A girl does plays in her home. either a dog or cat, lots of dress up clothes, i.e. scarves, hats, I think she uses a curtain and curtain rod as a setting for the stage. A lot of illustrations
131C: girl, dog or cat, “Plays”
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Category Archives: Picture Book
130E: sandman puts bears to sleep (solved)
Story involved a sandman putting a group of bears to sleep, either for the night or for the winter. The sandman looked like a young boy. Beautifully illustrated, large-sized children’s book, possibly from the 1970s.
130B: Stumpy ballerina girls (Solved!)
Kids picture book (large size at least 8×10″) for little girls, about a group of girls, about 4-8 of them, and they are very short and stumpy (e.g. thick legs) with big heads. They are sweet and passive. They do girly things, including ballet. Or maybe ballet through the whole book. At one part of the book they might get sleepy and take a nap under a tree. At one part there might be a group of boys who antagonize them. I read it during my childhood approx 1984-1992, so it can’t be newer than that and it is likely not much older.
Another way to describe the girls: they look human but they have doll-like proportions. Maybe they are dolls?
Update:
“The Little Girls’ Dance Class” by J. Carruth (1984).
I was able to find it through https://www.worldcat.org/ using the search criteria (year 1975-1993, juvenile, fiction, book). At first I tried searching all the “Ballerinas”, no luck. “Ballet”, no luck. I was going to do “dance” next (a lot of searches) but something all of a sudden told me to try “dance class” was something in the title so I searched that and found it! Wow, I was almost in tears when I saw the photo of the cover. I bought myself a copy online. I submitted the request on this site over 7.25 years ago, and thought of it many times since then. I never actually came back to check the site to see if there were any replies until today, and I was really disappointed there weren’t any, so that’s why I searched again on my own. The other reason I keep being reminded of this book over the years… so there’s this interesting physical/emotional feeling I get, maybe a couple times a year, it feels like my legs are stumpy/stubby like the girls’ legs in the book. Like I feel like the girls in book.
129A: Kitten wins contest when washed in bluing
This book was probably printed in the late 1960s or early ’70s and probably took place at the same time. I remember it as one of those very inexpensive quarter of a normal sized books, with a dark olive background and a fluffy white bluish cat with a pink ribbon and candy behind it.
A little girl has just started a new school or just generally goes unnoticed. I think she is extremely shy and lacks self-confidence, and her family may also have less money that the other children. I’m not sure about that. Her school is having a cat show which seems unlikely, but that’s what I remember. The owner of a nearby candy store has a litter of kittens and all of the other children rush in and claim the beautiful and lively kittens. Our main character hangs back, but the kindly store owner gives her what is obviously the runt, a bedraggled white kitten to take home. I think the girl may have named it Peppermint.
Her mother comforts her and gives it bath and adds bluing to the water. The cat turns out to be a beautiful long-haired kitten and wins first prize.
I loved the picture of the light blue cat with the pink bow around it’s neck, especially since my grandmother told me about doing the same thing to her white poodle during the Depression. You took your fun wherever you could get it back then. I’ve despaired of ever finding a copy of this book because it was in such a “throw-away” format. Thanks in advance if you can help!
127F:Very Messy Boy Finds Shed To Put Mess In.
Boy has messy room. Hoarder. Parents unhappy. Somehow is left on his own in house, uses all dishes, resorts to eating from soap dish, puts all dishes in truck bed to get rained on. Also finds key to locked shed, puts all hoarded stuff in shed, keeps room neat, parents happy, 60s/70s. Line drawings.
127E: Boy builds plane from vacuum cleaner
A boy builds an airplane from a vacuum cleaner and flies off to rescue his dad. I think it’s to get him home for Christmas. On the way back home they stop off to buy presents for each other, and they buy the boy’s mom some perfume from Paris.
Addition: It’s a picture book – a fairly short story on large, colourful pages. I read it in the 1970s and it seemed of its time. Borrowed from my (then) local library, in fact. Would it help to mention I’m in the UK?
125G: Book about logging, with real wood covers
Probably 1950’s or earlier, a book with actual wood for front and back covers, like shingles, about life in a logging camp, with black and white drawings of the narrow-gauge railroad used, etc. I remember it as being from a child’s perspective, who was sent to or visiting the camp, and I seem to remember the cookshack and mealtimes as important.
125F: Sheets on a Clothesline
My mom remembers a book that she read to me as a child and she has wondered what the title was ever since. I was a kid in the 80s, and the book was bought used, so: pre-1989 for sure.
The picture book is about a mother and daughter who hang sheets on a clothesline. Something about smelling the freshly washed sheets and then a storm coming.
Thank you for your help! It would be so cool to locate this for my mom.
124I: book on tree houses (solved)
Illustrated Book on Tree Houses
This is a black and white illustrated book on tree houses of almost impossible designs, of a Rube Goldberg or Dr. Seuss complexity, full of multiple levels, ropes, block and tackles, ladders, wooden shingles, stove pipes, etc. I remember the illustrations looked like Erik Blegvad’s style of crosshatching, but it may not be him. Very fun book I got from the church library when I was ten, so it would date from the 1960’s.
124H: Little Dancer with Big Shoes
I can’t remember the title or the author of the book and only vaguely remember the story. However, I desperately want to read my little girl this book that my mother used to read to me as a child. It is about a little girl who wants to be a dancer, but than she either gets hurt, or has some problem with her fee and she has to wear special shoes, which are big and clunky. She thinks she won’t be able to dance in her recital anymore. But, instead of giving up she gets on stage and dances her heart out in her big clunky shoes and she has a great time and impresses everyone. My mother read it to me about 30 years ago. Please help me to find this.