Have little to go on. Believe purchased via Scholastic Book Club or at Scholastic Book Fair between 1977 and 1981; a short-read, 1–2” children’s novel; think it’s published by Scholastic; it might be a supernatural or science fiction thriller; white paperback with cover art, possibly with kids and a Ferris wheel; main characters are kids, with the climactic eventat a carnival with a Ferris wheel with swinging lights?
Mother is busy, She’s making a pie. But we do the farm work, My dad and I. Together, together, We scatter the seeds, We shear the sheep, We pull the weeds. We milk the cows, We pet the goats, We fix the fence, We cut the oats . . . Hand in hand along with Dad, Around the farm with my dog Lad.
Winter, springtime, summer, fall, Ours is the nicest farm of all. But sometimes I wonder what I will be When I am as old as – twenty-three! I think of this, I think of that, Till there I am in a trim gray hat . . .
I’m a mailman! Tramp tramp tramp I walk for blocks, And I put Something Special in everyone’s box! Woof, woof, say the dogs As I walk through their yards, But on I go, carrying Letters and cards. Then after I’ve brought Everybody some mail, I pick up a hammer And drive in a nail – Wham! And there I am . . .
I’m a carpenter! Bang goes my hammer, I’m nailing down floors And putting in windows And hanging up doors. Zing goes my saw And I never stop Till I’ve built a fine house With a red roof on top. Then I pack up my hammer, I say, “Toodle-oo!” And quick as a wink, There I am . . . at the zoo!
I’m a zoo-keeper, see, With a broom, and a key. I’m walking the camels And feeding the bears, I’m stoking the lions And sweeping their lairs. I’m teaching the monkeys And training the seals. I’m giving the hippos E-NOR-MOUS big meals! Now evening is coming, the zoo has to close . . .
Presto and Change-o! I wear a red nose . . . Now I’m a clown With a painted-up face. I’m tumbling and jumping All over the place. My clown suit is baggy (It’s puffed up with air!). I wave to the children I see everywhere. See my duck in his bib? See my dog in his bow? See my string of balloons, And my nose all aglow? But all of a sudden I catch on a hook, And everyone shouts to me, “Look, mister, look!” Bang goes my clown suit- A Shoosh! Then a pop! . . .
Then I hold up my hand And the traffic must stop! For I’m a policeman At Walnut and Main. Are you looking for Somewhere? I’ll stop to explain. Now, go, Jim and Johnny. Go, Kathy and Joan. Stop, Little Puppy, Out walking alone! Then all of a sudden My day’s work is done, So I find me a horse (With a saddle, of course!) And I strap on my gun. . . .
Now I’m a cowboy, a-riding along, A-jingling my spurs and a-singing my song. Across the Great Prairie I ride far and near To round up the cattle and rope a wild steer. Then I tie up my horse (and I feed him, of course!).
Yippi-yi! Now I’m going. . . . I jump in a boat, And away I go rowing. Now I’m a fisherman Out on the sea, Where there’s nothing but water And fishes – and me! Riding a wave I see something afloat. It’s a whale come to visit- He’s rocking my boat! Then whoosh! comes a wave, And it gives me a smack . . .
And I call to my daddy, “Hello there, Im back!” “Just in time for a snack,” Says my daddy. And then . . . Off we go again! Together, together,
(scan cuts off here)
I have a PDF with some scans of an illustrated children’s poem from my mother’s childhood [see below]. Sadly, the cover and title pages were lost long ago. The scan does not contain all of the pages. I am attaching the scans as well as a transcript of the text. It is an illustrated poem about a boy on a farm who likes to daydream about different jobs, such as a zookeeper, clown, policeman, etc. My mom read this book as a child around the mid-late 1960s / early 1970s. I suspect (but cannot prove) this story may have some link to Western Publishing. (Western publishing was based out of Racine, Wisconsin and my family is from southeast Wisconsin.) We would love to figure out the title, author, and/or illustrator of this book! I have reached out to various forums and the Library of Congress but no luck so far. I really appreciate the opportunity to ask the Stump the Bookseller community! If there is anything I need to do to correct of enhance my submission, please do not hesitate to let me know!
I am looking for what I think is an anthology of poetry, illustrated, that contains an extremely cleverly illustrated version of Rudyard Kipling’s poem “If”. Black and white line drawings I believe. I remember seeing it in a bookstore in Ithaca circa 2012 it might have been newly published then. There were other poems in the book, possibly also short stories? And authors besides Kipling?
