Category Archives: Picture Book

336R: Large painted picture book with little people at war in forest (Solved!)

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I read this book in the 80’s in my elementary school library. Large, detailed paintings, rendered realistically, of little cartoon-ish humanoid people dressed in WWI type clothes and gear. They lived and fought in the forest and used animals as we would use machines. I remember the pictures always showing both sides trying to get the upper hand on one another in each picture, and one wore WWI German type gear, while the other side wore British.
One picture was a guy riding a sparrow, dressed as a fighter ace, the sparrow having a intricate harness to hold the rider and two maxim machine guns mounted to its back. He is looking behind him, or below at the opposing Sparrow pilot.

I have included sketches of what I remember.

336P: Girl with tangled hair and a fat uncle barefoot in a mudpuddle (Solved!)

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Seeking a children’s book about a slight girl with very long, slightly tangled dark hair, illustrated in realistic colored pencil, maybe?  On one page, there is a very affable, very fat uncle-type character, with his trousers rolled up, no socks or shoes on, and he’s in a stream or a mud puddle.  I feel like the girl has to be patient with her uncle(s) because he/they are very scatterbrained. 

336N: Reincarnation theme with lovers

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This children's picture book was likely published in the 70's, probably before 1978. It was set either in China or Japan and centered around a loving couple who died and then kept reincarnating as adversaries (like a fox and a hen) until they both reincarnated as swans. Loved getting this book at our local bookmobile from the Montgomery County public library system in Pennsylvania.

336K: Confused Woman Wants To Know Where Her Daylight Went

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I am looking for a book. Here are the details I can remember:

1) The book is about about a woman who is desperately hurrying to bring sunshine/daylight into her house so that she can save it for later, she uses things like pans and jugs to trap the daylight and carries it into the house, but is then confused when she gets inside and there isn’t any light (her house may not have had windows).
2) It is a children’s book
3) I believe the main colors in the illustrations are yellow, brown and black
4) I read it as a child in the late 1980’s, but it was likely a hand-me-down book from my sister who was born in 1980

336I: Confused Bird of Paradise

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We are looking for a book that we had when we were children. We think it might have been published in Australia, as it was a gift from family there, and must have been published before 2004. We can’t remember the title but it was about a bird of paradise. We think that the book started when he falls out of his nest or something and then asks lots of animals one by one what animal he is, until one animal tells him that he is a bird of paradise, and we think the last page was a double page spread of a picture of a bird of paradise.
We have been trying to find this book for years and had no success, so if you think you might know it I would really appreciate your help!

336H: A unique, darkly humorous children’s picture book

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Looking for the title of a picture book I had when I was a child–and absolutely LOVED.
Clues:
1. I know I possessed it at least as early as 1960/1961, and it was a used book when I got it. So my guess is that it was published sometime in the 1950’s, or even the late 1940’s.
2. As I recall, the book had an unusual shape. The top edge was curved, rather than straight across. I’m not 100% certain about this, but it is my strong recollection. It was taller than it was wide, giving it a much more rectangular shape.
3. There were both stories and poems in the book.
4. This was definitely not a sweet, endearing, Beatrix Potter-type book. The stories had a slightly darker edge to them. One of the poems was about a big, creepy tree, and the drawing of the tree scared me silly–but I loved it!
5. One of the stories was about a mischievous boy (it used that word specifically–it had to be explained to me) and one of the naughty things he did in the story was take piano keys off the piano and stuff them down between the crack in the floor boards.
There you have it…that’s all I remember. I sure hope someone can track this one down!

336C: Girl Plays In Orchard

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I’m looking for a children’s book from the 1950’s about a girl, probably 8 or 9 years old. The memorable thing for me is the picture of her outside playing in a yard or orchard and the trees have benches built around them. It’s all I can remember but somehow important to me to learn the name of the book. It was a favorite of mine as a child.

336B: Lion Has Feathers

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I’m looking for a children’s book from the 1960’s or possibly very early ’70s.  It is NOT “Lion” by William Pene Du Bois.  The story was a lion who wanted to look different, and there was one particular illustration where he had feathers all over. The illustrations had very limited colors. I think in the end the lion decided that feathers were not for him, and went back to his original fur.

Thanks for any assistance you can give!

335U: Children’s Collection, Help Solve The Mystery

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I would like to find a children’s book from the 1970’s, I presume. It was a smaller hardcover (I swear a red cover).
It was a collection of a few “help solve the mystery” stories in which every time you turned a page, it followed with a super intricate, detailed black & white drawing in which you looked for a clue…usually from the previous pages’ words.
A sort of “Where’s Waldo” style art – black and white.
I wish I had more to go on. It was in my elementary school library in NY 1977-1980-ish.
Please help!

335R: Red-Headed Mischievous Princess

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I read this book in the mid 90's, probably between 95-98. It was a picture book targeted at probably K-2. It was on the larger/taller size and it had a gray brick castle on the cover and a lot of the illustrations were of the castle. The characters were a young princess with long red hair and her friend who was a boy with blonde hair and freckles. They got into mischief together, led by her I believe. Most of the book was about the two of them playing together in the castle. The illustration style was clean and sharp, somewhat realistic but simplified, and more 3-d-ish than flat. . . I remember images where they were on upper levels of the castle and the girl was closer to the front, the boy farther away. I believe it might have come from my school book fair, so it was possibly Scholastic.