Looking for a small book about two Icelandic children who ride their ponies to visit a relative. They witness a volcano erupting, and the resulting earthquake causes them to detour. One of the ponies has a foal. The illustrations are in colored pencil, and it was likely published between 1965 and 1972.
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.
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.
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!
Seeking an illustrated children's book (probably paintings) with a slew of riddles on one page and an accompanying painting containing the answers to those riddles. Likely published late 70s or 80s, no later. Somewhere in the book is a picture of a Raven and some thread. The last illustration features a horse. Not Animalia, but possibly inspired by it. Book is on the larger side, dimensionally. Thank you.
Looking for a book from my preteen years. It was about a girl who moves to California. She lives with people who are not her family or maybe distant family or family friends. They run an orange orchard. They have to go out in the cold nights to light smudge pots to keep the fruit from freezing. (And I think at some point, it is a big deal for her to acquire a yellow raincoat that they call a ‘slicker’ in the book.)
I read this novel in the 1970s when I was in early-mid elementary school. The main character and her family live in a state in the upper Midwest; she’s wicked into competitive figure skating and has been training/competing for years. Because of her dad’s job (he might be a college professor), they move from a city to a more rural part of the state where there are no indoor skating facilities and no training. She checks out the lake where the other kids skate, but finds it unsatisfactory (perhaps the surface is always bumpy). She finds a perfect pond! Ice is always clear of snow and smooth. But the locals shun it. She’s happy to train there alone. Eventually, she learns the reason why the spot is shunned by locals. It was a tragedy. The family that owned the mill was holding a party there for their daughter (about the same age as the novel’s main character), there was a fire, and the girl was killed.
“Closed are the story books on the shelf
Good night little ones, goodnight”