Category Archives: 1970s
318F: 1970s/1980s Illustrated Fairytale About the Plague
I’m trying to find an illustrated storybook set in a medieval fantasy setting. It may be a children’s book but the story and theme are very morbid. I think the book was published in the late 1970s or early 1980s. The illustration style is drawn in detail and colored, possibly watercolor.
The protagonist is a young hero, possibly a prince, who is betrayed or abandoned by the woman he loves. Perhaps their courtship was called off after he performed a great deed or quest for her father?
He somehow ends up heartbroken and dying on a small island in the sea.
He stays alive by sucking the salt and tears from the tattered and faded blue or black cloak that he wears. Eventually the cloak becomes magically imbued with a toxic curse and is blown on the wind to the kingdom where his former lover lives.There it spreads a deadly plague, possibly the Black Death. I vaguely recall an image of the woman dying from the plague with birds strapped to her feet (an ineffective cure meant to ward off the plague)
Does this ring a bell for anyone?
317U: Richard Scarry Treehouse Scene
My son had a favorite Richard Scarry book from the 1970’s. I think I purchased it at a ToysRUs store around 1978 or 1979. His favorite illustration was a two page illustration of a very detailed treehouse with all the items labeled, as the author did so well. There was a kitten in a basket being hoisted up to the treehouse. The image may have been an end cap of the book. I don’t remember which of the Scarry titles it was but it was one of the hardcover oversized books. I have been searching in vain for about four years now. If I at least knew the title of the book, it would make it a bit easier to find an old copy some day.
317Q: Girl, possibly babysitter, can occupy the mind of any animal she sees
317P: Girls Search for Witch Parents with Mouse Father
The book I am looking for is one I read in the mid to late 70’s about a girl (and I think her sister) perhaps named Lydia. Their parents are part of a witch/warlock community that are in some kind of other dimension. Somehow they get abandoned by their parents and go off searching in the other dimension. The whole time they are carrying a mouse in a cage that ends up being their father (complicated family dynamic!). The book is printed with occasional drawings of their adventures including one where they are forced to clean up the kitchen of some captor. I think they end up freeing a dragon whose collar is unlocked by a key that the mouse had – or something like that. I have spent years googling and haven’t been able to turn up anything. Thanks!
317M: Plagiarized Book Report Leads to Personal Growth
I am desperately trying to recall the name of a book I believe I read in my youth (I suspect in middle school so most likely a YA novel) in which a plot point turns on the plagiarism of a book report by the protagonist that is to be the final assignment of the year (possibly of seventh grade). The assignment in question is simply to write a book report on any book (I remember being confused by the lack of constraints and specificity in the assignment and this felt like a detail that aged the book. I likely read the book in the mid- or early nineties, but suspect it was written in the seventies. ) At the library to select a book for his assignment, the protagonist looks over a book -- which I believe to be Johnny Tremain, though I am not 100% certain -- and notices that the novel's plot is neatly summarized on the back cover. He checks it out and returns home, but puts off the assignment for several days. Anxious to be done with his assigned work for the year, rather than actually reading the book, the protagonist eventually caves and copies the summary from the book's back cover, submitting the work as his own. (Again, I believe the book from/for which the protagonist plagiarized his assignment is Johnny Tremain but I am not 100% sure. ) When his misdeed is discovered, the protagonist's teacher takes pity and agrees not to flunk him for the year, so long as he spends his summer successfully writing original book reports on ten different books as punishment.
As I recall, it is essentially a coming of age novel; most of the story transpires throughout the course of the summer and the ten reports serve as time markers or a leitmotif of sorts as the protagonist matures throughout the summer-- possibly coming to terms with disruptive changes in his family/home life during the process -- and by the end of the summer he has, if not quite become an enthusiastic reader, at least become so adept at quickly reading and summarizing novels that he cannot believe that just several months earlier he found the task so onerous and burdensome as to be driven to commit plagiarism rather than suffer through the reading and summarizing of a single novel. Sadly, I recall very little else about the book but this one plot point, other than that the main character's home life was perhaps somewhat tumultuous, or at least that he seemed to lack for a father figure, which the teacher perhaps senses and attempts to step in as a surrogate in some capacity. As such, his parents' separation or impending divorce may have been a plot point but I can't recall with certainty. Baseball may have been a significant theme as well in some capacity but I am not certain about this either.
Sadly I can recall absolutely nothing else about the book. I had not thought of it in years, but something I encountered in a podcast recently sparked my memory of this plot point -- specifically a supposedly unrelated anecdote about an attempted plagiarism by a middle schooler of an assigned book report on Johnny Tremain -- and of the book as somewhat formative for me. My clear memory of this isolated narrative set against my utter inability to recall anything else about the book in question has been bedeviling me. If you can help me in any way I will be forever in your debt.
317K: Modern Poems for Kids
The book I’m looking for was purchased in the mid-70’s. I don’t remember the dust jacket but it had a purply red cloth cover and was about 7” by 9” opening on the short side with a few line drawing illustrations. It is a collection of modern poems for kids (not nursery rhymes). One poem in particular was my son’s favorite. It starts –
“Once a little boy lived with a bear.
Went to sleep against deep brown hair
Soft and warm in a hidden lair.”
We don’t remember the middle part but it ends
“Though he at last returned to men
And never walked with the bears again,
All his life long he dreamed of the den.”
Would love to find this book again for my grandchildren. Terrific poems no matter your age.
317J: The Singing Heart
316Z: Olympic the show horse
Looking for a book I read in our school’s library in around 1973 about a white horse named “Olympic” who became a show jumper (not the true story of “Snowman”). Set in the US I think. Softcover.
316M: Colouring a grey kingdom leads to misfortune
A man (possibly the king of a realm) lives in a kingdom, its quite likely grey, and he discovers various colours in his castle / dungeon. You see a brilliant patch of colour in an otherwise totally grey scene as he discovers each colour. He rushes outside and paints the entire land colours, but this makes the inhabitants sick / depressed / angry etc. based on the characteristics expected of that color. Colors include (from memory) pink, cyan and yellow.
I first had this read to me in the late 70’s and as it was from my public library so may have been published considerably earlier, perhaps 1950’s or 1960’s.