Category Archives: 1970s

338Z: Witches and a Magic Stone

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A young girl spends the summer with her Aunt Margaret (sometimes called Meg). The young girl finds an unusual stone that unknowingly to her, belongs to a forgetful witch named Lanie, who needs the stone in order to be able to fly. The witches come back looking for the stone, but the young girl has hidden it. Most of the book is about their efforts to get the stone back. At the end of the story, the young girl discovers her Aunt is actually the queen of or head of those same witches and in fact, is herself a witch and she has a pet black cat as her familiar. This is a young adult chapter book with pictures that I read in the 70’s.

338X: Secret Playhouse In The Woods

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Looking for an illustrated children’s book (perhaps 12″x”12 and ~48 pages) about a group of kids who discover and clean out an old abandoned cabin in the woods and fix it up, paint it in vibrant colors and decorate it. I read it at my public library in Vancouver, Canada in c1974 and remember it being full color on all pages so am guessing it was published in the early ’70s. I can’t recall the title or the author. That book was so magical because the kids had a secret playhouse in the woods that no one knew about. There was no adversity/bad in the book that I recall (other than overcoming the shed’s dilapidated condition) and I believe it ended with the kids hosting a party there?????


Thank you in advance for your efforts to figure out what the book was.

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.

338A: The Mystery of the Missing Twin (or maybe sister)

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This is a kids mystery book, probably written in the early 70s.  The author’s last name was at the end of the alphabet–Mayba a W.  
Two sisters–I think twins, but they may be triplets, where two are identical and the third isn’t.  The girls are on vacation in either Newfoundland or Nova Scotia.  They run into another girl who looks exactly like one (or two) of them.  the non-identical sister is convinced she’s adopted, and that the girl they saw is the actual twin (or triplet) of the others.  They try to find the girl again, but she’s been kidnapped.  
 
There’s a whole mystery involving caves and some missing jewelry? The parents are kind of cagey about why they’re In Canada, so they’re not a lot of help, although they are present. They’re at a lawyers office quite often, giving the girls unsupervised time.  They use the resemblance between the kidnapped girl and the sister to trap the crooks somehow, with the fathers involvement.

 
At the end, it’s revealed that the kidnapped girl is their cousin, which is why she looks like them. I think the parents were trying to arrange to adopt her.
 
I’ve been trying to remember this for awhile, but can’t.  Googling just brings up a lot of results, which aren’t helpful.
 
Thanks for any help!

 

337A: The Adventures of Merlin the Magician (Solved!)

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I am looking for two books from the 70’s featuring Merlin the Magician.
A little boy and his dog (Max?) go for a walk in the fog and find a store. The store is actually run by Merlin, who tries to trap the boy. The boy damages Merlin’s hat, which is the source of his power.
The boy and his dog escape, and are later unable to.find the store.
In the sequel, Merlin poses as “Auntie Nilrem” and bakes pies – all the while looking for the boy.
Illustrations were black and white with some pink for Merlin’s clothing.
I hope this helps.

336N: Reincarnation theme with lovers

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This children's picture book was likely published in the 70's, probably before 1978. It was set either in China or Japan and centered around a loving couple who died and then kept reincarnating as adversaries (like a fox and a hen) until they both reincarnated as swans. Loved getting this book at our local bookmobile from the Montgomery County public library system in Pennsylvania.

336E: Creepy Girl Holding Up Egg (Solved!)

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I read a book as a school aged kid in the 70’s and I think it was probably published in the 70’s.
The most memorable thing about it was the illustrations.  I found them so creepy, I could barely look at them.  Kind of like the illustration of Alice in Wonderland when her neck gets stretched by Tenniel.
The picture I remember most clearly was one that was a black and white drawing and the girl is holding a single egg in the kitchen.  The perspective is as if she’s holding the egg up to a camera on the ceiling.  She has large eyes and looks creepy.  Imagine Wednesday from the Addams Family holding the egg.
The plot was about a strange girl who moved next door to the main character – a girl of the same age I think.  Probably about my age at the time, 10 or 11.  I think the new girl holding the egg had some kind of magical powers.  I don’t remember liking the girl, so she wasn’t like a fun Pippi Longstocking character.  I think the setting was in the country.  Definitely not in the city.  The kitchen seems like a farm kitchen in a farm house.
I don’t think this was popular book at all.  I think I tried to make my friends read it to see if they found it as creepy as I did, and they declined.
I’m afraid that’s all I’ve got.  Thanks in advance!

336B: Lion Has Feathers

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I’m looking for a children’s book from the 1960’s or possibly very early ’70s.  It is NOT “Lion” by William Pene Du Bois.  The story was a lion who wanted to look different, and there was one particular illustration where he had feathers all over. The illustrations had very limited colors. I think in the end the lion decided that feathers were not for him, and went back to his original fur.

Thanks for any assistance you can give!

335Z: Charlie’s Uncle’s “New Invention”

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I am looking for a young adult novel that I read in the late 70's. The setting was an urban/city background called “Dogtown", a place in which the main character, Charlie, was doing everything he could to earn money to join his uncle to go off and use his uncle’s “new invention” to make a fortune. His uncle lived out of a VW bus that he also drove, and would come to town from time to time. Charlie’s friend Henry Etienne would help him and his efforts (they would salvage scrap; they farmed ladybugs in, I believe, the Sierra Molina canyons; at one point in the book, Charlie and Henry have a fake fight at a men’s club to earn tips). Charlie had a teacher, an Asian American man who rode a motor scooter, who encouraged Charlie to write down all of his ideas. At the climax of the story, we come to find out that the “new invention“ the uncle has is actually a fighting cock. Charlie and his uncle go to their first fight at which the rooster is killed, and the police bust up the illegal fight.

PLEASE help me find this book!