Category Archives: Solved

296Y: Haunted house with shrunken ghost (Solved)

I am looking for the title of a book from my childhood. I was born in 1982. The book might be a Bugs Bunny book where he moves to a new house and doesn’t realize the house already has someone living there; a ghost. The ghost tries everything to scare Bugs Bunny away. He rattles chains, he moans, nothing works. Finally late one night the ghost and Bugs have an encounter and somehow Bugs spills juice on the ghost. Now the ghost is really depressed, can’t get rid of Bugs and has a stain. So Bugs washes the ghosts sheet and accidentally shrinks him to a tiny ghost. Distraught and embarrassed the ghost and Bugs work through their problems and end up sharing the house as friends.

Side note: it might not be Bugs Bunny, it might be the Pink Panther. I can’t remember!

296U: Teenage model (Solved)

I read this book, from my high school library, around 1972. It was contemporary at that time. The main character was a pretty, poised girl who gets a job as a fashion model. This scene might have occurred during the hiring process, which took place at a restaurant. She gets the impression that one of the men is flirting with her, so she asks if he has children. When he says yes, she asks to see pictures of them, which distracts him from the flirting so she feels as though she has rejected him without offending him. The girl has a nerdy younger brother and this scene only stays in my mind because a friend who also read it asked me “what are the runs” when she gets to this part. The main character stays home with her younger brother when he has the runs. Although they typically quarrel like siblings do, she feels bad for him this day and is kind.

296L: Impersonated by a false bride (Solved)

There was a book I had as a child which was a collection of stories from all over the world. It was a very thick hard cover book, the illustrations were numerous and rather realistic looking and in many cases quite scary looking. My mother went to America in 1988 and she bought it for me, I was 8 so my memory is rather hazy. Possibly it had been recently published. The hard cover had illustrations from the different stories all over it and down one side was a young African man hanging upside down with his hands trapped in a shell.

This was a collection of short stories from America, Africa, Germany, India, Norway and Europe among others. The stories were divided by continent in the Contents. Many were original, some were fables and some were excerpts. Some of the stories i definitely recall the book had were Peer Gynt, Scarface (excerpt), Black Bull of Norway, East of the sun and West of the moon and Six Blind Men (India) in which 6 blind men all feel and elephant and each one describes it according to whichever part of the elephant he’s clutched thinking its the sum total of the elephant.

Then there were some which I loved but I don’t recall the titles.

May have been set in North America:

Three sisters who set off in the dead of winter to find the Sun or maybe its the North Pole or the Wind. And are told not to pause their sledge to tie up their coats until they reach the sun’s tent and then not to eat or drink until he enters. The elder two ignore the instructions and cook the meat in his tent and eat it and the second one even goes to sleep on his bed and he throws them out in the snow. The youngest obeys and wins of course.

Japan: An exquisitely beautiful and obedient daughter named Peach Blossom and her father is a warrior of mercurial temperament i think and also very idiotic and at the end he chops off her head.

Another one was about a very lovely little baby girl who’s discovered and as she grows up her skin is supposed to be so delicate it says through her skin her veins showed and through them her bones and within that her febrile artery quivering away. I still recall that line and she’s perhaps impersonated by a false bride because that one rides her horse through some posts and ties it on the first post and the actual bride ties it on the last post.

One story set in Africa in which a young man dives into the river to hunt for shells and his hands are trapped in a massive shell and he drowns I think. Another one was how the world began and it was of Native American origin because the Sun, Earth, Sky, Wind etc were all personalised in it.

If you could help me identify and locate the book I would be eternally grateful. I’ve lost track of how many children’s anthologies I’ve scrolled through hoping to find this particular one. I’m sorry my details are so vague and sketchy and i know the titles I do recollect are in many collections but here’s hoping Loganberry can help me 🙂

296E: Littlest Joe (Solved)

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)

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)

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!)

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)

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.