Category Archives: MG (grades 2-6)

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!

 

297S: Star-Shaped Key (Solved)

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I am looking for a book targeted at, I think, 10-to-12-year-olds, which I suspect was published between 1965 and 1980.  I think the protagonists were a brother and sister who for some reason were spending some months (summer vacation?) in a remote location, which I believe was mountainous.  The permanent inhabitants were faced with a problem that I do not remember but which I believe involved water.  A recurring plot point was that the young boy was taught to play draughts and was challenged to improve–this name for the game may mean that, though I read the book in a U.S. library, it was a British book.  The problem was solved through the use of a key with a star-shaped end which was inserted into a rock face and turned.

As a final detail, I believe the cover of the book was mostly a picture, drawn in blue and white.

297Q: Like a Canadian Little House on the Prairie

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1950s (or earlier) Canadian series about a family.

My mother is looking for a series she read in the 50s but she doesn’t know whether it was published for her generation (born in the 40s) or the books were from her mother’s childhood. They seemed pretty contemporary however. She grew up in Canada and the books were all set in Canada.

The main characters were a boy and a girl, possibly twins. There may have been additional siblings. They moved a lot and each book took place in a new town, much like Little House. Their father may have worked for the government. Or possibly he just was sent many places and they regularly visited him.

One book took place in a logging camp with lumberjacks. In another, they moved to Montreal and dealt with the language barrier, being English-speaking. She particularly remembers them having trouble figuring out the French labels for hot and cold on bathroom sink faucets.

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!

296W: Sci-Fi Retelling of Homer’s The Odyssey

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I read this in the late 1970s. A 12ish year old boy living in a rural area of the US notices small lakes are disappearing in his area. He deduces that aliens are stealing the water to use for fuel and starts watching for their ship, which he boards when he sees it. The ship takes off while he is aboard and the rest of the book is his adventures in trying to return home. There are other abductees from other planets already on board who become his crew. It is a loose re-telling of Homer’s The Odyssey in that the boy travels from planet to planet aboard the ship and encounters people who are recognizably the Lotus-Eaters, the Cyclops, Circe, etc. Because it’s a children’s book, many of the details are toned down. For example, the Cyclops had poor vision and thus needed to wear a thick lens to see, which the adventurers broke to “blind” him. I remember very well there was a full-page painting of the boy in the Cyclops cave, which might have been the cover of the book.

 

296V: Family moves to country home

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This book was from my elementary school library, read around 1967. The book was older, 1950s or 1940s. A family that was either down on their luck, or through an inheritance, move to a house in the country that came with African-American servants. This might have been in the South and it seems as though there was an adjustment. I recall food scenes, such as how much the family enjoyed the fresh baked biscuits. This might have been their first encounter with them. In another scene, the mother twists her ankle while walking through the garden and sits alone until she was found because she was in too much pain to walk. What struck me was that this was the first book I read that was told from both an adult and a child’s viewpoint. There was a mystery involved too but I don’t recall whether the house was haunted.

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.)

296G: Gypsy lady animal healer cottage forest

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Children’s Book: for ages 6-12

Beautifully illustrated with heaps of flowers and animals Cloth cover, possibly purple or brown in colour.

1cm thick

Roughly 25cm by 18cm

Written Before 1994

Story is about an old lady who lives in the middle of a forest in a cottage, she is like a gypsy who heals the animals with different herbs and concoctions.

2 children visit her to find out she is not as crazy as the village people say she is.

The pictures show her in front of her cottage.

In front of a fire healing the animals.

Putting a herbal Pulse on an animal

296E: Littlest Joe (Solved)

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About a mutt dog, a many-paged book and the longest I’d read at age 11 in 1957, who goes through many awful experiences through his lifetime and dies at the end. I think the dog was part pit bull and maybe bulldog, definitely a short, squatty and solid guy. I had checked it out as many times as possible, then finished it all through the night so I could drop it off at the library the next day. Intending to reread it, I found that it had been withdrawn for repairs and never returned to the shelves.

296C: An English village and an American cousin

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Sometime around 1956 when I was in the Millville School District 2nd or 3rd grade, maybe the 4th we had a hard-bound reading book with a dark blue cover that was page by page beautifully, color illustrated with 1930s era style artwork not unlike the covers of Jacqueline Winspear books.

The story lines, at least one, involved an English boy about 3rd or 4th grade age living in an English village and his having an American cousin, similar aged, visiting and he showing him around his village.

I do not recollect a title nor publisher, but have been searching for such a book for the last three or so decades. That book and old geography books still in use in our school, circa 1926, contributed to my Anglophilia.