I’m looking for a small bright blue hardcover book, at the end there is an illustration of a boy in a churchyard with a yew tree. Printed before 1980. Not sure if it’s an ABC book for children but the yew tree illustration is definitely at the end of the book. It’s a book for young children; there are only a few lines of text on each page. The boy is standing in the yard with the yew and there is also an old man in the illustration. The boy may have been lost or looking for something. Maybe the book is British because of the mention of the yew tree?
Category Archives: Picture Book
289N: A kitchen full of copper pots boiling strawberry jam
Bethany, bethanyboster@yahoo.com
Seven years ago my (then) four year old daughter fell in love with a book from the library about colors. She is now 11 and a budding artist. I would love to find this book for her. The details I remember are sparse but do make this book a standout:
gorgeous illustrations – no cartoon characters or paint blobs. One particular illustration stands out; on the pages that discuss red, they compare that color to a bright warm kitchen full of copper pots boiling strawberry jam.
text – the words were beautiful and evocative, not your run of the mill, “The tree is green.” With each color they created a detailed scene (both verbally and pictorially) to help the reader feel the color.
As I recall, they did all the colors of the rainbow, so words like “rainbow,” “prism” or “color” are likely candidates for the title.
289G: Strawberry Princess
I’m looking to find my favorite story I read as a child in the early 80s. It was about a young princess who loved strawberry jelly. Every page was about her love for this jelly. I’m almost certain it was strawberry. There was one page in which she was in an old fashioned tub washing away the sticky jelly. The princess had light brown hair. That’s all I can recall.
289F: Messy family refuses to clean house (Solved)
Instead of cleaning their house, a family comes up with ways to work around the mess, like laying a blanket over the messy floor, and using suction cups to walk on the ceiling. I would have read this book in the early 80’s, but I’m not sure of the publishing date (or the actual title). It is a picture book.
289A: Girls and Boys and Boys and Girls
I am hoping you can help me with the name/author of a book that I loved as a kid in the 1970s – I think it was called “Girls and Boys and Boys and Girls” or something like that. It was a color, picture book probably aimed at 5-7 year olds.
The format was basically “Lee A. (who was a boy) likes to color and Lee B. (who was a girl) likes basketball” and so on – I think all of the kids in the book had names that were gender neutral – Lee, Chris, Jo, etc.
288D: Woman in black kidnaps kids
It is a “scary” children’s picture book about a woman dressed in all black and she kidnaps children. She has a black hat with a black veil, yet has yellow eyes that can still be seen. She carries an umbrella and a bag of bricks. She has pilgrim buckle type shoes. She can run really fast and creates a black streak as she passes. As she kidnaps more kids, the parents of the remaining children send them to school with protection. The zookeeper’s son arrives with a boa constrictor around his neck, the beekeeper’s son wears a beehive, the military kid rides up in a tank, etc. The lady in black even takes a teacher. They eventually catch her and she leads the police to a cave where the children and teacher are kept, unharmed. The lady then slips out of the handcuffs and escapes. The book was written in English and had colored illustrations. I read it in Minnesota, USA in the mid-to-late 90s. I remember a specific illustration in which the lady is hiding behind a pole at a bus stop, just before she takes a kid.
287G: Horse in Forest of Silver Trees
My daughter (now age 20), has been searching for years to find a book she loved to check out from her elementary school library in first grade +/-. She has re-searched the library many times, spoken to teachers, friends and has had no luck. I remember her bringing it home, so I know it isn’t a figment of her imagination.
What she remembers:
— Picture book of a horse in a forest of silver trees, limited (if any) text
— Illustrations in black ink/watercolor style
— Limited color palette, black, white, gold and maybe silver
— Possibly part of a series/pack of picture books
— Horse is main character on some kind of quest or adventure, with many crystals in the forest, possibly gold
— Special lake in the forest, perhaps also a cave
— Likely blue hard cover, she thinks larger than 8.5×11
— Likely an “older” book, I’m guessing from 1960s or even older
287F: Pictures are like aerial photos
This is a hardback picture book we read in the 1980s from the library. One garden is transformed (I think topiary is involved), then gradually other gardens in the town. Drawings are like wonderful aerial maps of the transformation. I recall streets being very rectangular and regular in shape.
287E: Children robbed in forest as they come home from a fair
This was a hardback picture book we read in the library in the 1980s. Two or three children go to a fair. On the way to or at the fair they get some small items (possibly a gold star?), which are put in a ‘cornucopia’. I think this was pictured as a paper cone. On the way home through the forest, robbers steal their treasures. I think it had the line ‘what wicked robbers to steal such precious things’, the point being these are items of no commercial value, but things of wonder to the children.
287B: Girl & Her Family Travel in a Motor Home in a World of Paved Roads
No one can walk anymore. They only drive in large wheeled homes and mobile offices. They even have motorized vehicles in individual sizes for transporting themselves outside of these wheeled homes.
Everything has been paved over with roads, except a small area with a flower or a tree in it.
Fascinated by this unpaved area, the girl wheels over to it only to find her wheeled individual vehicle can’t go on the unpaved area. She is forced to get out of the vehicle and make her way across the green space without motorized assistance.