Category Archives: Anthology

360J: Children’s book about animal characters, including a fox who gets his tail wet in a stream and meets a mermaid (Solved!)

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I think the title was bedtime stories or goodnight stories, something like that.
The cover was a scene with trees and leaves, might have been autumn. In the foreground is a witch and a fox in a raincoat (maybe?) and they are surrounded by iridescent bubbles. 
The book was a few short stories about animal characters: 
In the first, a young fox (his name might have been Freddy)’s mother makes him a new raincoat and sends him off to play with friends, warning him not to get his tail wet. The friends end up sailing down a stream in an upturned umbrella and the fox’s tail hangs out and gets soaked. 
In another one, two other animal characters sneak into a local witch’s house and mess around with some spells, turning the sky green and grass blue. 
Another one had all the animal children go to the beach with school. The fox character meets a mermaid who gives him a shell to remember the sound of the sea.

359J: Private Investigator Has Bad Luck With Pulp Fiction Publisher

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Looking for metafictional short story that’s an homage to classic noir (probably published in the last 10 years or so) in which a PI is hired by a pulp fiction publisher to write stories. I think the PI only deals with a woman (secretary?) at first, they pay him a lot of money for his writing, and then maybe he eventually meets the publisher and there’s a twist ending that goes poorly for the PI. The tone was winkingly hardboiled (first-person narrator like classic PI stories). I have exhausted every possible Google keyword variation I can think of, and am just hoping someone in your network may have read this! I seem to think it was in a short story collection with different authors doing takes on mystery stories (similar to an anthology called Tiny Crimes), but could be wrong about that.

358U: Book of children’s stories written 1930s-40s

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1. No Title (the cover is missing

2. Book is about 100 pages +/-; Chapters are individual stories with a moral such as: Page 17, The Storm, Page 2, The Burglar; Page 71, The Letter to Mama, etc.; also includes black/white photography of animals, children, people, scenes with captions & guessing the “origin” such as “@ Topical” or H.A. Roberts titled “It’s Lots of Fun Helping Daddy” page 64;  or Page 58 Gendreau “Feeding the Horse”;

3. There were at least 1 or 2 others books very similar to the above. Our mom would read a story at nap time or bedtime in the 1940s-1950s; The books we had were soft-back.

358R: Bedtime Stories Collection Book

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This was a large, hardcover book of bedtime stories for children.  It was red with gold page edging.  One of the stories in it was about a baker who forgot his glasses.  He mixed up his ingredients and made raisin cookies and chocolate chip bread instead of raisin bread and chocolate chip cookies.  Then, while making a birthday cake for his niece, he is unable to read the recipe properly because he lost his glasses.  So instead of using 2 cups of flour, he uses two crates.  And instead of 2 eggs, he uses two dozen eggs.  Then he presents this ginormous cake to his niece, who loves it, and lets him know she found his glasses.  I believe it was called The Birthday Cake Mix-up or something like that.  The characters in most of the stories in this collection are bugs of some sort.  Another story is about a little girl trying to get her hair done but she doesn’t like any of the styles the hairdresser makes.  Eventually the hairdresser asks her what hairstyle she wants and she says she wants pony tails but her mom says they aren’t fancy enough.  So the hairdresser makes her fancy pony tails with ribbons and curls, and she is happy.

358O: Shrinking Farmer’s Wife Falls in Macaroni Bin at Store

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Farmer’s wife shrinks suddenly, unexpectedly, and often. At a store, she shrinks and falls into an open bin of dry macaroni. The farmer hears only “macaroni, macaroni!” as her tiny voice cries out. Another instance has her riding on the back of a crow. This could possibly be a stand-alone book, or it could be a story in a storybook collection.

357O: Scandinavian folk tale collection (Solved!)

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I am looking for a book that was a series of short stories or collection of Scandinavian (?) folk tales. It could possibly be classified as young adult but likely for a younger age range (10-14). The usual searches (Norwegian, Swedish, Scandinavian folktales) have not turned up the book, so perhaps it was a collection of general folk/magical themed stories. There were pictures throughout book. They were not in a cartoon style but drawn and I believe one picture showed a cave and/or beach. I only remember these drawings being in black and white. There was at least one story about the sea. The version I had was paperback. Cover art: White background, young girl (face of a young girl). It is was nymph like, or some type of fairy. Very g-rated. There was some green on the cover. It was more modern looking than the usual cover art for Nordic folk tale books, however, an overall flowy feel to the cover. Timing: I received it sometime between 1998-2002. It was likely purchased in Canada at either McNally’s Robinson bookstore or an independent seller.

357G: The Little Old Lady (Solved!)

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This might actually be in the title of the book. It may have been published in the 70s or before but definitely not later than the early 80s. I believe it was a book of children's poems about an old lady and one of them was "There was an old lady who wanted to ski, she wouldn't take lessons - it's easy said she! She tried and she tried but she just couldn't go. Nobody told her she had to have snow."

357F: Wizard vs. Seriously Overgrown Plant

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I’m looking for a short story that was published in a compilation of sci-fi stories, probably somewhere between 1995-2005. Sci-fi short story was about wizard and a plant that was taking over the earth. The wizard was trying to kill the plant to save the world, but no matter what he tried, he couldn’t do anything about the plant and it ended up taking over the world. Wizard also had a globe or orb that was an exact replica of the earth. The orb displayed live and the wizard could zoom in and see anything and anyone and what they were doing. The only thing that didn’t show up on the globe was the globe.

356T: Book of Children’s Stories from 50’s or 60’s

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I am looking for an old children’s book of stories. I guess it would be from between the 1950s or 60s. It contained the story of the woman who became a woodpecker who baked pies as well as a story of a man who had to cut a hole in his roof to fit the top of his tall Christmas tree through.

Thank you for any help you might be able to give!!!!

356O: 80s Children’s picture book with animal protagonists and moral lessons including the danger of electricity and getting lost

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I read a children’s picture book in the mid to late 80s in the US that was about moral lessons/behaving. Sorry, can’t remember what the cover looked like. There’s probably like 10 stories including: 1. A young hippo waits too long on a train to use the bathroom and poops his pants. An older animal tells him if he pays attention to his tummy and uses the toilet, the other animals will want to spend time with him. 2. A mother tells her young child (sorry, forget what type of animal it is) that electricity is dangerous and warns against putting things in the electrical outlets. A monkey encourages the child to stick a knife or fork in the socket and the child says no, so the monkey does it himself — book shows monkey getting electrocuted. 3. A panda or bear goes walking and ends up getting lost even though his mom warned him against it. The police end up getting involved. 4. There’s also a story about behaving for the babysitter when your parents go out and/or a story about how to behave when you get a new sibling. There’s no humans in the book and the illustrations are cartoony, not super realistic.