Category Archives: Status

352N: Little Sister Tidier Than Big Sister Thought She’d Be

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This is a small (I think it was green with ivy on the cover) children’s book about a little girl who is not allowed in her sister’s room without permission for fear she will make a mess. She gets in one day and does make a mess while playing, but then cleans it up.  If I remember correctly, her sister is angry when she realizes her little sister went in without permission but then forgives her when she sees how tidy her room was left.

352L: Storybook with Dragons, Circuses, Witches, The House that Jack Built

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I seem to have misplaced my favorite storybook from my childhood. So here is your challenge. It includes the rhyming story "The house that Jack built." The cover is blue with red lettering and a white bearded wizard. It is at least 25 years old. Hardbacked. There are stories of dragons and circuses, and witches.

352J: Pizza grows on trees?

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I have a memory of a children’s book from the 80s — it was interactive with flaps and things you could pull. I have two clear memories of it. One page had a tree with lots of foods you could pull out — like a slice of pizza and an orange. Another page had little doors you could open for each letter of the alphabet–each one had a name starting with the letter from the alphabet (I remember Quentin and Xavier) and when you opened the door it would either say “Quentin is in” or “Quentin is out”). I believe each character was a mouse and if they were in, you would see them in their little window. If they were out, it would be empty. I think, actually, that the whole book might have been themed around these mice and that it might have been called something like “Mr. ____ Mice.” But even though I’ve tried to search for it many times, that clearly hasn’t been enough info to turn up the book I want! It seems to me like it might have been a Dr. Seuss knock-off, one of those books that sort of looks and sounds like Dr. Seuss but isn’t. Don’t know if that’s enough to locate a book! But grateful for any help you can give me.

352I: Boy Performs Appendectomy in the Deep Woods

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I’m looking for a book I read in the late 70’s or early 80’s, about a boy who was deep in the woods with a man, maybe a relative, for an extended period of time. It may be a Canadian book. The man develops appendicitis, and instructs the boy how to cut out his appendix, to save his life. The boy does it, and it works. The boy must be at least 10 years old, he may have been a young teen, I’m not sure.

352H: Boy Turns Into Gas Pump

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This may sound crazy but there is a children’s book I read years ago that I have been looking for. I posted to online forums but no one could identify it, so I assumed I imagined it. But today someone posted the exact same story wondering if anyone remembered it so it’s real!
Basically it’s about this boy who loves gas station pumps. He is incredibly sad and lonely and often wishes that he could be a gas pump. He eventually starts to turn into one. Also, at some point he eats an abacus. At the end his parents show up and fill their car up at the pump. They don’t recognize him but they say things like “My, what a fine pump!” “Our boy sure would have loved it!” He is happy when he hears this and gives them free gas.
I think I read it at my grandma’s house as a child so that would mean it’s pre-2000s. the story may have been a metaphor for something, if it was my child brain did not understand it. Also possible it was in a collection of short stories, my grandma always had loads of those around.

352G: The Symbol in the Magical Wall

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I read this book in 2009 or 2010. I believe it was considered a young adult book but it was a good reading level for me in 6th grade. The book seems so scattered and has gotten worse in my memory over the years so excuse me if I seem to jump around in the story.

The cover I believe had a sort of symbol that is important in the book. I remember the cover being mostly red and black but couldn’t say for sure.
The main character is a boy around 12 who is in the foster system (?) and comes to live with this old woman who is introduced as talking to the TV (I believe Jeopardy) and talks to the TV as if the person on the show Is talking directly to her (indicating schizophrenia), but the TV actually changes from the show to sending her secret code within the show (?).
Somehow they end up in her house deep in the woods, the child service worker leaves and the boys weird gets weird (in like a magical seance) and he likes to walk around the woods surrounding the property and find a magical wall of some kind that the symbol then becomes important in. The story gets so back and forth from there it would be impossible to explain. This book somehow helped me a lot in the part of life I was in and I really just need to read the series again.

352F: The Nonsense Book

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The book I am looking for, a book I read at my elementary school library quite often, is a children’s book, maybe aimed at the 9-12 year old set. I suspect from the late 1960s to the mid 1970s. It was a book of self-proclaimed nonsense, with riddles and jokes and poems and shaggy dog stories, with surrealistic drawings and text. The sense of humor was counter-cultural and a bit Monty Pythonesque. I seem to recall that it had the “As I was going to St Ives” riddle in it.

It was a larger format book, 8.5”x11” or larger, and around 80 pages. I think the cover was a brownish green. The drawing style was in a similar borderline grotesque line-art mode as the illustrations for Shel Silverstein or Roald Dahl books, but with a significant amount of clip art and a throwback-y quality to it. I think the title itself had the word nonsense in it, or a word with a similar meaning.

I’ve been racking my brains trying to recall more about it, but that’s all I can seem to manage.

352E: Pig has fun at amusement park (Solved!)

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This is a 80s/90s picture book with no words or few words. A female pig runs wild at an amusement park, it could be a department store rather than an amusement park, trying on hats and eating lots of ice creams and rides the rides and possibly gets chased by a policeman (for having no money to pay for ice-cream?) before finding true love with a wild boar and having several piglets at the end of the book.