Category Archives: Fantasy

294R: Young Adult Fantasy Featuring Giant Blob (Solved)

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Our teacher read us “A Wrinkle In Time” when I was in the seventh grade, about 1980. At the end of this book, there was one chapter from another book, sort of a promotional sample. It featured a fantasy warrior of some kind looking at a giant blob that contained the half-digested remains of many other warriors, their armor and their weapons, spears and such. I always wanted to read that story, never found out the name. Since it was at the end of the L’Engle book, I thought it might be published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, but I don’t know how to research it. Ring any bells?

 

294D: Enchanted Book

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Beautiful cover with picture of an opening through a forest. 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.

293T: Girl visits magical world, stranger with furry coat

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This is a book that may be British. It may have Rebecca or Dreams in title. Or Emma or Milly. It’s a chapter book with some illustrations. A girl visits a dream world where there are friends or helpers. One is a tall man (maybe a giant) with a large furry coat. It may be yellow. There may be a room she’s in that’s like being inside a globe, with lots of locks. Also, she may have to solve a series of puzzles to go through this world.

292H: The Weiry Wax

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I am looking for  a children’s book . . .

Title:      (not sure)     The Weiry Wax         Alternate spellings: Wiery, Weary       Wacks

Approx publication dates:   older! I read it sometime between 1945 and 1950. It could have been a 1930s publication. I’m born 1941. Been seeking this book for 60+ years, for my grandchildren, and myself. Contemporaneous with PING, the Chinese duck and the junk boatman.  I mean, I was reading these books at roughly same time. Also that Brownie book, of 1930s or ’40s.  Barbar….that era.

Description:  children’s book, roughly that picture book format/size, glossy cover, with the 30  or so pages of text and  art.

The main characters, I believe on the cover, were the Weiry Wax  (or ___ Wacks, or Weary ___), but I think the spelling was like a ‘weir’ (low dam) They were roundish, something like a mummer meets a sea urchin. Black.  A coal-black snowball, with spines.

I’m reminded of them whenever I see the soot sprites in Miyazaki’s TOTORO–the little black dust balls. These guys were bigger than that, but not more than knee or waist high on a child.

I can’t remember the other characters….was there a human? don’t know. It’s just that the Weiry Wax themselves scared me mucho, but they weren’t too evil, I think, and I came to be fond of them. Wanted one for a pet.  (They may have been dreadful: I was a weird kid, only child, active imagination.)  Pretty sure they had eyes, like the Miyazaki sprites, and not much else.  Stubby legs/feet maybe. Like a Shmoo, but definitely in the dark part of any shmoo universe. I don’t think they were there to help.  Guess they lived in a forest. They might have carried a staff or spear, ergo hands/arms.

291V: Fox Trapped in a Smokehouse

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This is a book of interconnected short stories. It was an oversized hardcover book with full-page text and color illustrations, meant for an older reader. The stories all concern a community of animals who live in the woods adjacent to a farm. I’m fairly sure the title of the collection has the name of the animals’ home in it — maybe the lake they all live around, or the name of the woods, or the name of the farm? The book was published in the 80s or 90s. Each short story ends with a well-known moral or saying. I think there is a story about a badger or raccoon who is sick of it all at home and doesn’t want to get out of bed. There might be a story about an animal collecting (quail?) eggs that then get destroyed or eaten — the moral is don’t count your chickens before they hatch (or don’t put all your eggs in one basket?). The story I remember most is about a fox (perhaps the main character in the book) who gets trapped in the farmer’s smokehouse. He sneaks in to steal some of the farmer’s ham (I think?) and gets his leg stuck in a claw trap or gets locked in, and he has to beg another of the animals to help him escape before the farmer finds out and shoots him with his shotgun. In one of the later stories, I think the fox runs away from the animal community. I loved this book as a kid but can’t seem to work my Google magic to identify it! Thanks in advance to all you sleuths out there!

291S: Death Flees Me

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So, the title if this small novel as i recall it is “Death Flees Me”. However, I cant find it under this name so i am probably mis-remembering.

The novel was about the End Times, written from the point of view of a non-believer. As I remember it, it was not very religious at all. It simply played out the story of his wife and friends disappearing one day. I recall nothing else about the story. It was short, a very thin book.

288B: The fall of the house of something (Solved)

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Title was the fall of the house of something or the fall of something It starts off with the house finally being finished and a storm coming in. Main character is a guy who is an engineer, he has just completed a house and this group of people said it would have to be destroyed because it was forbidden. He said, okay but let me have a party in it first, you can be the guests. Then the people came to the party and he shows them the robots he made to look exactly like them. The entertainment is the robots being tortured and killed in awful ways. Each person of this committee kind of disappears until only one man was left and then he realized it was the people of the committee being tortured and killed and that it was the robots who are laughing and who he had thought were the people. And he is next in line to die.

287G: Horse in Forest of Silver Trees

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My daughter (now age 20), has been searching for years to find a book she loved to check out from her elementary school library in first grade +/-.  She has re-searched the library many times, spoken to teachers, friends and has had no luck.  I remember her bringing it home, so I know it isn’t a figment of her imagination.

What she remembers:

— Picture book of a horse in a forest of silver trees, limited (if any) text

— Illustrations in black ink/watercolor style

— Limited color palette, black, white, gold and maybe silver

— Possibly part of a series/pack of picture books

— Horse is main character on some kind of quest or adventure, with many crystals in the forest, possibly gold

— Special lake in the forest, perhaps also a cave

— Likely blue hard cover, she thinks larger than 8.5×11

— Likely an “older” book, I’m guessing from 1960s or even older