Looking for a book that I read in grade school circa 1973. My memory is hazy, but I remember the following:
Thanks.
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.
Our teacher read us “A Wrinkle In Time” when I was in the seventh grade, about 1980. At the end of this book, there was one chapter from another book, sort of a promotional sample. It featured a fantasy warrior of some kind looking at a giant blob that contained the half-digested remains of many other warriors, their armor and their weapons, spears and such. I always wanted to read that story, never found out the name. Since it was at the end of the L’Engle book, I thought it might be published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, but I don’t know how to research it. Ring any bells?
A children’s story about a girl who goes off to sea with a bunch of toys, including a toy soldier (but he was probably a toy sailor or sea captain)? Eventually, a duck leads a mutiny of all of the toys with no teeth against the toys with teeth. I must have read this in the 70’s as a hardcover in my school library and it seemed turn-of-the-century but who knows. I believe it had a sad ending.
The book I am looking for is something like Rocking Horse Christmas. It is a children’s book, many pictures in color, there is a snow storm, a dad driving home, and some writing. It was published in the early 1950s I imagine.
British kids play at the War of the Roses. They seem to have no restrictions. I was an oldish kids’ library book in 1955. (What today they call a chapter book, or YA.)
This was a YA book that I read back in the 1960s or 70s about a girl who wanted a forever home. It might have been set in England. She had marbles, or maybe just one marble, that she thought carried power. At the end of the book, the marble rolled under the front porch of her new home and she decided that meant that they were there to stay.
This was a young adult novel about a group of children who are compelled to walk from New England to D. C. as a form of protest (maybe echoes of nuclear war?). One of the kids is, I think, the granddaughter of the president but keeps that a secret. As the march continues, more children join in. There’s some sort of mystical element. I read the book in the mid-1980s.
What I remember: I read it before Borders bookstores closed. I picked it up in paperback on a display that said this type of book was not the author’s usual style. It was long.
Plot: a guy in the south (maybe Georgia?) thinks he kills his secretary and rolls her in the rug and takes the rug to the dump. The reader has the idea she’s alive, but the hero goes on the lamb in a convertible — I think eventually ending up at his dad’s house.
I also remember at scene where he accidentally sees the neighbor’s wife in a revealing outfit and it causes a family rift. There is a teenager daughter. Maybe he works at a furniture store? I would call it a archetype = hero’s journey
Thanks for any help!!
I would have read this book in the mid to late 1970s and I am pretty sure it was published around then. It was about a woman who owned a diner, but she was a terrible cook. Her customers all complained about the horrible food — I remember one diner saying, “This tastes like a burnt tire!” Somehow she finds (traps? meets?) a genie who promises to help her. He makes delicious spaghetti and meatballs that everyone loves, but the magic he used to make it goes out of control and fills the diner with spaghetti and meatballs until everyone floats away on a river of pasta. I seem to recall that the illustrations were primarily in black and white with splashes of color. The drawing style was sort of crude and comical — heavy, rough lines and the faces of the characters were somewhat grotesque. The main character’s name could be Frieda? Possibly. Also, this is definitely not Strega Nona which has a similar magical spaghetti pot.