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.
There was a book I had as a child which was a collection of stories from all over the world. It was a very thick hard cover book, the illustrations were numerous and rather realistic looking and in many cases quite scary looking. My mother went to America in 1988 and she bought it for me, I was 8 so my memory is rather hazy. Possibly it had been recently published. The hard cover had illustrations from the different stories all over it and down one side was a young African man hanging upside down with his hands trapped in a shell.
This was a collection of short stories from America, Africa, Germany, India, Norway and Europe among others. The stories were divided by continent in the Contents. Many were original, some were fables and some were excerpts. Some of the stories i definitely recall the book had were Peer Gynt, Scarface (excerpt), Black Bull of Norway, East of the sun and West of the moon and Six Blind Men (India) in which 6 blind men all feel and elephant and each one describes it according to whichever part of the elephant he’s clutched thinking its the sum total of the elephant.
Then there were some which I loved but I don’t recall the titles.
May have been set in North America:
Three sisters who set off in the dead of winter to find the Sun or maybe its the North Pole or the Wind. And are told not to pause their sledge to tie up their coats until they reach the sun’s tent and then not to eat or drink until he enters. The elder two ignore the instructions and cook the meat in his tent and eat it and the second one even goes to sleep on his bed and he throws them out in the snow. The youngest obeys and wins of course.
Japan: An exquisitely beautiful and obedient daughter named Peach Blossom and her father is a warrior of mercurial temperament i think and also very idiotic and at the end he chops off her head.
Another one was about a very lovely little baby girl who’s discovered and as she grows up her skin is supposed to be so delicate it says through her skin her veins showed and through them her bones and within that her febrile artery quivering away. I still recall that line and she’s perhaps impersonated by a false bride because that one rides her horse through some posts and ties it on the first post and the actual bride ties it on the last post.
One story set in Africa in which a young man dives into the river to hunt for shells and his hands are trapped in a massive shell and he drowns I think. Another one was how the world began and it was of Native American origin because the Sun, Earth, Sky, Wind etc were all personalised in it.
If you could help me identify and locate the book I would be eternally grateful. I’ve lost track of how many children’s anthologies I’ve scrolled through hoping to find this particular one. I’m sorry my details are so vague and sketchy and i know the titles I do recollect are in many collections but here’s hoping Loganberry can help me 🙂
A short story published in one of the well known Sci-Fi magazines- I believe in the 1950’s. The bad guy is able to control people’s minds. He decides to kill a good guy and announces to the victim that he will, at a later time, force the victim to shoot himself. The victim rigs up a gun that shoots backwards at the holder. As the bad guy forces the good guy, through mind control, to point the gun at himself, the good guy struggles to keep his mind clear and not give away his plan. He points the gun at himself, pulls the trigger, and the bad guy is killed as the gun fires backwards. Super cool story!
Looking for paperback science fiction collection of short stories (probably from about 1958-65) with a story about plants and trees being able to cry out (at a pitch not audible to humans) when they feel pain. A scientist, who devises a way to convert the sounds to those audible to humans, goes mad when he is able to “hear” the effects of mowing a lawn.
This book I read in 1984 and was a collection of six stories of a British youth gang; each story focused on a different member of the gang. One character may have been called Darkie Bates. One of the six stories took place in a disco where the gang member was ‘saved’ by the friend of a girl he had earlier been insulting with terms like “frog-eyes”, when she hit his assailant with a bottle. He ended up going out with her. The author may have been Tony someone but just as likely not. Great book for young adult fiction.
I was hoping you could give me some information on a short story I read probably 46 years ago.
The story is about a young Hessian soldier who is captured during the American Revolution after the battle of Bennington in 1777. His captors, Vermont militiamen, have orders to kill any prisoners, but they wind up sparing him and one brings him back to his farm.
I think they story is titled either “Hans of Luck” or “Lucky Hans.” “Hans” may also be spelled “Hons.” I read this story in the 1970s.
I’m seeking the identification of an illustrated science fiction anthology I saw once in the children’s section of a library. This was back in the early 80s so the book was from that time period. I remember the ending of one story where some astronauts were walking along and a robot that was with them telling them to stop because there was danger up ahead. They laughed at the robot and told it there was nothing ahead of them. They kept walked and ended up stepping into quicksand. They begged the robot to help them, but the robot told them it wasn’t allowed to put itself into danger, so the astronauts ended up drowning.
I remember two illustrations from the book: one for the story mentioned, it was a drawing of the astronauts disappearing into the quicksand. The second illustration was of a dinosaur being scooped up by a payloader. I’ve wondered about this book for years. My Google skills have been fruitless, so if somebody here could figure this out for me I’d be ecstatic.