I am looking for a children’s book that is a collection of biographies of heroes, both female and male, that was published before 1955. I believe it had a gold cover. Biographies included such people as Harriet Tubman, Father Damien, and many others, each about 4-6 or more pages long.
My favorite story in the 1950’s. I remember it as “Rob Roy & Puss the Cat.” Story of a boy (Rob Roy?) and a cat (Puss The Cat?) who eat the alphabet (Because they are so poor?) May be a story within a collection of stories.
Greetings from upstate New York!
I hope you can help me identify and find a book I had as a child.
I do not know the title or what the cover looked like because my copy was missing the cover. But here are the facts as I remember them:
I was born in 1960, so this book had to be late 50’s early – mid 60’s
It was a Christmas book – containing many different stories/legends from the birth of Christ to the real Saint Nicholas to Christmas legends like the Christmas Spider
It was a large, oversized book, say 12″ x 18″ ish. It was not a thick book.
What was so great about it was the artwork – very beautiful renderings – not cartoony or modernish, more like realistic paintings. So the art was appealing for even adults, but the stories were short, maybe one or two per page. If I had to guess, I would say the art style was something similar to this picture below.
As a child, the images I remembered the most was the story of St. Nicholas paying the dowries of three poor women. They were all sleeping in a bed and he threw a bag of gold in through the window.
There was also a story of this flying ( but I don’t remember it with wings!), hairy, red-eyed beast with sharp tusks/teeth, but I can’t remember the story. LOL – I don’t think it was Krampus, because it was more like an animal (wolfish) than a human devil guy.
Another feature was the rich colors of the end papers. Like a renaissance fabric pattern. I think red with a little blue and gold in a repeating diamond pattern, I think – it has been a long time since the book was lost or given away.
So I know these are a lot of random details – I wish I had the title and publisher, but maybe you can help me – my desire is to purchase a replacement copy to pass on to future grandkids.
I’m looking for a particular book of fairy tales. I could swear it was just called “Children’s Book of Fairy Tales”, followed by a sequel “Children’s book of more fairy tales” or something very similar. I’ve tried Googling with quotes and nothing comes up – without quotes I get hundreds of fairy tale books but none the one I’m looking for. Both were hardcover, medium thick. One of the books (I don’t remember if it was the 1st of 2nd – for some reason I think we got the sequel book first as kids) – I seem to remember had a busy cover that wrapped around from front to back, with characters and scenery that covered all over – and I picture mostly a green/blue color, possibly water or leaves (but I could be remembering that wrong). We received the books in the 80s, and they weren’t vintage so I’m guessing they were 80s published, probably mid-late 80s judging by my age. The illustrations, both cover and in the stories (all the stories were heavily illustrated on every page) – was more cartoonish then painting-like. It was not life like, like many of the vintage fairy tales. Oh and I’m pretty sure all the characters were animals. So like cartoon animals as fairy tale characters. I’d say there maybe 20 or so stories in each book. Some of the stories were classic fairy tales but I remember there being a lot I had never heard.
Anyway, it’s driving me crazy because I’ve found many of my favorite childhood books, even obscure ones, but this is alluding me, possibly because there are so many fairy tale collections out there and this wasn’t a classic vintage one (but the best I’ve ever seen!).
Any help would be great!
Thank you!! – Rachel
In this short story/book a girl finds herself in a night carnival. The climax in this story is very similar to the, Come Back Lucy by Pamela Sykes.
This short story, however, I found it at a library a library and was never ever to re-find the story on the shelves or in its database. I believe the story was in an anthology of short stories.
The story is centered in an almost 1950s style where a little girl interacts with another girl in a mirror. The girl (main character) mysteriously falls into her mirror and finds herself in a dark somewhat spooky place.
As I recall, she sees a carnival in the distance. I believe the carnival is a type of ethereal place and is ghoul like. My favorite excerpt, “she found herself on a path dimly lit by the dancing of fireflies.”
I recall she sits down and cries. She tries to get back into the mirror that she fell out of and it appears she cannot escape the dark, Gothic world in which she landed. Her sobbing countenance becomes the reflection that a new girl sees in her mirror. This temporal/spatial rift that the girl finds herself in is somehow a trap that is now the main character’s punishment for her self-obsession.
What was most intriguing about this story was that it was dark, twisted and yet eerily beautiful. Strong visuals paint the story and it was from the late 1960s to early 1980s. That is, within the time frame of the Reader’s Digest short story anthologies.
