Category Archives: 1960s

241D: 1970s Children’s Book

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My sister had a favorite book when she was about 3–1970. The book was thin and tall with a green cover and we think it was titled “The Two Little Princes”. The story is about 2 little princes who have everything in the world, but won’t share and still want more. Their nurse/ nanny decides to take away all of their toys and leave them in an empty room by themselves. Finally she brings in a basket with a single train track, one blue train and one red train. The have to work together to make the track and then play together with the trains.
The drawings were simple without much color and the nurse wore a white hat with an apron.

241C: A Boy and a Witch Named Gherkin

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The book in question is an older British book, I remember finding it around the mid-to-late 90s, about a young boy being raised by his “aunt” (I clearly remember that she loved taking baths with the Purple People Eater fragrance, which was used later in the book by a sewer-comber who knew where her house was because of the smell) who is approached by a young witch who thinks she’s an outcast because she isn’t ugly, whose name is Gherkin, along with a few other strange characters – including an animal from the island each of them is from that looks like a soft white seal, loves music more than anything, and emits a thick fog when happy. The boy is the lost son of the king and queen of the island, and is the only one who can help save them from some calamity.

240C: A family of animals underground (Solved)

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I was born in the late 1960’s. There was a children’s book that had to have been published before 1973 that I remember that had these illustrations it in about either a mole, a rabbit or a mouse whose family lived underground. The book had illustrated cut-aways that showed the ground above, the tunnels going down and their little house down in the earth (like a little kitchen, bed, etc.). For years it has been driving me nuts trying to find this book. So if you have any information please let me know.

Thank you!

240B: Carrying The Mail In Old Florida

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I read this book in the late 1950’s or early 1960’s. It was in our school library. It was about a boy who was hired to carry the mail along the Florida coast before any development of the Florida coast took place. Along the way he saw many interesting sights and had various adventures. Finally he met a young girl and the two of them hid under an abandoned rowboat for protection in a hurricane. I don’t remember the title or the author. But I would sure like to be able to read that story again. It must have been written for older children or teens.

Thanks

crrunion

239I: Photos of frolicking kittens (Solved)

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This book would have been published before 1978 but probably after 1960 or 1965. It was a children’s book with photos (probably black and white) of a pair of frolicking kittens. The kittens had black and grey stripes. There may have been short captions of the pictures. The pictures were of the kittens leaping and jumping in funny ways.

239F: Fuzzy Shoulder Friends (Solved)

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I need help finding a children’s book, I can’t remember what it’s called!

It’s about a little village where all the people have little fuzzy creatures that sit on their shoulders. They look like fuzzy balls with eyes, and come in all different colors. These creatures make the people happy and build their self esteem. Then the people get greedy and start taking each other’s creatures to the point where the whole village is unhappy. They realize this and begin to share the creatures, the village is happy again. Moral of the story: when you take someone else’s confidence, you feel worse too. Published in 1960’s – 1980’s, perhaps.

Any help would be appreciated! Thank you!

238A: Benjamin B., who is he?

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Taught myself to read in first grade with a book of forgotten title. The main character is Benjamin B. (or Benjamin B––) (not Bee or any other variation). The book was published before 1966, which is when I read it. The book was not new when I read it, so possibly published before 1960. It is my faint impression (which could be incorrect) that he was a British boy, so perhaps written by a British author. I’m sorry, but that’s all I have. I have been looking for this book for about a decade, so any help appreciated.

237D: Aliens with moss-like reproduction

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This was a novella contained in a large edited volume of Sci Fi short works. Since I read it in the mid 1960’s to 1971 time period and it had a library binding, it probably dates from early 1960’s.
The plot is as follows:
Humans underwent a diaspora throughout the local galaxy; then at some point colonies lost contact with each other and with Earth and cultures evolved on their own pathways. At the point in time when the story takes place, an interplanetary Human government is trying to locate old Earth colonies to bring them back into the fold. This is apparently a very desirable event for the other cultures, as they get all sorts of economic benefits by being in the human club. Thus, many civilizations of near-human look-alikes also try to get into the human federation (Yes I know, what are the chances? Convergent evolution can only do so much. )

So inspectors investigate new applications to the federation to determine if the people really are descended from ancient earth colonists. The lead character in the story is an inspector/investigator. He is following up on the investigation and mysterious disappearance of an earlier investigator. He has a copy of the previous investigator’s rather cryptic journal, which mentions “Musci” in relation to the people of the planet. Musci? Is he talking about houseflies (Muscidae)?

Turns out, the people look much like humans, but clearly are not; they reproduce by alternation of generation, like mosses and all other land plants (though it’s only really obvious to the naked eye in mosses and ferns). “Aha! Not houseflies, but mosses!” the narrator of the story thinks. (“Muscinae” is an outdated name for the mosses, now called Bryophyta.) There is a diploid generation that gives birth to a batch of haploid babies (plants do it with spores). These babies are spirited away (out of sight of nosy humans), and grow up to be either pure haploid males (one set of chromosomes plus a Y-chromosome) or pure haploid females (one set of chromosomes, one X-Chromosome). The author describes them as very handsome/beautiful, the essence of the ideal male or female. These people have sexual reproduction, give birth to diploid babies, and die. The diploid adults raise the diploid babies (if I remember correctly) and the haploid people raise the haploid offspring of the diploids.

I really would like to locate this work, to use as a side note in teaching introductory biology lectures on plant reproduction and how strikingly different it is from animal reproduction.