 50s U.S. Chapter Mystery – Kids, Summer, a ‘Chateau’, a Diamond Necklace?
When I was in about 3rd to 6th grade in the early 1970s, my favorite book in my NJ public school library was a hardcover chapter book about kids on summer vacation, possibly in upstate New York, who get involved in some kind of mystery involving a neighboring house they call the Chateau. I think a diamond necklace came into it, and I’m pretty sure the children of one family joined forces with a boy from another family (maybe living in the Chateau?) to solve the mystery. Either Chateau or Diamond Necklace might have been in the title, but I’ve had no luck Googling for it. It was an old-fashioned story at the time, probably could have been written any time from the late 1930s to the mid 60s. There were illustrations, but a limited number, and I think they might have been listed by caption after the table of contents. I think it was the first time I had heard of a “Porte cochere”, which I had to look up. I think the binding was red, and may have had an imprint illustration of a country house on the cover — but I could be making that up!
I loved it and probably read it four or five times, but these scraps are all I can remember! I’d dearly love to find a copy.