When I was a child, we enjoyed many books from the local library (located at Coventry Rd and Euclid Heights Boulevard in Cleveland Heights, Ohio).
A favorite was about two bugs. I remember them pictured as lady bugs named Pimpernel and Cochineal. Their friend Bagley Beetle was sick and they went to visit him and gave him some slippers they made for him.
Book was probably printed 1930’s or earlier.
The book I’m looking for was stories for older aged kids than the grade school library I found it in (our librarian wanted to encourage us). The book had a red hardcover, about 16″ x 8″ and was about 2″ thick. It had an illustration from the first story, I think, on the cover. The only story I remember the title for is The Twelve Princesses. It had stories from Europe, the Americas, Asia, Africa and probably more. When us grade schoolers got on the bus with it the older kids tried to borrow it! It was quite a read and some bits of the story lines were, the stairs to heaven with a trapdoor on one of the ends (Japanese), and the man who escaped a pond/water which he had to pass by putting a shell to his ear which had been filled with a love song by his beloved (Malaysia, I think). I wish I had more specifics.
Girl gets lifted by a big bird to a far off fantasy land. She has golden blonde hair and brown eyes. All of the people in the new land have white hair and blue-green eyes, and the kids ride to school on six-legged unicorns.There is a wise old woman who grants each person one answer to an important question in their lifetime. This was a children’s book I borrowed from the library in 1972 or 1973.
This book was a little over my head when I was around 7 (ironically). It was not a Little Golden Book nor a Disney book!
It was a story book or what seemed to be a collection of related stories. An elementary epic? May be Scandinavian stories rather than Soviet.
The early 1970s edition I had was bright blue and the cover was at least 8 ½ x 11.
There were seven (or only six) sisters. In the picture book version each sister was wearing an ornate but monochromatic dress. I’m thinking they were different examples of the regional dresses worn, or maybe clan-type styles. But with a hippie-vibe art style.
I think each sister was sent out on some kind of unusual coming-of-age search. Or maybe they were kidnapped by seven (or six) different people and each had a story about how they got home.
I was a natural reader, but either the words were a bit too big for me or I was too interested in what they were wearing to remember much of the plot. (That, and home wasn’t peaceful so I was sleep-deprived…so it was a big, wordy, beautiful blur of a book.)
I’d still have the book, but since I didn’t seem to be reading it, Mom gave it away to charity. I still have books that I was given when I was even younger…
I’m haunted by a (probably YA) time travel book I read in the mid 70s. I believe it takes place in England, where relatives are visiting (maybe from America?) their professor/scientist Uncle (?) who has produced a time travel potion. I think one of its main ingredients is monkey brains, but I’m not 100% sure. The serum allows the imbiber to travel back to Middle Age Britain, not sure if it’s as an active participant or as a fly-on-the-wall. Whichever character it is that starts taking trips, soon gets caught up in the people and events of that past. He becomes addicted to it. The danger is that his body stays more-or-less in present day geographically, so when he comes out of the trip he may be standing in the middle of a super highway or some such that wasn’t there hundreds of years ago. I don’t remember the resolution. I just remember loving the imagery and concept. Anybody?
I work at a high school library and am trying to find titles of two books I had read as a young person back in the 70s. Both were probably titles that I had ordered off of the book order form/flyer that the school handed out back in the day where the kids could order really cheap books, like maybe Scholastic or Troll or something similar.
In this children’s book, a pet alligator lives in a penthouse apartment. He wants a garden to be on his balcony. One day, he falls off of the balcony to either get at a plant or a balloon animal. (Somehow, balloon animals are involved. ) He gets stuck in a tree, and his owners frantically search for him. At the end, they buy plants to put on his balcony. Each page was full of intricate details when you examined them closely.
I’m looking for a book about a little girl who forms a friendship with a grumpy weatherman. Her class is due to go on a school trip, to the beach I think, but the teacher tells them they can’t go if it rains.The girl decides to go and see the weatherman to request nice weather.The weatherman is in his weather factory and can see that she is on her way to find him. He sends wind, rain, snow, and all sorts of bad weather so she can’t make it. For some reason, I think there is a picture of her in a snow storm on Inkerman Street. The street name might be mis-remembered though. When she finally gets there, the weatherman is cross because people only come to see him when they want something. The girl realizes he’s lonely and they make friends. He shows her round his weather factory and makes her cloud ice cream with rainbows. He gives them good weather and the trip goes ahead. It was probably published in the 70s or 80s. The illustrations in Anthony Browne’s books really remind me of the illustrations. I loved it so much but my mum was a teacher and took all our childhood books to her school when we out grew them, and no one can remember what this one was called.
I’m looking for an I SPY / Where’s Waldo style book that my mom had as a kid. She was born in 1966, but it may be from the1950s. Instead of Waldo, you searched for a spy. I remember the cover was white and searching the pictures for the blue spy, then a green spy, and lastly a red spy.
I’m trying to find a book my mom used to read to me. I was born in 1992 so I’m assuming it was published in the late 80s/early 90s. It was a children’s Halloween book with a sound panel. The book was large with a dark purple cover with a haunted house. I’m pretty sure there was a character named Frank who was a Frankenstein monster and the plot was a tour of the folks/monsters that lived in the house. It was for kids but I remember it being less cartoony than other books we had.