Category Archives: Fantasy

298A: A Clockmaker in Bern

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I must have read this some time in the 70s. Not a picture book, I would say this book was middle grade fiction (aimed at 8-12 year-olds). I’m guessing I read it between the ages of 9 and 11. It took place in Bern, Switzerland, and although I think the protagonist may have been a young girl, there was definitely a clockmaker in it, and his shop. I don’t think it had any elements of fantasy in it, but I remember finding it a magical story. I wish I remembered more about it, but that’s about all I’ve got!

 

297P: Wizard/Mage/Sorcerer’s Trap (Solved)

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This is a book I read hundreds of times in my childhood I can assure you it exists and yet I cannot find it.

It is a thin paperback book with watercolour highly detailed paintings. It is set in a far off land with two kingdoms across the sea from each other. One inhabited by a good king and the other by (I think his brother) an evil, very powerful, wizard.

The wizard decides he wants to take control of the kingdom of light and decides to do so by killing the king’s only son on (i think) his coronation day.

Cut to a parade in the street of the good kingdom, we meet a blind young woman who weaves baskets to make money. She hears of the coronation day and people buy her baskets more than ever. She speaks to a gentle man who gives her too much for her basket but insists she keeps the excess. Suddenly the prince goes missing and the evil wizard mocks the king by telling him he has turned the prince into a fish. The king banns all fishing and the people starve as well as cannot make money. The girl cannot sell her baskets. The wizard says he will set the prince free if someone can get a magic pearl guarded by an octopus at the bottom of the sea.

The king offers anything to whomever can bring his the pearl and by extension his son back home.

First a knight steps forward. He is put on a boat with a special orb to let him breath underwater and never returns. Then a lion tamer steps forward. He is put on a boat with a special orb to let him breath underwater and never returns. It is a long while before anyone else comes forward. But eventually a thief steps forward. He is given a boat with a special orb to let him breath underwater but also doesn’t return.

Eventually when the girl is about to starve and is on her last piece of bread a talking turtle asks for a piece. She shares it with him and finds the courage to go and search for the prince. (The turtle offers to be her eyes i think) the king doesn’t believe in her but is desperate and reluctantly lets her go. She and the turtle run into, a swordfish, a sea lion, and another sea creature before finally making it to the giant octopus.

She gets the pearl and makes it back to shore.

i forget what happens next but it is revealed that:

swordfish=knight

sealion=lion tamer

other creature= thief

octopus= sorcerer

turtle=prince

The prince decides to marry the blind girl and they all live happily ever after.

I forget what happens to the sorcerer, he either dies or vows to leave the kingdom of light alone.

Please help me find this book it’s a favorite of mine (as you can tell) and it’s driving me crazy not having it!

297L: Cuttyhunk Island (Solved!)

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The book that I am trying to find was purchased via scholastic books (or similar) in the 1978-1979

school year. Probably Spring ’79.  It was young adult fiction and either the back cover or the description said “Rites of Passage” (then something about learning to drive,graduating,etc.)

The book began with the heroine and her family cleaning out a beloved family cabin or cottage. Her grandmother had just died and she was having trouble dealing with it. A female cousin shows up and they don’t really like each other. Later in the book they become close.The cousin has become cool by sewing shift dresses for classmates. The dresses are unique because she added a pop art twist to

each dress. The cousin would appliqué a hamburger up by a shoulder or a little snake at the waist.

The heroine is dating / deciding between two boys. One is a freshman at MIT / ridiculously smart. One of them gives her a rock from Cuttyhunk Island. I had never heard of this Island and was taken with the idea that it could produce perfectly round rocks because of tides and gravity,etc. For a work of fiction,it explained it pretty well.

The heroine keeps the rock as a talisman ( learned that word from the book ) and at the end of the book throws it into the sea because she doesn’t need it any longer.

That is all that I remember. Thank you for your help.

296X: Yellow Cape/Yellow door

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This book was on the shelves of the library of my middle school in the early 60’s.  I would find it by the cover, which I think showed a tree with a round door.  Not unlike Hobbiton, the story was about small people and their society.  They lived in hollow trees. The thing I remember best is that the individuals wore capes that matched the color of their front door.

 

296Q: Tiny Boys Cross the Lawn

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In the early sixties I read a green cloth hardback of two boys who drink something in their dad’s basement lab. As they head out to play they suddenly become tiny.  Trying to cross the yard they train a dragonfly with blinders to carry them. Written for maybe fourth grade.

(Surely inspired ‘shrunk the kids’, tho can’t confirm.)

295S: The Holy Island of Lindisfarne

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I’m looking for a children’s or YA novel about St. Cuthbert, the Holy Island of Lindisfarne, some children, and possibly a selkie (mythological creature). The story, as I remember, was somewhat mystical and had to do with St. Cuthbert. I would have read it in the late1960s— it’s not The Wind Eye by Robert Westell (1977), which was published too late to have been the book I read. I remember the cover being illustrated in shades of gray and white. It may have shown some birds flying around the island, which has a distinctively shaped profile.

295L: Don’t trust Girl B

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There was a book that I read in the early 1970s about a girl (A) whose family took in another girl (B), I can’t remember why. Girl B turned out to have powers that she used against Girl A. I remember two scenes. Girl A was going to the prom or a big dance with her boyfriend and was going to make her own dress. Girl B “made” Girl A buy a pattern and color for a dress that was unbecoming to Girl A. Also, Girl B “made” Girl A sick right before the dance so Girl B went with Girl A’s boyfriend. I don’t remember how Girl A got rid of Girl B, but the book ends with Girl A saying whenever she reads a story in the newspaper about a wife dying, or an accident with 3 people where the woman dies, that she wonders if it is Girl B is still out there up to her old tricks.

295D: Enchanted Book

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Beautiful cover with a picture of an opening through a Forrest. The colours were browns and golds and green. It was a story about a boy and girl traveling into an enchanted place and the things they experienced there, an adventure.  I read this book over 50 years ago