Category Archives: Nonfiction

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!

168E: Non-fiction book on making wooden toys

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I am looking for a non-fiction book that I took out in the 1990s. Last week I contacted my old junior high in hopes that they still might have it, since there were encyclopedias there from the 60s and 70s when I went there…who knows how long old books languish in the stacks.

1. Woodworking book with fun and simple projects

2. All the information I can remember about the book and what I tried is here: This is what I remember:

    • Black and white photographs, line drawings for the patterns

 

    • Cover was blue with black and white photographs

 

    • It seems it would have been published in the 1960s or 1970s

 

    • It was not exclusively aimed at young people

 

  • The projects included a castle, castle residents (I traced these onto balsa wood :-)), a catapult, a siege tower, a modern bungalow dollhouse, wooden boxes with a combination lock, possibly a puzzle or two like a tanagram, an elephant with a mahout. The projects were pretty unique and charming

I started my search on Alibris and ABE, but I fear that the title was something generic like “Making Wooden Toys” (of course!) or “Wooden Toys You Can Make”. I went to World Cat to narrow it by year and got a decent list of titles, but looking them up on Google gives me results that I don’t remember and that don’t sound like the book. Or, sellers have not provided a photo of the book. Woe! I can tell you that the book is:

    • Not part of a series or published by a sponsor (Dover, Time-Life, WOOD etc)

 

    • Not by Richard Blizzard

 

  • Not More Wooden Toys That You Can Make by WG Alton

Unfortunately I can only find out what book it is *not*. The search is made difficult by the generic title it had, which of course, I can’t remember exactly. Is this enough detail? The book was in English, and I read it in Canada, which means that the publisher could have been American or British.

147B: Heavily Illustrated book of North Ameriacan Wildlife

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I am looking for a book that I read in my elementary school library when I was a student in the first half of the 1970’s. It was a heavily illustrated book of North American wildlife. I don’t remember the title or the author, but I have photocopies of several of the drawings. I liked the book enough to make copies of the illustrations, but unfortunately none of the pages have text on them to help identify the book. All the illustrations were full page with a single animal. Given that the image of the grizzly includes a frontiersman/mountain man, I searched for things like Davy Crockett, Hugh Glass, Louis and Clark, etc. without any success.

I also tried a google image search. The image of the grizzly returned 2 hits, one of which was in Japanese.

Help is greatly appreciated.

145Y: Nonfiction book on racism for preteens

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This could easily be post-1990, but not post-2006. It’s a thin hardcover – maybe no more than 60 pages – presumably meant for school libraries. One striking anecdote I remember was about how racism doesn’t have to be taught through words. In it, a white Southern woman, probably born in the 1950s, told how her mother was an impeccable lady and also “quite a racist.” However, the mother never said an unkind word about any person based on that person’s skin color, because “she was too much of a lady for that.” Even so, every time the mother and her daughter went shopping and had to talk to a black cashier or sales employee, the mother used a tone of voice as if she were talking to a silly preschooler. So, wrote the daughter, (not verbatim) “she passed on her racist views to me without a single word being exchanged between us on the subject!”

 

143M: Historical Tales With a Twist

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I am looking for a series of books I loved as a small child around 1982-83.  Each book dealt with the story of a historic figure such as George Washington who was depicted in a happy child-like cartoon format.  Each book also had a central theme such as honesty, courage, etc.  The main character would be faced with a problem taken from their actual life and during the problem an inanimate object (in the case of Nelly Bly it was her pen) would come to life and help them get through the problem using the theme word of courage, honesty, etc.  At the end of the story was a small biography of the person.  The books were in a large picture-book format with hard white covers with pictures of the character on the front.  I have no idea if all the books had the same author though I believe they al had the same illustrator.