A chapter book (possibly), with green binding, printed pre-1950s I’d say. Suitable for the 8-12 group, I think. It’s about a girl who is home (possibly sick), and goes outside. The garden is described beautifully with winding stone or brick pathways, and as she walks down them, she finds fairies among the plantings.
I am looking for a children’s book, published in the 1970s or earlier (I was born in 1975, read this sometime between the ages of 7 and 12, and recall the book itself physically feeling “old” at the time). Most probably published in the 50s or 60s.
Two children were the main characters, I think they were a girl and a boy. I don’t remember any names of characters, unfortunately. They lived next door to a witch whose property included a walled and gated yard. When the witch did magic, her hair “floated above her shoulders” or something like that. I remember that rowan trees figured heavily in the story line; either they were searching for them or there was something about them the witch needed.
At the beginning of the adventure part of the story line, the children’s beds turned into boats and they were magically transported to a river or creek while they were asleep – one of the children wakes up because they become aware that their hand or the bed linens are trailing in the water.
I loved this book – hope someone can help me find it.
Thanks!
All I can remember is a young girl enters a curiosity/antique shop with a disturbing old man as proprietor. She purchases a toad figurine that appears attractive in the store but when she gets home appears less so. As days go by the toad appears uglier and uglier, even evil. Bad things begin happening and people in the house become ill. Somehow the girl knows the toad is responsible. She tries to return it to the shop but the shop is closed and when she looks through the dirty windows it appears to have been closed for years. I don’t think she lived with her parents, may have been an orphan living with an aunt or grandmother. Remember something about the evil curiosity shop. Would LOVE to find it again.
This was a three book series I read a few years ago. My library had them in the “young adult” section. I remember the book cover of one was green, I know one had vines on it. The book was about a girl and her family lived on a kind of farm and she finds this kind of tunnel. On the other side was a whole “colony” of these dwarf like things some of them had wings. There was this kind of Pegasus animal, it was small though and horse-like but had wings. I believe in the second book maybe the third the little girl gets sent to a boarding school and everyone thinks she crazy because she talks about these dwarf things.
One part of the book the Pegasus animal gets hurt and the girl takes care of it for a while in a sort of shed that her family no longer uses. At one point, I know, the two of them spend the night in a tree house sort of thing near the girls house. I know as you read the books it went back and forth of who was “narrating” like one or two chapters would be the girl side and then one or two chapters would be from the “dwarfs” side.
It was a kinda confusing series because it ended up that this little girl had had another life or something a long those lines. I don’t know how much help that is. There was something about a magical “touchstone” that guided the “dwarfs” they had migrated and at the end of the book they migrate again.
The book opened with a pancake shaped creature taking a kid under the covers transporting them to another world. The cover was dark blue with the kid in bed pulling the covers up and the creature at the foot of the bed. It was more fantasy than horror.
Children’s picture book in which a house follows a boy down the street. Read it with my boys in the late 70’s/early 80’s.
Probably read this in the early 1970s Two children, boy and girl, are turned into buttons by a woman (witch?). As buttons, they looked like carved bone and I think they were dressed as Pilgrims. They had to escape before they were sewn onto anything, because once they were sewn on, the change was permanent.
There was a cat named “Strawberry” and the characters/kids in the book traveled to the Land of Now Here. I think at least part of the journey was completed in a hot air balloon, and there was a train.
Children’s fantasy book from the 50s, 60s or 70s, something about “the Isle of Capri”. I think the cover was basic – black and white, or dark green and white. Perhaps there was a butler and a big house…there was some sort of magic going on, I think. The Isle of Capri might have been spelled “Capris.” I remember that a child goes to a big house, a mansion, to live and there are mysteries and strange things going on. That’s all I can remember!
I’m hoping you can help me find a book that I’ve been trying to remember for years.
I can’t remember the name at all, but it’s a fiction book in which children still have a natural ability to speak to trees, but adults have all forgotten how to (around puberty) by losing their belief in childish things. There are rowan trees, elder trees, ash trees and many others but they are the main trees I recall being part of the story.
I’m an eighties kid but it could be an older publication, I used the public library a lot and had a teacher who lent me her favourite childhood books too.
I think the cover had a colour pencil style drawing on it, mostly green in colour, but this is hazy so could be mixing up a memory.
I also can’t remember the children’s names or the story arc so I realise it a long shot!