Category Archives: 1970s

370V: Teen boy wakes up and nobody can see him, he thinks he’s dead (Solved!)

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I read this book as a kid in the 1970s. I don’t remember much, except that a teen boy wakes up in the morning and soon realizes that nobody can see him. He thinks he’s dead. He can’t really interact with the world, but he does manage to ride a bus without falling through the floorboards. It might be that he never existed–I seem to remember that people weren’t wondering where he was. It might have the word “disappear” in it.

370S: All About Puberty

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Looking for a pre-teen girl book I read in the late 80s/early 90s that was already really dated. The girl in the book is going through puberty and gets her period. But the maxi pads still have the belt and the hooks. My friend and I just saw Are you there God? and for the life of us we can’t remember this book. They may have also been a part about keeping notes in a notebook about puberty.

370R: Teen boy with blue hair (maybe!) flees bad guys and escapes to parallel world with help of mongoose (maybe!) (Solved!)

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I read this book as a teen in the early 1970s. It had a typical teen book dust jacket design from the 70s: pen/watercolor painting of profile of boy with blue hair (I think) and I have a memory that it was called “The Blue Boy” or something similar but all searches have turned up nothing appropriate. 
Anyway, this memory is decades old, but what I recall is that this teen boy (probably orphan? no parents present in the story that I can recall) is somehow involved with a gang of bad people. Perhaps boy has magical abilities that they are taking advantage of for ill-gotten gains? Perhaps boy has blue hair as a gimmick? Maybe there is no blue hair but I swear there was. In any event, boy decides to escape from his situation and is pursued by bad guys who want to recapture? kill? otherwise cause problems for him. Boy is on the lam and has an unexpected mysterious ally who brings him food and perhaps finds him safe spaces to live. In my memory this ally is a talking mongoose, but crikey, how does this narrative even make sense? The boy is astonished to get ripe mangoes when in his world (the world of our narrative), mangoes are still green and unripe; months and months away from ripeness. It turns out this ally is from a parallel world, and the book ends with the ally helping our boy escape his pursuers by moving to the parallel universe. In my memory, book ends with boy on a sunrise-shining beach in this parallel world. 
I read it in English, but nothing about the story seems to be set in North America (mongoose and mangoes, or at least mangoes even if the mongoose is a figment of my imagination or faulty memory). 

370O: Children’s Paperback Picture Book, circa 1980, girl monster/purple dinosaur with a red dress, beautifully illustrated

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Hello, Stumpers. To the best of my memory, this is a Children’s Paperback Picture Book, circa 1980.

It was set in a woods, populated with monsters, near a lake that featured heavily. I think our protagonist – a girl monster whose face resembled a purple baby dinosaur, and who wore a red dress with puffy sleeves – saw her reflection in the water and got scared, or didn’t understand it was her.

It was beautifully illustrated line work, trying to make things look realistic with texture and shading, versus the looser style and flat coloring of a Mercer Mayer or Richard Scarry.

370J: Man Cleans House To Win Contest

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I had this paperback children’s book in 1970. It is probably from the 60s. It is an American book with words. The illustrations were line drawings.  
All I remember is that an old man lived possibly on a hill.  The town was having a cleaning contest, and he cleaned every bit of his house, and I distinctly remember he even cleaned the cobwebs out of the corners. The people came to judge his house and he won.  This may not be right, but my memory comes with the color yellow. Maybe the cover- or maybe the man wore yellow.  I’ve tried and tried to find this book. 

370F: Kids exploring cave during the depression era (Solved!)

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I’ve been searching for this book for years.  I cannot remember all the details but the basics:
Farm kids during the great depression, I think a boy and a girl.  They go exploring a cave nearby and pretend its their mansion.  So they don’t get lost they use breadcrumbs but birds eat it.  They decide to use string instead.  A mystery of some sort is solved.  I seem to recall mention of the Hobos that would come around looking for work, and their family took one in and fed him a meal.  At the end of the book he left markings on their fence that was code for “friendly family” or something like that.  Other details: I THINK they took a canary into the cave, there was something to do with the underground railroad, and ration books were mentioned.  

I read this book when I was in 6th grade, possibly 1977/78.  It was an old book at the time, hardbound with the old fabric book covering. I think it had illustrations but can’t quite remember–I read a LOT in those days.  This book belonged to my mom who was born in 38–sadly its been long lost.

369T: My Busy Day

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I am looking for a book my father often read to my sister and me when we were very little. She was born in 1978; I was born in 1980. The book title (I think) was about a “busy day.” There are two lines/quotes from the book that stand out to me that my father recalled years later:

I start my day with breakfast. I drink from my own cup.

Next I play dress-up. Look! That’s me, the fire chief!

The book definitely seemed to be written in the first person, and it contains some kind of reference to drinking from a cup and playing dress up as a fireman.

Any ideas? Thanks for any potential leads you can give. My father died in 2015, and my sister and I are always looking for ways to help our own children know him. This book would be such a special connection!

369P: Overconsumption

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I am looking for a children’s book I read in class as a kid.  1974-1977 I remember it had a big gold award seal on the cover. About a society that the people replaced household pieces every day.  Specifically I remember plumbing pipes being replaced and then a landfill was piled high with all this junk that had only been used one day.