Category Archives: 1960s

340U: Talk Show Goes To The Dogs

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This book is fiction, and could be a novel, short story, or novella, but set in the current time and real world when the book was published (sometime between 1960-1985). A famous night-time talk show (along the lines of The Tonight Show during the Carson age) hosts a segment featuring a guest who is a man with a very smart dog; the guest claims the dog can understand spoken conversation, beyond just verbal commands. There are a number of conflicts that arise; the main conflict is the sponsor of the show (a dog food company, I think) wanting to use the dog in advertising, but the dog’s owner refusing. I think it is set in Manhattan, and the book culminates in a dog fight on the ice of a pond in Central Park (between the smart dog, I think a golden retriever, and a doberman pinscher).

340K: Separates

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Looking for a book from about 1960 about a young teen girl. Her mom makes all her dresses, but she wants to babysit for extra money so she can buy “separates.” She babysits children who come down with diphtheria and she must work hard to save them while in quarantine. Good luck!

340C: Old Children’s Storybook: Hot Water Williams, Over-Fishing Fishermen, and More

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When I was a child we had this big storybook with a red cover that must have been published sometime between 1960-1990. I haven’t been able to find it anywhere on the Internet by searching details that I remember and I can’t remember the title. The first story I remember was about an old grumpy man whose bathtub begins to overflow because the bathtub knob gets stuck and he needs the help of the whole community to turn the knob. Everyone comes together to help him even though he is so grumpy and mean. I believe this story was called Hot Water Williams, but again this search phrase pulls up nothing for me on Google. The other story I remember is about a boat of fishermen who overfish and their boat starts to sink. The illustrations were very 70s-style. There were several stories but these are the only two I remember. If anyone can help me find it I would be so happy because it was one of my favorite books ever. I’ve been trying to find it for years.

339Q: My House is Cozy – Bedtime Poem (Solved)

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I was born in the late 70’s and my mom used to recite a bedtime poem to us each night. I can remember three different verses:
Opening verse:
My house is cozy warm and wide.
It has the nicest things inside…
A knife, a fork, a yellow cup,
For drinking all my cocoa up…
Closing verse:
Outside my window I can see,
The moon and stars shine down on me.
Basically the poem was a tour of a child’s home. I believe there was a stop in the kitchen, bathroom then finally the bedroom. I don’t believe it was an original work, and seem to recall my mom saying that she got it from a book, although I don’t ever remember her reading it to us. She was born in the 50’s, so it could be from her childhood. My uncle (her youngest brother) was 10 years older than me, and it may have been a book from him that arrived in disrepair and so she memorized it to recite. My thought is that it is from a compilation/treasury of bedtime poems/rhymes/stories between 1950 and 1980. Googling hasn’t yielded anything. On a whim, I recently purchased Rene Cloke’s Bedtime Book to see if it was from there, but it wasn’t.
Thank you for any help you can provide! We lost our mom 4 years ago and I would love to find the source of this to share with my brothers and sister.

339P: A Girl, An English Boy, And Plaits

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Looking for a children's/middle school age book from 1960s about a girl. A boy from England moves in next door. I think the setting is rural/farm community. She likes the way the boy says bath (baahth). For a special occasion she "plaits" her hair more loosely than usual so the plaits will lie flat when she wraps them around her head or pins them up. She leans over kettle/ pot of steam to create tendrils. That's all I can remember. My mom got it for me from the local public library in Chicago.

339O: Children’s Book of Short Stories Published in the 1960s or early 1970s

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Hello. When I was around 5 or 6 years old (1972 to 1973) I loved a book of short stories. I think it contained around a dozen or so stories.

One of the stories was about a lost cat (or kitten). The cat is lonely, cold, and hungry. The cat wandered around and found a pond with a fish in it. The cat tries to grab the fish, but is pulled into the water. (I think there may have been a fishing pole, and the cat got tangled in it.) When the owner of the house heard the ruckus outside, he went out to retrieve the fish and cat. The cat then lives happily thereafter with the owner, and the owner cooks the fish for the cat.

Another story was about some people who went for a short boat ride on a lake in a rowboat. To make sure everyone person was accounted for, the organizer of the voyage had everyone wear a similar hat. Her plan was to count the number of hats before the journey, and then afterwards. If the number matched, then everyone was accounted for. I recall the voyage had some problems. I think the boat started to sink because someone forgot to install the drain plug. But it wasn’t dangerous because the lake was very shallow. At any rate, at the end of the voyage the organizer was worried & upset because the number of hats she counted afterwards was one less than the onset of the voyage. But someone pointed out that she forgot to count the hat on her head, and everyone laughed.

Thank you

339I: Children’s book about a Southern girl who wants to be a doctor

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I was eight or nine, and this was in the early 1960s. The book opens with a wedding; the girls’ sister is marrying a Mr. Quackenbush. It’s a big Scottish American family in the South. Later her brother is bitten by a copperhead snake, and the servants’ children—I am ashamed to say they called them pickanninies-and one goes blind. It’s the first time I read the verse “Yea though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death I will fear no evil.”

Ideas?

338U: Civil War Fiction From My Childhood

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I found this book in the used bookstore when I was in middle school (1984).

It was already older (published in the 50s or 60s, I suspect). It had a orange/rust colored cover with a very impressionistic sketch of a military scene.
The story follows an orphan who runs away to join the army.  He is befriended by a soldier (the name Mr. Putnam stands out) who protects him in camp and on the battlefield. Either the boy or the soldier is wounded (fairly certain it is the man).
Of all the details I remember,  there are young girls who makes silk beads that supposed to help quench the soldier’s thirst if they run out of water.

338O: Girl searches for spinet-playing doll (Solved!)

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I’m looking for a book that was written probably in the 1960’s, possibly early 1970’s.  I think the title contained the words “secret friends”. It is about a girl and her best friend who stumble across a mystery involving 2, or maybe 3, mechanical dolls. Her father owns an antique store. He has one of the dolls, a girl sitting at a desk who dips a pen in an inkwell and writes. The other is a girl playing the spinet. I remember the clue to the mystery was found inside the doll.