Six little Robbins (or Robins). Children’s chapter book about a family that moves into an old schoolhouse and refurbishes it. Probably 1940-1960s. Might have a subplot of the father not being around.
308R: Six little Robbins (Solved)
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Category Archives: Solved
308L: Mole in the hole (Solved)
A mole is asleep in a hole but a bear (I think) thinks that he fell in and is hurt. He tries to get help but has to bargain with other animals e.g. horse has a rope but he wants a brush to swap, so bear goes to squirrel to get a brush but he wants nuts (I think) … eventually bear gets back to mole to find out he was only asleep
308C: Itty Bitty Bobbin Boo (Solved)
I’m looking for a book about a little bird trying to fly. Only thing we can remember is the line “itty bitty bobbin boo.”
307I: Boy and Agoraphobic Sister Orphaned in NYC (Solved)
I am looking for a fiction book I read as a child, probably in the 1970s, about a brother and sister living in New York City (possibly Soho?). They are left alone and their parents do not come home, so the brother learns to scrounge food on the streets. His sister is afraid to go outside. The boy meets a children’s book illustrator in another building, who begins using him in her drawings. She takes him to the beach (the Rockaways?) in her convertible, and I believe she eventually adopts the boy and girl.
307H: Children’s book with moveable character on a string (Solved)
Last summer, I bought my son a new children’s book which contained several characters which dangled from the book on strings – the concept was that you could move the characters in between pages so they could give “hugs” to the other characters. I bought it because it reminded me so much of a book I loved as a child. When I brought the new book home, my sister had the same reaction: “this is making me think of a book from when we were growing up!”
The best clues I can come up with:
– I was born in 1984 and my sister in 1980 (we also have a younger brother born in 1987).
– Our grandma loved to give us vintage books, so it may have been even older, though I suspect it was from the 1980s.
– There was one character on a string, sturdier than a single sheet of paper but not as thick as a board book. The string–about 6 inches long–was glued into the binding of the book. The concept was to move the character from page to page and bring him throughout the story of the book. He was probably about 2 or 3 inches tall.
– The book had interactive elements – for example, I remember vividly that you could somehow insert him on a slide, and he could “ride” down the slide as you pushed the little character along the page.
– I think the character was an animal (a bear? A weasel? Something brown?) but my memory is so faint on this that it may very well have been a human.
306W: Animal figurines come alive, children’s book (Solved)
It was a book that my 5th grade teacher read to us in 1996-97 in Missoula, MT. There were magical rules to when the animals can come out of the china hutch. It’s really hazy, but I do remember that one of the main characters was a dog and something tragic happens to him. I feel strongly that the book had a red, white, and black cover. Something makes me think it has something to do with ‘Valentine.’ Maybe it’s a character’s name? It was probably a chapter book. I think the figurines where porcelain? It may also be set in the Victorian era, or other era I would have considered old timey as a child. The memories of this book are very visceral and strong but not detailed. It made me cry. Please help!
306O: Crushed Toys (Solved)
Hello, I remember a set of books (we had 2 but there may have more to the set) they where hard back and about 2in thick. Plain cover with no illustrations, short stories with just a title on the cover. Each story was about 10-15 pages long and had a illustration at the beginning of the story. I remember one illustration with a car that was 1950’s looking. One story was about a kid leaving his toys (toy cars maybe) in the driveway and dad came home and ran them over. I really don’t remember any other stories from the books. I think the covers where dark blue or grey. The stories where life lessons and not really fantasy, no talking birds or stuff like that, as far as I remember.
305U: Diary of a girl who died (Solved)
The book in question is a ghost story that I read in the late 80s and I believe it to be a Young Adult book or possibly geared towards preteens. My impression is that it was written or published in the 70s, but that is only a guess. I cannot remember the title, but it was an off white hardcover library book with some sort of random small scene on the front relating to the story. It was a fairly thin book, maybe only 50-75 pages?
The story was about a teenage girl who had to go live with her uncle (I think) for some reason, and while she was there she found an old diary from a girl who had died many years before. The book makes many references to the ‘bogs” near the house (I didn’t know what a bog was before reading this book) and the girl who wrote the diary died after running into one of the bogs in the middle of the night and sinking. Not sure if it was accident or a suicide due to grief. I believe that there was a reference to a missing necklace or locket and the girl (who wrote the diary) had a boyfriend/lover/fiance that may have been a soldier named Ian who died.
One of the chapters in the book was titled “Letters To Ian.” The main character becomes obsessed with the story as she reads the diary and starts having dreams/hallucinations about this girl and Ian and their deaths. Near the end of the book she finds herself either sleepwalking or hallucinating and ends up caught in one of the bogs in the middle of the night, possibly trying to find the locket/necklace.
I read this books dozens of times when I was young but never owned it and one day when I went to check it out again ( I lived next door to a library as a child) I found that the library had discarded it in a mass auction to make room for new books. I was heartbroken, and none of the librarians could provide me with the title to search for it elsewhere. We only had paper catalogs in our small town library and no computer system back then to look at what books a customer had checked out. I’ve tried for 30 years to remember the name of this book so that I can look for a used copy somewhere, with no luck.
Hopefully the little that I can still remember will jog someone’s memory.
305R: Little Bear’s Surprise (Solved)
Back in 1979 or 1980…my parents used to read to my a book called Little Bear’s surprise. The last line of the book is “and they all had a donut party.”
I have searched everywhere and cannot find it. Would look to get a copy for my nephew.
305O: A jewel from the ruins (Solved)
I read a hardback book, in the ’70s, about a girl on a coast, Ireland or Britain, who finds a piece of jewelry, a ring or broach or a necklace (in the ruins of an ancient building maybe?) She has dreams that reveal the life of the girl who had the piece a long (centuries?) time ago. The dream girl was maybe Spanish.
There were dolphins, and an island that figured very large in the story.
It didn’t seem like a new book at the time. Looking back I would guess that it was written after ww2. It had a sad tragic feel to it.
Does this ring any bells?