Category Archives: Solved

296E: Littlest Joe (Solved)

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About a mutt dog, a many-paged book and the longest I’d read at age 11 in 1957, who goes through many awful experiences through his lifetime and dies at the end. I think the dog was part pit bull and maybe bulldog, definitely a short, squatty and solid guy. I had checked it out as many times as possible, then finished it all through the night so I could drop it off at the library the next day. Intending to reread it, I found that it had been withdrawn for repairs and never returned to the shelves.

295Y: Young Reader Adventure with Plane Crashes, Loch Ness, and Balloon Races (Solved)

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This book was read in middle school. It featured four stories with the same gang of young boys. One story was of them faking a Loch Ness Monster using radio-controlled boat in their lake. Another was their search for a crashed airplane using radio direction finding. A third was their competing in a hot-air balloon race. The fourth I do not remember. This was probably published in the 80’s or late 70’s.

295X: ‘Through the chamber door’ or something about a conch (Solved)

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I am looking for a children’s chapter book that I read in the mid to late 80s about a brother and sister who become trapped in the center of a conch shell and have to solve riddles in order to open up each chamber of the conch to work their way back out to freedom. I can’t remember the author or title. The title might have included words like ‘through the chamber door’ or something about a conch, not sure.

295V: Trapped in a snow globe as pets (Solved!)

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It was a paperback about two girls on a trip with their family and they stop at some mine or cave. The younger sister runs off into the gift shop and the older follows. The evil gift shop owner ends up trapping both in a giant snow globe as pets for a giant family in the cave system. They really just wanted the little sister so the elder is a freebie. They end up escaping when the older girl melts the snow globe on the fireplace or something and they run out through the tunnels.  Might have been apple paperbacks or similar.

295U: Ring-Around-A-Rosie (Solved)

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I am looking for a book I read in the mid-1960’s, probably young adult.  Tells the story of a girl who moves to Cape Cod? (some seashore region) to train with a famous tole (painting on tin ware, etc.) painter.  At first she just copies his designs, but he insists she should find her own muse.  One day she sees a group of kids playing ring-around-a-rosie and does a design based on that.

295N: The Lonely Doll meets The Curious Clubhouse (Solved)

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I read a juvenile novel in the 1980s (from my school library). It may have been from the 1960s or 1970s about a very lonely girl who moved to a new house in the country, and while exploring, she found a secret playhouse that had dolls and teddy bears in it, and I think they came to life. Kind of like The Lonely Doll meets The Curious Clubhouse, but definitely not either of those! It had illustrations, maybe an orange cover, and I feel like Secret may have been in the title, and the author’s last name began with G or H?

295M: Roommates bond (Solved)

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I read a book as a young teenager in the late 1950s entitled Roommates; it was about two girls who bonded as roommates. The book was touching and so poignant that I realized the potency of literature then. I believe the first name of the author may have been Rosemary. I probably borrowed the book from the Brooklyn Public Library.

 

294X: The Perfect House (Solved)

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I read this book in the late 1960s or early 1970s, and here is a somewhat lengthy synopsis of the entire story (which I used in a library school course as a story-telling subject while I was getting my MLS).  Please help me identify the book!  It’s been a life-long unsolved mystery for me!

There once was an old woman who had lived for a long time in a blue farmhouse.   Now this house was not perfect, by any means.  It needed a fresh coat of paint, and the roof leaked when it rained, and the shutters hung crooked on the windows.

But it was comfortable, and it was home to the old woman and her horse and her dog and her cat.  The horse liked to graze in the meadow behind the house.  The dog liked to jump and play in the stream that ran through the meadow.  And the cat liked to chase mice in the attic.

One day, the old woman decided that the house was too run-down and that she must find a new house to live in.  So she packed up all her belongings and loaded them into her wagon.  She hitched the horse to the wagon, called for her dog and cat, and drove on down to the end of the road.

At the corner, she took a right-hand turn, and there, down the road a bit was a house just standing open and empty and waiting for someone to move in.  It had a fresh coat of green paint, and the roof looked new, and the shutters hung straight on the windows.

The old woman decided that this must be the perfect house, so she unhitched the wagon, and unpacked her things, and moved right in.

After about a week, she noticed that her horse seemed very sad.  He just moped around the little back yard all day with nothing much to do.  The old woman thought and wondered and thought about what could be making her horse so sad.  Then she realized that there was no meadow for him to graze in.

Well, the old woman could not abide by a sad horse, and she knew that she had to find a house with a meadow for her horse.  So she packed up all her belongings and loaded them into her wagon.  She hitched the horse to the wagon, called for her dog and cat, and drove on down to the end of the road.

At the corner, she took a right-hand turn, and there, down the road a bit was a house just standing open and empty and waiting for someone to move in.  The red paint was a little faded, but the roof looked new, and the shutters hung straight on the windows.

The old woman saw that there was a meadow behind the house for her horse to graze in, and so she decided that this must be the perfect house.  She unhitched the wagon, and unpacked her things, and moved right in.

After about a week, she noticed that her dog seemed very sad.  He just moped around the meadow all day with nothing much to do.  The old woman thought and wondered and thought about what could be making her dog so sad.  Then she realized that there was no stream for him to jump and play in.

Well, the old woman could not abide by a sad dog, and she knew that she had to find a house with a streaming running through the meadow for her dog.  So she packed up all her belongings and loaded them into her wagon.  She hitched the horse to the wagon, called for her dog and cat, and drove on down to the end of the road.

At the corner, she took a right-hand turn, and there, down the road a bit was a house just standing open and empty and waiting for someone to move in.  The yellow paint was a little faded and the roof looked old, but the shutters hung straight on the windows.

The old woman saw that there was a stream running through the meadow for her dog, and so she decided that this must be the perfect house.  She unhitched the wagon, and unpacked her things, and moved right in.

After about a week, she noticed that her cat seemed very sad.  He just moped around the house all day with nothing much to do.  The old woman thought and wondered and thought about what could be making her cat so sad.  Then she realized that there were no mice in the attic for him to chase.

Well, the old woman could not abide by a sad cat, and she knew that she had to find a house with mice in the attic for her cat.  So she packed up all her belongings and loaded them into her wagon.  She hitched the horse to the wagon, called for her dog and cat, and drove on down to the end of the road.

At the corner, she took a right-hand turn, and there, down the road a bit was a house just standing open and empty and waiting for someone to move in.  The blue paint was faded, and the roof looked old, and the shutters hung crooked on the windows.

But the old woman found that there were mice in the attic for her cat to chase, and a stream for her dog to jump and play in, and a meadow for her horse to graze in.  And she decided that this must be the perfect house. (It looked a little bit like this one.)  And it felt like home.