Category Archives: Picture Book

298C: Hurry! Hurry! (Solved)

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Children’s book with a mustard-olive color cover (as I recall):

Artwork throughout shows a busy woman in a long coat hurrying everywhere.  Everywhere she goes people say “don’t be in such a hurry or something worse may happen” and it does – all kinds of unfortunate accidents due to her hurrying.  Finally one day she steps in glue and is forced to slow down…and she realizes that there is more to life than getting there.  At the end of the day she decides not to remove all the glue from her shoes, because she likes going slower.

I would SO love to find this book!

297Z: The clown who had to become a ditch-digger

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In the early 1950s, I had a children’s picture book about eight by ten inches concerning a clown who was forced to leave the circus.  I can’t recall why he had to leave, but he had done something wrong.  What lingers in my memory is a closing illustration of the clown, dressed in a blue clown suit, oversized shoes, red wig and nose, walking down a road with a pick and shovel over his right shoulder, perhaps into the setting sun, though I’m not sure of that detail.  He had to leave the circus and become a ditch-digger.  I thought it was the saddest image I had ever seen and the saddest fate I could imagine.  I still think so.

297T: Illustrated Children’s book with the theme ” You can choose”

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Illustrated Children’s book with the theme ” You can choose”. We had this book in the late 1980s/ early 1990s. It was square with a yellow hardcover with a cartoonish girl/boy on it. Book was about 20 pages ( 10 layouts with different scenes where the boy and girl make different choices between colours and objects etc. ). Each scene ends with a phrase similar to ” You can chose”. Very repetitious. One scene has them in a classroom. Size of book 20cm x 20cm. I know it is not the following books “If I could choose” or “Which one would you choose”.

297M: In a fever dream she dances with snowmen

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I’m looking for a children’s book I read as a child.

There’s a dark-haired little girl (maybe a Sarah, but I’m not sure) who goes outside to play in the snow (I think they build a snowman), but doesn’t put on her coat/mittens/hat/etc.  When she comes back in, she gets sick.  I think they give her a bath but it doesn’t work and she’s basically bedridden for most of winter.  At some point she has a fever dream where she’s dancing with snowmen in some sort of winter world.  When she wakes up, it’s springtime and I think she goes to a grandparent’s house, where the trees are in bloom, and the white blooms look like the winter world and she runs happily through them since she’s been cooped up for so long.

Beautiful illustrations.  Would love to look for a copy for my daughter.  Thanks in advance!

 

297K: Very Afraid Little Blue Monster

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I’m looking for a book from my childhood (born in 1977).  The main character was a little blue monster, and if I remember right, he was very afraid of just about everything, and was quite little compared to the other monsters of his kind. I think the book ends with him feeling safe after finding his monster mommy. This illustrated children’s book’s main character is dark blue, with a large head vaguely shaped like a devil, or maybe a tear drop (wider at bottom, narrow at top, perhaps with two ear-like horns?). He might have had a tail, and his body may have been “textured” with some black lines, and typically was depicted with an open mouth (indicating fear).  I vaguely recall that most of the book was devoid of color in the illustrations, save for the slightly panicked looking monster. My hazy memory makes me think that the book was published sometime after 1960, likely in the 70s, and certainly before 1983 or 1984. I think we had a hardcover of it growing up.

297J: A boy in a fully automated house (Solved)

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Hello! I have been trying to find a children’s picture book from probably the 1970s or possibly 1960s. It was about a boy who lived in a house that was fully automated. (No parents are in the story, I don’t think. ) A machine would wake him up in the morning, put him in the shower, dry him off, put his clothes on, make him breakfast, sit him down to eat, and send him off to school. It was not a robot, more like he was moved through a conveyor belt of morning routine activities. They boy seemed to sleep through everything. One night, the machine goes on the fritz, and he is sent through the morning activities in the wrong order. The machine is all messed up – he gets his hair washed with breakfast, clothes put on upside-down, etc. Hope you can help!

297H: A boy who turns into a wolf

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I remember having this book as a child, it was a picture book about a boy who turns into a wolf and becomes part of the pack for a season. At one point the pack travels close to his old home, and when he sees his family he remembers them and turns back into a human. I can’t for the life of me remember the title or the author, and at this point.  I’m pretty desperate for any information. Thank you!

296Y: Haunted house with shrunken ghost (Solved)

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I am looking for the title of a book from my childhood. I was born in 1982. The book might be a Bugs Bunny book where he moves to a new house and doesn’t realize the house already has someone living there; a ghost. The ghost tries everything to scare Bugs Bunny away. He rattles chains, he moans, nothing works. Finally late one night the ghost and Bugs have an encounter and somehow Bugs spills juice on the ghost. Now the ghost is really depressed, can’t get rid of Bugs and has a stain. So Bugs washes the ghosts sheet and accidentally shrinks him to a tiny ghost. Distraught and embarrassed the ghost and Bugs work through their problems and end up sharing the house as friends.

Side note: it might not be Bugs Bunny, it might be the Pink Panther. I can’t remember!

296R: Possibly Jesus?

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A picture book about a girl who finds a bear in a garden surrounded by roses/thorns. She makes him a cloak (out of thorns maybe?) and it turns out to be a test and the bear turns into man (possibly Jesus? I was in grade 2 at a religious school)