Category Archives: Nonfiction

243C: Busy Busy Port (Solved)

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I am looking for my son’s favorite book when he was a small child. He was born in 1982, and the book dates from early to mid eighties in publication. Its title is “Busy Busy Port”, but I have no idea of the author. It’s a picture book.

The book is essentially nonfiction; there is no plot, nor are there characters. It’s just a picture book close-up of all the activities and the boats, ships and navigational devices and trains that center on a big city port.

The book is a small book, maybe 10 x 8, and nothing like Richard Scarry-type books with lots of flashy colors

243B: A Picture Book of Color Photographs

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When I was a boy growing up in Farmingdale, NY (Long Island), I attended a primary school (Parkway Oaks) from 1973-1976 and there was a picture book that I used to take out of the school library all the time.

It was full of color photographs of objects. I believe it was an object book or visual dictionary of some sort. However, I also vaguely remember that it was organized by color so that green objects were together, etc. I could be misremembering this, though.

It was not a very thin book; I think it was reasonably thick, chock-full of photos. It was smaller in dimensions (WxH – not an oversized book).

I remember the color being red, but I could be wrong, and that could simply be an artifact of edition. This book appeared to have the style of a book from the 50s or 60s. I cannot imagine a book from the 40s having this much color photography.

I remember being fascinated by all the color photographs (rather than illustrations, which were more common in the other children’s books), and I would love to find this book again.

Thanks!

236G: A collection of sports biographies

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Trying to find book I was given as a kid around 1960-1963(?) with short bio’s and drawings of athletes; I remember bio’s included Babe Zaharias, George Mikan, Jesse Owens, and Mo Connelly. It was a book for kids along the type of format as “Two Flags Flying” or “Illustrated Minute Biographies” with a bio and drawing of the person in each case.

226E: Adventures in science (description updated)

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My husband is always talking about a series of books he read as a boy (born 1957), probably from school or city library. He remembers them being called “Adventures in…” followed by some sort of science title. The protagonists were two boys, one or both pre-teens. They would travel with their father and have what I guess were all science adventures (there could have been others, like mathematics, but my husband remembers only the two that were science oriented). The two he always talks about are the chemistry book (perhaps Adventures in Chemistry?) where the boys went to a laboratory and made toothpaste (he remembers the younger boy tasting the toothpaste and liking it) and a book about model rockets (Adventures in Rocketry, perhaps?). The boys and their dad are driving to a deserted place where they can shoot off their rockets and are stopped by the police who see all the rockets and the rocket motors in the car and are upset; maybe the dad shows them a permit to shoot off rockets or something to let the police know they are no threat. It’s our 25th anniversary coming up and I’d love to dig up one of these books, but I’ve never found them searching online.

212D: Mammals in Wisconsin

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Mammals in Wisconsin Children’s book with beautiful full page high gloss pictures and short narratives of common mammals (weasels, fox, deer, bear, etc.) in Wisconsin. Published around 1959-1961. A quote from the book is “When a weasel sets out to go hunting he always asks himself will I eat today or be eaten”? I don’t recall the title, but the book was most likely purchased from a Milwaukee, Wisconsin book store.

202D: Scholarly book on Babylonian and Assyrian myths

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I had this book in the fall of 1978. Scholarly book on Babylonian and Assyrian myths. Dover-type binding (probably not Dover book, at least it’s not on their website). Perhaps 200 pages if that, not long, 5 1/2 x 8 1/2. Bright blue cover with line drawing on right-hand side, possibly a picture of Marduk? It was not the one by Donald Mackenzie or E.A. Wallis Budge, but it was that type of thing. I thought it might be Lewis Spence, but have searched for an edition with that cover and found nothing. I had just started to read it, lent it to a friend and never got it back.

 

199B: Easter Island Childhood (photobook) (Solved)

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I can’t remember the name of the book or the author. Photo book about a indigenous boy who lives on Easter Island, and the book follows his day exploring the island, probably suggested as a `biography’. Emphasis is on big B&W photos. It was a hardback book and I think probably from British/UK publishers. I’d say it was about 12 inches by 10 inches – bigger than normal size. This would have been published in the mid to late 60s or very early 1970s. I remember this from South Africa where I spent part of my childhood.

191G: Scary UFOs, Nice Paintings (Solved!)

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The book I’m after was a spooky children’s book picked up at a R.I.F. book fair in the early 80s. It was from a UK line of books and I believe was titled, simply, “UFOs.” It was perfectly square, tiny (a bit larger than a piece of toast), softcover, short (maybe 24 pages or less), and had realistic and creepy paintings of supposedly true UFO case files. Lots of art, light text. The cover was entirely midnight blue, and either had no art at all, or perhaps just a small clip of art from within, probably a “grey” alien face if anything. I had another book from the line that I believe was called “Dinosaurs,” and followed the same format, but had a vivid green cover. It was definitely an entire line of small books. Oh, and I remember the UFO book was the first place I ever heard of the Men in Black, though they seemed a lot creepier in the book than in the movie. I think the entry on their mysterious origins (it was acknowledged no one knew if they were extraterrestrial or government agents) mentioned one of them putting his fingers in a cup of coffee as if he didn’t understand it. Or something like that!