Category Archives: Solved

355C: Silly Goose Forgets to Invite Friends to Party (Solved!)

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I’m delighted by this site and have a book that I’d enjoy seeing again. When I was in kindergarten in 1955, my favorite story was of a goose who decides to have a party for her friends. She cleans her house, and cooks and bakes up a storm. But no one shows up! Then she hears her friends chattering outside at the bus stop and learns that she forgot to invite them. They come in and enjoy her feast, so all ends well.

Obviously, this was a long time ago, so I don’t remember the name. Any one have a clue?

355A: Orphan Girl Has Pick of Families (Solved!)

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An older orphan girl gets lucky and gets to stay with a few families over summer break. On her first train ride a nice gentlemen buys her an orange. He never eats his and  gives it to her before he gets off.
She stays with an older woman and has a lovely time. At the end of summer all of the families she stays with want to adopt her she chooses the older woman.  She thinks herself simple and not that pretty.

354Y: Elephant Overcomes Fear of Dark with Favorite Quilt (Solved!)

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My stumper is a book about a little elephant going to bed, but she is afraid of the dark and can’t sleep until her mom brings her favorite quilt. I remember it having a lot of purple, lavender, and soft yellow. It would have been in the early 90s that we repeatedly checked this out from the library. My sister and I have searched off and on since high school for this book but neither of us remember the title or author!

354W: Eating sugar on snow (Solved!)

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I’m looking for a book that I thought was written and illustrated by Tasha Tudor, and that I thought was called The Four Seasons. After much googling, I now doubt both author/illustrator and title.
Pale yellow cover, vertical orientation.
Published before 1985.
At the end of the book, the children eat sugar on snow.
Neither A Time to Keep nor Around the Year looks like my book.
Thank you for your help!

354I: An American lawyer in Myanmar (Solved!)

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I do seem to recall that the title was in two parts separated by a colon and may have had the word pressure or oppression in the title. It may have been a play on words.

This was a memoir about an American woman who found out her boyfriend was cheating on her and moved to Myanmar. I believe she started working as a lawyer to a higher up government official. She does a bunch of exploring the island, getting used to the heat, and dating maybe 2-3 different guys. I seem to remember there were many scenes in which she was at a local restaurant/bar and uses “phonetic” spelling to convey the accent of the server/local women.

This is driving me crazy! Any help you can offer would be greatly appreciated. I actually didn’t even enjoy this book, but I did read it years ago and can’t remember for the life of me what it’s called.

353Y: Dad bakes tire cake that is secretly pretty (Solved!)

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I’m looking for a children’s book that I read in the early 2000’s. The plot is that there’s a baking competition at this boy’s elementary school. All of his friend’s moms sign up to bake, but when he goes to ask his mom she can’t for whatever reason (I think she may have had work? I vaguely remember him lying in bed trying to fall asleep and hearing her type, but that might be wrong). His dad volunteers, and the kid is kind of embarrassed but he agrees. He wakes up the next morning and his dad has the cake under a cake server lid so he can’t see it. At some point he shows him the cake, and it basically looks like a large black tire. The kid is stressed that it’s not as pretty as the other cakes. The parents (all moms except the one dad) line up in a row and the teacher goes around tasting the cakes. When the teacher gets to the dad, he asks her for the knife to cut it. The kid becomes even more embarrassed because he thinks the dad is trying to be chivalrous. The dad takes the knife and instead of cutting the cake, he starts carving it. All of these beautiful rainbow flowers and designs start to appear and everyone is stunned and suitably impressed. I think they end up winning first place and there’s a happy ending.

353V: Orphan Cathy Runs Away to Scotland and Learns True Name (Solved!)

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I’m looking for a British children’s book, likely from the late 1940s, about an orphan girl who lost her parents in the Blitz. She’s found wandering London with a torn tag that says only “Cat” so the orphanage calls her Cathy. Several years later she has a sudden recollection that makes her feel that her family is in Scotland and runs away to find them. Meets some siblings who help her and have a kind uncle named Alastair. Lo and behold, the kids end up being her cousins, her name isn’t Cathy, it’s Catriona(?) and she is reunited with the family who have been searching for her all these years. Might be the first in a series, a la the Boxcar Children. Thank you!