I cannot remember the title. All I can remember is it was a fantasy book involving a girl who was given the power to swim underwater where she befriended a whale, a dolphin, and it involved rescuing her friends at the bottom of the ocean who were trapped there underneath a bubble. One key character that I remember was a “dimity bird” that was enchanted to move about. Presumably published in the ’60s, early ’70s.
This was a perhaps slightly oversized paperback book with illustrations of different dog breeds. I believe the cover had a green border. I’ve been been poking around online to see if I could find an old copy with no luck. So far the closest thing I’ve found that’s similar are the illustrations from How Why Wonder Books Dogs Wild Animals Irving Robbin Martin Keen, 1962.
The illustrations were grouped in a certain way on the page, similar to these (but it wasn’t these books):
It’s not impossible that our paperback was a reprint of a 1960s book. There were no photographs in the book, and very little (if any) information about the care of dogs. It wasn’t very wordy. We got it at a garage sale in Michigan in the 1980s.
The book I am looking for was published in the early 1970s or possibly late 60s. It was a large format children’s book (probably around 15″ tall by 10-12″ wide). If I remember right, it had a black and white checked border on the cover, similar to The Real Mother Goose. It was an anthology of children’s stories. There was a story about a little girl who picks her neighbors flowers, and her mother explains to her that she shouldn’t do that and they plant a garden for the little girl so she has her own flowers. There is another story about a little boy picking huckleberries and pretending to be a bear or maybe running into a bear in the woods. There is another one about a little girl who reads The Little Red Hen and then she pretends to be the red hen. There is also a poem called “Look at Me, Mama” wherein a bunch of different bugs do things and tell their mothers to look at them – there is a line that goes something like “And when a little water bug sticks his face – his WHOLE FACE – into the water and says ‘look at me, mama!’, she does!”
The graphics in the book are all very much straight out of 1968 – 1975.
For the life of me, I cannot remember what this book was called and I’ve not seen a copy of it for years. I’ve been googling everything I can think to google. It was one of my favorite books when I was a kid and I want to share it with my son, who is now about the age I was when my mom used to read it to me.
I hope you can find it – thank you!
I’ve been looking for a picture book about a family that goes on a road trip (I think). I remember the pictures being detailed, I think the family had a loaded up station wagon with many things tied to the roof. They go to the beach, I think, among other places. I was born in 1974, , so it might be late 70’s, early 80’s? The illustrations almost had a Where’s Waldo look to them, though NOT a find and search book. I think there was a baby in the family, maybe three kids. I remember winding roads and color illustrations.
I checked in the fairy tales page but didn’t find my book amongst the ones listed. I am looking for a child’s fairy tale book that was probably published in the late 1970s or early 80s and possibly in Canada as my parents lived in the Niagara Falls area and it may have been purchased in Niagara-on-the-Lake. The book was oversized and probably around 100 pages with a pale bluish cover and contained many tales including The Nightingale and I think the very last story was the 12 Dancing Princesses. It was heavily illustrated with beautiful colour illustrations that had a very “silky” look to clothing and hair of the characters. I’m pretty sure it was a generic title such as Fairy Tales or maybe World’s Best Fairy Tales and it is NOT the Reader’s Digest book from that era. I think there may have been a prince and princess on the front cover and there was a round vignette illustration on the back of scenery I believe. Any help would be appreciated!
I am hoping to find more information about an Easy Reader type book my teacher used when I was in the first grade, circa 1990.
The book was a series of red books, and the words were phonetic. I believe each book had multiple short stories. I remember one was about an African American boy who finds a Genie. The book definitely had a black boy and a genie, I may be conflating the two.
This cover looked familiar to me. The reader I am thinking of, may or may not be this one or have an image on the cover. I distinctly remember it was red.
I also remember the clothing of the illustrations within the book looked dated to me as a child, which I think means the book may have been published in the 70s or 80s originally.
I am looking for a book targeted at, I think, 10-to-12-year-olds, which I suspect was published between 1965 and 1980. I think the protagonists were a brother and sister who for some reason were spending some months (summer vacation?) in a remote location, which I believe was mountainous. The permanent inhabitants were faced with a problem that I do not remember but which I believe involved water. A recurring plot point was that the young boy was taught to play draughts and was challenged to improve–this name for the game may mean that, though I read the book in a U.S. library, it was a British book. The problem was solved through the use of a key with a star-shaped end which was inserted into a rock face and turned.
As a final detail, I believe the cover of the book was mostly a picture, drawn in blue and white.
I am looking for a big book of stories I enjoyed as a child in the early to mid 1980s. It’s possible the book was published in either the 70s or 80s. It is NOT the typical hardcover collection of stories but rather a paperback, rather oversized book – almost like a telephone book with same type of “newspaper like” pages and black and white print. A distinctive feature is that it had pastel multicolored sections of pages inside. Each color represented a specific type of story like yellow for fairy tales, pink for animal stories, blue for classics adapted for kids, etc. The most specific story I remember is the 12 Dancing Princess who wore out their shoes. It had beautiful illustrations with ladies sporting the French pompadour style with ringlets hairdos and full ballroom dresses. I also have a vague memory of a cute little story featuring a ladybug and other various insects conversing with each other. We also had a similar type big book of jokes (featuring different types of jokes including Tom Swifties!) that I seem to remember having a mostly white cover; I always thought they were part of a series of big books but I could be wrong.
Thanks for any help.
The book that I am trying to find was purchased via scholastic books (or similar) in the 1978-1979
school year. Probably Spring ’79. It was young adult fiction and either the back cover or the description said “Rites of Passage” (then something about learning to drive,graduating,etc.)
The book began with the heroine and her family cleaning out a beloved family cabin or cottage. Her grandmother had just died and she was having trouble dealing with it. A female cousin shows up and they don’t really like each other. Later in the book they become close.The cousin has become cool by sewing shift dresses for classmates. The dresses are unique because she added a pop art twist to
each dress. The cousin would appliqué a hamburger up by a shoulder or a little snake at the waist.
The heroine is dating / deciding between two boys. One is a freshman at MIT / ridiculously smart. One of them gives her a rock from Cuttyhunk Island. I had never heard of this Island and was taken with the idea that it could produce perfectly round rocks because of tides and gravity,etc. For a work of fiction,it explained it pretty well.
The heroine keeps the rock as a talisman ( learned that word from the book ) and at the end of the book throws it into the sea because she doesn’t need it any longer.
That is all that I remember. Thank you for your help.
Hello! I have been trying to find a children’s picture book from probably the 1970s or possibly 1960s. It was about a boy who lived in a house that was fully automated. (No parents are in the story, I don’t think. ) A machine would wake him up in the morning, put him in the shower, dry him off, put his clothes on, make him breakfast, sit him down to eat, and send him off to school. It was not a robot, more like he was moved through a conveyor belt of morning routine activities. They boy seemed to sleep through everything. One night, the machine goes on the fritz, and he is sent through the morning activities in the wrong order. The machine is all messed up – he gets his hair washed with breakfast, clothes put on upside-down, etc. Hope you can help!