I read a book of short stories in 1963. My memory is that the title or description following the title was “stories for girls to live by”. I believe one of the shorts was by Betty Cavanna. I do remember one of the stories had an excerpt about a girl on a sandy beach applying nail polish (crazy fragment to remember, I know). I have been searching for this book in vain forever. I lent it to a girl friend in 1964 and never got it back. If you can help me I’d so appreciate it as I would love to find a copy.
Thank you
Mary
I had this book for 11 years before losing it a couple years ago during some moves. I bought the book from my elementary school library in 1999-2000, in one of those sales where they get rid of old or damaged books. The book was hardback, felt like it had fabric over the hardback material but I don’t know that it ever had a dust jacket or anything. The cover was illustrated, with I think either a tower or the “man in the moon”, or both. The book was a purple-maroon color, possibly a faded dark blue the way dark blues and blacks might fade with bleach, but I’m pretty sure it was the purple-maroon color originally.
Some stories I remember, but can’t find exactly on any searches:
1. A poor man lets some elves/fairies eat the last of his food (bread and cheese), and they repay him by placing a coin on his oven that always is replaced when you remove it. I think it flies in from the window or something. He becomes rich, and marries a woman who is different from the other villagers, I think from another town/city. She is vain, and washes her face in milk to keep it pale, while other villagers wash their face in cold water to keep their cheeks rosy. The wife doesn’t like that no one has ever seen the elves/fairies, so she sneaks up on them one night and they disappear and take the money, leaving the man and wife poor.
2. A man sees these fairies dancing at night (either 8 or 12), and thinks one is incredibly beautiful, and describes her features to be like the moon and so forth. I believe her hair was black, not sure. He ends up kidnapping her to be his wife. She becomes very sad and either stops talking to him or tricks him into letting her go.
3. A girl is given 3 presents, which she opens when she needs help from I think her step mother, who makes her do ridiculous things. I think she helped an old lady, who gave her the presents. They might have just been called colorful boxes. One present was opened when she was told to make a cake, and the box contained a giant cake. The last box had a man/prince in it to take the girl away.
4. There was one about the man in the moon, a man built a Tower to reach the moon and I guess he ended up stuck there. Somewhere in the book is an illustration of the tower and of him in the moon, which was a full moon and a smiling face with crinkled eyes. It’s also possible I’m combining 2 stories, but I’m not sure.
5. A boy finds a leprechaun and gets it to reveal his pot of gold. The boy knows he can’t take his eyes off the leprechaun or it will vanish, but the leprechaun eventually tricks the boy into putting him in his pocket. As soon as the boy does this, he realizes what he has done and the leprechaun has disappeared.
6. There was a version of Rapunzel, not sure if that was the title of the story but I’m assuming so. A pregnant woman gets her husband to steal greens out of the witch’s garden, and the witch makes them give up the baby. The witch locks her in a tower, and eventually a prince rides by and climbs her hair, and they fall in love. The witch finds out and causes the prince to fall into brambles, blinding him, and eventually rapunzel finds him again, and cures him of his blindness with her tears.
7. There is also a version of Rumpelstiltskin, where he helps her spin golden thread for three days in exchange for her firstborn child. Then he gives her a chance to keep her child, if she can guess his name in 3 days. She eventually hears him singing his name, and gets to keep her baby.
I want to say there is a number in the title, like 100 or 50, and a list of all the stories in a table of contents. But I feel like that’s too many, so I could be wrong.
I was read this book by my mom when I was about 7 years old. It was probably published before 1995. It’s part of a collection of stories, possibly with the word “treasury” or “collection” in the title. The book was hardcover, a royal blue color, maybe a little bigger than a standard piece of computer paper, and about an inch thick. It may have been designed to be a bedtime book, but I don’t remember anything about sleeping.
I don’t remember anything other than a bit about one of the stories. I think they may have all been about animals, though. The one story I do remember involved a raccoon or black and white animal (but not a skunk) that steals a pie that was set to cool on a different animal’s window sill. I think the pie was cherry and had a lattice top crust.
Please help me find this book. I’d love to read it to my son.
I think it was called “Big book of Bedtime stories”. It would have been published in the early 80s or older. One of the stories was about an alternate world where people walked there hands instead of there feet. Other stories about magic. Yellow.
Trying to find book I was given as a kid around 1960-1963(?) with short bio’s and drawings of athletes; I remember bio’s included Babe Zaharias, George Mikan, Jesse Owens, and Mo Connelly. It was a book for kids along the type of format as “Two Flags Flying” or “Illustrated Minute Biographies” with a bio and drawing of the person in each case.