Category Archives: MG (grades 2-6)

142B: toymaker’s workshop (solved)

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I am looking for a children’s book that I read in primary school, and I’m afraid I have no recollection whatsoever of the title. One of the main characters is a toymaker whose workshop is in a mountain: his character is definitely ambiguous, sometimes actively malevolent. There are children, perhaps siblings, who are other characters who have to deal with him. The toys may come to life?

Other hints: my recollection is that there may be more than one book in the series; the setting is in Austria, or Switzerland or some similar mountainous European locale, and the feeling was definitely of fantasy.

Maybe the strongest marker would be the date of publication. I think it would have been published in the 60s or 70s, certainly no later. I was born in 1965 and was reading it at ages 7-12 or 13.

I have already searched Loganberry Books Solved Mysteries, and not found it; nor has a preliminary search on Google produced anything.
Thank you VERY much for whatever help you can give

 

141Q: Son, father and Stonehenge-like village (solved)

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From what I remember as a ten year-old: the book was for tweens, probably published in the seventies, mid to late. It is a chapter book, contemporary, about a father and son visiting a quiet (English? New England?) village that has a secret. The people in the town are all secretive and distrustful of outsiders, but the boy strikes up a romantic friendship with a girl from the town. The mystery of the town centers around a Stonehenge-type ruin. The climax of the book involves a cyclical resetting of the people of the town and their memories.

 

141E: Teen novel about racial tolerance and baseball from the early to mid-60s

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. I read this memorable book in 1965 when I was ten years old. I was a 5th grader at P.S. 92 in Brooklyn, NY. The story was about the friendship which grew between two teenage boys-one white, one black; teammates on a baseball team in the South (Texas, perhaps?). The black teen lived with his widowed father in a small, meticulously maintained home. Initially, the white teen is wary of his teammate, his attitude shaped by the segregationist attitudes of that time; the novel very movingly describes how mutual mistrust evolves into a soild friendship. I’d be grateful for any help you could give in helping me find this wonderful little book…

140A: Childrens book with an animal (bunny or mouse) that wins the lottery (solved)

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I have been searching for a book that I read in first grade, and I can not find it to save my life.

The book is about a rabbit or possibly a mouse. He works in a grocery store, and wins the lottery. He wastes the money he wins on a car with no engine, a mansion that is too big for him, and a motorcycle so that he can move back and forth through the mansion.

The book ends with the mouse or bunny broke, and returning to work at the grocery store. he buys another lottery ticket on the last page i think.

I was in the first grade in 1988-89, so my memory may not be that great of the details. I think this was a scholastic book- we had book fairs and mailers come home all the time, and that might have been how I ended up with this book.

 I have a first grader that is starting chapter books, and I would love to give him this book. I have very fond memories of reading and laughing at how silly it was. Your help is much appreciated.

 

137D: Boy Flees Village (Solved)

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In 1973 I read an old hardcover book containing European children’s stories.  The stories were probably written in the early 1900s.  In one story a boy is working for a man in a village and unknowingly helps the man rob a house; the man uses a ladder to enter the second story of the house.  Someone pulls up the driveway and they flee.  Days later the boy returns to the village, is forgiven, and continues to be friends with the girl who lives in the house.  He tells her how he fled through the woods and fields for days.  He tells her that when he was fleeing, he met the man again by a lake, and the man said to keep running.  There is no magic involved in this short work; it is not a fantasy.  The story was written for ten to twelve year old readers.