It was a children’s fiction novel I read in the early to mid 1990s. The story was about a horse that had escaped from its owners, who I think were neglecting it. The escaped horse was found by two young girls who were friends, both of whom want to help the horse when they realise he’s hungry and in poor condition. Knowing that if they return the horse to the rightful owners that he’ll probably just continue to be neglected, the girls decide to care for him in secret rather than return him to the abusive owners. There’s an abandoned, overgrown stable at the back of a nearby property that is owned by a mysterious recluse who lives in the property’s main house, so the girls have to be very careful to not get caught trespassing by the landowner. The girls have to clear a tall enough path through the undergrowth and remove the poison ivy so they can move the horse into the old stable, which they do their best to clean and repair. They share the responsibility of caring for the horse, taking odd jobs around their neighbourhood to earn extra cash and they pool their pocket money to purchase the feed and supplies they need from the hardware store. Much of the story revolves around the girls working to feed the horse up to improve his physical condition and health, but it is also stressful and difficult for the young girls to constantly manage the demanding routine by themselves and still keep it secret from everyone, which creates some tension in their friendship. Eventually they get found out by the landowner, and the girls are terrified he will call the police and that they’ll be in big trouble for stabling the horse on his property without his permission. But when they finally speak to the man who owns the old stable they are surprised to find that he is actually a kind man and not scary like the schoolyard rumours said. He explains to them that he let the stable go to seed after his horse-loving daughter died, as it was just too painful for him to look at it and constantly be reminded of her. The young girls explain their side of the story to him and the man is touched by their passion and empathy for the neglected horse. To his surprise they remind him of his daughter, but not in the painful way he used to experience in years gone past. Instead he feels quite touched by their efforts to care for the horse and he realises that he also wants to see the horse properly looked after because his daughter would have wanted the same thing. He gives the girls permission to keep stabling the horse on his property, and I think he even promises to help repair stable and maybe even assist with some of expenses associated with keeping the horse. But the condition he gives them is that they have to come clean to their parents about what they’ve been doing. By the end of the book the girls are very happy to be caring for the horse openly with the permission of the owner and their parents, but they kind of miss the excitement of keeping such a huge and exciting secret from everyone.
Full color picture book. A boys parents warn him not to go into woods. He sneaks out anyway, each page is a separate part of the woods and he encounters a unique type of creature/monster per page. I think one is like a colony of tree people, but at the end of the woods and in the final pages he starts getting chased by a smog creature, for like 4 pages he’s just running as the color pages are filling up with smoke. He barely escaped the forest and gets back into house or bed and thinks to himself “never doing that again”. The big part of the book is the escaping through the forest and running home from the smoke (which looks similar to a dragon maybe) but I think they never reveal what the monster is. This book is probably 14-33 pages. The other identifier is that each stage of the forest is a unique creature. Fantasy vibes. Pretty sure the book as color as well. – I know it’s not where are the wild things, and I know it’s not the tomtins.
This is a Sci-Fi short story from 50’s or 60’s about a parallel universe being pulled inside out through a portal using a winch in this universe. The effort goes wrong.
I am an avid classic novel reader and I read a book a few years ago and absolutely cannot figure out what it was. It reads very similar to a Brontë but I don’t think it was very mainstream, since no one else seems to recognize it. It was set in the 1800s I think somewhere in the United Kingdom. The plot was about this spunky brunette who was beautiful and unconventional. I remember her riding horses. She didn’t follow social norms and people had difficulty with that back then. Men kept falling for her. The main part of the plot was about a gentleman who falls for her against all his better judgement, proposes, and she declines. He licks his wounds and eventually marries a much more conventional easy going woman and they end up making a great pair, but the girl always wondered how he felt since she was his second choice. Ultimately, the spunky girl does settle down with someone and they are all able to be friends. It’s not Far From the Madding Crowd or Portrait of a Lady or Age of Innocence or Pride and Prejudice. If you can figure it out, I will be overjoyed.
I don’t have much to go on. It was a book I got from the library in the mid-1990s. It was a children’s book. It was fantasy. My mom didn’t care for it because it was too “weird.” It had a girl who I think was crossing a desert for some reason. I know she came to the edge of the desert and it was a cliff or drop-off, and I think she floated down (or up?) somehow. She might have been on a cloud or holding an umbrella? Honestly, it so frustrating because I remember loving it but can’t remember hardly any of the plot. I just know it was very trippy, like Alice in Wonderland level odd things. Like the person who wrote it was hallucinating. Lol. Thanks for any help you can give!
Grok failed, so people help me with the name of a fictional novel in which a guy somehow saves his musical idols from untimely death or drug addiction, so they can create their destined masterpiece music. Hendrix, Brian Wilson, and a few others.. it was dammed good but it’s no longer in my book shelf.
Seeking a murder mystery about drowned boy who was bullied probably published around 2000-2003, maybe up to 2005 this book was for high schooler and young adults and I think the cover was blue with a rose. The main story line of the book was an investigator was trying to find the cause of death of a teenage boy who was found in the river who they initially thought was a drowning but then found stool in his lungs that was his cause of asphyxiation. The river had once had a sewage issue, but that was investigated and found that the problem was fixed. He was accidentally killed by other students who gave him a swirly (dunked head into a toilet) that had stool in it that caused him to suffocate. The reason that he was given the swirly was he had a crush on a girl and had given her a rose he had changed the color of from red to (possibly) blue as a magic trick, the book did describe the chemical trick used to perform this. I do not remember the color of the rose, apologies. The girl’s bf or some other significant male figure.
