I don’t know the title or author; it was a children’s book for preschoolers that was read to me more than 80 years ago. One of the characters was a wise old owl who sat in a tree, saying, “I am thinking important thoughts I didn’t have time to think yesterday.” this line has been quoted in my family ever since to anyone who was staring into space, daydreaming. I have long wondered what the book was. Thanks for any help you can provide.
I am looking for a children’s book . . .
Title: (not sure) The Weiry Wax Alternate spellings: Wiery, Weary Wacks
Approx publication dates: older! I read it sometime between 1945 and 1950. It could have been a 1930s publication. I’m born 1941. Been seeking this book for 60+ years, for my grandchildren, and myself. Contemporaneous with PING, the Chinese duck and the junk boatman. I mean, I was reading these books at roughly same time. Also that Brownie book, of 1930s or ’40s. Barbar….that era.
Description: children’s book, roughly that picture book format/size, glossy cover, with the 30 or so pages of text and art.
The main characters, I believe on the cover, were the Weiry Wax (or ___ Wacks, or Weary ___), but I think the spelling was like a ‘weir’ (low dam) They were roundish, something like a mummer meets a sea urchin. Black. A coal-black snowball, with spines.
I’m reminded of them whenever I see the soot sprites in Miyazaki’s TOTORO–the little black dust balls. These guys were bigger than that, but not more than knee or waist high on a child.
I can’t remember the other characters….was there a human? don’t know. It’s just that the Weiry Wax themselves scared me mucho, but they weren’t too evil, I think, and I came to be fond of them. Wanted one for a pet. (They may have been dreadful: I was a weird kid, only child, active imagination.) Pretty sure they had eyes, like the Miyazaki sprites, and not much else. Stubby legs/feet maybe. Like a Shmoo, but definitely in the dark part of any shmoo universe. I don’t think they were there to help. Guess they lived in a forest. They might have carried a staff or spear, ergo hands/arms.
A picture book in which several small children build a working car out of stuff they find. For the headlights, they fill a jar with fireflies.
This book must date back to the 1940s. I remember finding it at our summer home in NH, where there were all kinds of odd books for young people about.
It is a picture book. The illustrations are similar to pen-and-ink drawings that have been colored in, quite bright, beautiful sense of line.
The story is about a girl (and her brother) in a northern country (Scandinavia?). In the winter (Christmas?) they decorate sleds with strings of colored tassels for some procession. The girl cleans house for an old woman who makes her the tassel string. The girl gets caught in a terrible snowstorm on the way home and takes shelter in the root-hole of a much loved ancient oak tree. (The oak tree is a character in the story too.) This is where she is found.
I have never encountered this book anywhere else. It doesn’t ring a bell with anyone I have ever talked to.
Thanks for your suggestions!
This book would be from mid-late 1950s. Color illustrations throughout, done in a painterly style. A girl (with pigtails?) named (Belinda?) gets some money somehow. She sneaks off to the penny candy store to spend it and doesn’t want any of the other children to see her. In the old-fashioned candy store, they wrap her purchases up in a brown paper cone. As she runs home to avoid the others, the candies fall out one by one. The neighborhood children pick them up and return them to her. She learns about selfishness and makes new friends. I think she is wearing an old-fashioned coat with muff. I tried to find this book when my daughter was little, to no avail.
The title is something like, “I’ll Be The Mommy and You’ll be The Little Girl”or vice versa. It also may include “I’ll be the Daddy, you be the Little Boy,” (or vice versa as well.) The book is from the early 1980’s, I think, suitable for early primary children. It is two stories in one book The first part is about a mommy and little girl going for an outing and they change roles briefly. If they book is turned over and similar story involves a daddy and a little boy doing the same thing. In the middle of the book is a two page illustration of the parents and the boy and girl meeting up in the home…just adorable. It is nicely illustrated and while I don’t see it listed on any Sesame Street lists, the illustrations of the characters remind me of that company’s type of drawing.
“Board book” from late 60s or early 70s about teddy bear family – photographs of teddy bears doing things like eating at a table, other everyday activities. The pages had a green background and were on glossy heavy cardboard with rounded edges.
A book bought in late 70s Australia (possibly UK published) picture book about a kingdom in black & white & wizard. Under the direction from the king who decides to make it colourful, first turns blue and everyone is miserable, then red and everyone is angry, then yellow everyone becomes ill. Eventually the magic goes crazy and the colours mix to give full pallet and all ends well.
I was born in 1965 and remember this book from when I was around 5-7.
It was about a painter that lived on a houseboat and painted abstract paintings. For some reason he broke the painting up into a bunch of small paintings and a buyer flew to his houseboat by seaplane to buy them I think the houseboat was near San Francisco. It was a large book, hardback, and illustrated.
This is a picture book from the early 80s. My mom thinks it came from a mail order book club. Kids in an apartment building have amphibian pets: turtles, alligator. . . the alligator gets stuck in a tree. Balloons get him out (or got him in?). At the end the kids get a rooftop garden for their pets. Over the course of the story you see an ornate fountain being built in town.