Child’s book from the 1950s. A 9×12 book with a cover in seafoam green. Realistic illustrations of children in soft pastel-like style. Stories about a family, perhaps called The Bumpsies. We think in one story, they have a picnic in the attic.
I’m looking for a children’s book that was a collection of fairy tales or stories. My father brought it home to me around the mid 1980’s from one of his trips abroad. The book was written in English, largish font, and beautifully illustrated. The pictures stand out the most in my memory, reminding me of brightly colored Hummel characters. I believe the front cover had a boy and girl on a wagon. The stories were unique, I’ve never read them anywhere else. The only bits I can recall is that one story was about a princess or young girl who was picking peaches and either in the same story or a completely different one there were elves or fairies picking leaves of gold and they had to wear special sunglasses to do so. It was either leaves or apples of gold.
I hope what little information I was able to provide will help you in figuring out what book this was!
Cinderella story, one in an anthology of fairy tales. This version has Cinderella going to three balls. The book is beautifully illustrated but also very descriptive of the gowns-of the fabrics and decorations-e.g.”yellow silk” or “yellow taffeta.” Published prior to 1960.
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 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!
Hello! The book I am thinking of could *possibly* be a school book, it was hard cover, and grey-blue in color. It had “Many Moons”, by James Thurber, the last story was by, I believe, Laura Ingalls Wilder, and there was a story about a toy maker making wooden animals for a farm set. The lights went out and he painted all the animals the ‘wrong’ colors and was very upset until someone told him they were even better that way.
I would love to find this collection of stories again!
Two people ride a train into a place where there is some disease that makes everyone fall asleep. They tell each other jokes to stay awake. It was a story in a science fiction anthology for young adults. I read it in the mid 1980s in a school library, but it was an old book even then.
My inquiry is about an old story that a dear friend told me. She was born in the 30s and, I believe must have heard the story when she was young.
She thinks it was in a book of children’s stories. It is about Buster Hard Rocks and Tilly Fields. The moral of the story is how difficult it is to grow and prosper crops or other things you are growing when all you have in your field are hard rocks. But if your field is easily tilled, then you can grow crops. Then similarly in your life, the condition of your heart and mind can be difficult to cultivate if you are hard and unwilling to listen and be persuaded.
I would love to find a copy of a book with this story in it.
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.
I’ve looked all over NYC for my favourite children’s book to no avail. It contained stories with elves as well as several more modern city stories. It had black and white illustrations , probably pen and ink. The book was in memory slightly smaller than 8 ½ by 11 in two dimensions and over an inch thick. It had a pearl grey hard cover that was pretty shiny in the 1950’s. That’s all I remember and it’s not much to go on, but I’d love to find a copy.