I am trying desperately to find a beloved book from my childhood. I do not remember the name, but I do remember a few details.
Category Archives: 1970s
349N: Bad Cat Throws Alarm Clock Out Window (Solved!)
This is a children's book from the 1970s about a very bad little cat who lives with his mother, who throws his alarm clock out the apartment window and damages someone's car. His mother says "Another nail in my coffin" as he is constantly getting into trouble. I think he becomes a good cat by the end.
349H: 60s or 70s Black and White Silhouette Book
I’m trying to find a book for a friend and wanted to see if you might be able to offer any advice. My friend’s late father was a photographer and had a black and white nude silhouettes book published back in the 60s or 70s. Unfortunately, my friend’s copy was lost many years ago and never found. I don’t have the title, but it would have been published under Bill Coco or Francis V. Coco. Any advice on how I might be able to try and find it? All suggestions are welcome! I’d love to try and make my friend’s holiday by finding this! I hope you can help.
349G: Selfish Witch, Disguised as Regular Girl, Does Selfless Favor
Looking for a beautiful line-drawn picture book from earlier than 1975, about a witch and her daughter who live beyond the seven valleys and the seven seas. The daughter witch is selfish, and does not come home to her mother on time. Her mother sends her away until she can do a selfless favor for someone, while disguised as a regular girl. She is dropped off outside a village. Eventually, she finds a little boy who is also being punished, and helps him peel mounds and mounds of potatoes. She falls asleep doing this, and her mother comes to collect her. Ends with a line something like, "but she could never stand the sight of another potato."
349C: Beaver Patrol?
Looking for children’s book that my wife had as a child. She was adopted, but remembers this book from her birth mom. She is wanting those memories back. Can you help?
This is a children’s book with illustrations, circa 1970-1980. A family of beavers who wore red jumpers, I think. One of their activities in the book was making pancakes and flipping them with their beaver tails.
348Z: The Griffins Who Loved Tragedies and Other Short Stories (Solved!)
Collection of magical and wacky short stories for children, I believe it was an anthology of different authors, but I’m not sure. The edition I read in the 2000s had a cover illustrated with dancing pumpkins entwined with various characters from the short stories. It was old, maybe 70s or 80s? One story was of the pumpkins, someone tended them too well and they danced around the town causing havoc, another involved too much bubblegum. The only story I remember in detail was one of an author who wrote comedies. Everyone loved them, but he dreamed of writing tragedies. Whenever he tried submitting tragedies to his publisher, he was turned down. Being the father of two boys, he can’t afford to stop writing his jokes. These two boys also wanted a swimming pool. One night the author threw his tragedy out the window, and the pages floated to the mountains. The next few nights he heard crying coming from the mountain – and finally he went to investigate. There he found a griffin, crying over a few pages of his manuscript. Griffins, apparently, love tragedies. So the author offers to write him more, and give dramatic readings, and the griffin brings his friends, and their tears flow down the mountain, and become a natural swimming pool for the author’s boys, who become the best swimmers at their school.
348Y: The Magician’s Windows and Other Short Stories (Solved!)
348T: Children’s book about alchemy, 1970s or 1980s (Solved!)
I had a book when I was a kid that I really liked a lot. I was born in 1976 so it would have been published before the mid-80s, probably. It was about an alchemist, possibly old and doddering, who was trying to turn lead into gold. If I remember correctly it had sort of sepia-toned line drawings, and there were quite detailed illustrations and instructions on how various alchemical apparatus worked. I remember illustrations of him working with tubes and liquids and flames and such. He also needed a unicorn horn so he had to get a young maiden to help him catch one. Can’t remember the title at all.
347V: Shape Shifting Amnesiac Becomes The Thunderbird
I read this book in the 1970s or early 1980s. It is fiction/fantasy about a man with amnesia (modern times of the 1970s or 80s) who through adventures eventually discovers that he is a shape shifter who morphs into the SW Native (Indian) god/entity the Thunderbird. I think there are two books in the series and I seem to recall a female protagonist who also turns into a Thunderbird and the two characters go off into the sunrise together, but don’t quote me on that! The cover art was intriguing. And the end was sad because to become Himself as the Thunderbird the guy with amnesia had to give up the self he had become while in human form.