I read this book in maybe 1978. Black and white Illustrations with hidden objects throughout, like a giraffe under a man’s hat, etc. A boy runs away from home and befriends a man who sells donuts from a cart on the street. The donut salesman falls in love with a woman who has a pretzel cart and this makes the runaway boy jealous. Then a bull escapes from a pet store and runs into a giant tank of coffee, which the boy is sure to drown in as he gets trapped in a basement filling with coffee. The donut salesman saves the boy by dumping all his donuts in the coffee. The boys goes home at the end.
Category Archives: Solved
291H: Teens captive on open stairs (Solved)
I read this book in the 1970’s. It’s a dystopian future where teens are trapped on an open staircase. They arrive separately and meet each other there. They must do certain actions in order to receive food.
291F: Hip comic novel (Solved)
An early 1980s hip comic novel of single womanhood in which the heroine is the only white backup singer in a black rhythm and blues band.
291C: The something egg (Solved)
I read this book probably between 1957 and 1964. The plot is about a boy who finds a dinosaur egg which hatches and is a triceratops which he keeps as a pet. The title could be something like “The [something] Egg” (?) or maybe not.
Thanks!
291B: He forgot to go “widdershins” (Solved)
Children’s book, enjoyed in ’60’s but probably from ’30’s or 40’s, possibly English. Included a story about young brother and sister in a churchyard (castle yard?), playing with a ball. The brother (possibly named Roland) went to retrieve the ball when it went over a fence, but forgot to go “widdershins” and was taken by a witch. The little girl goes in search of her brother. (It is possible the girl was taken and the boy went to save her, but I remember it as the girl.) Illustrated with sweet old-fashioned colored drawings.
The story “East of the Sun, West of the Moon” may be in the same collection, or may just have been in the same bookcase.
290X: “Packy” for pachyderm (Solved)
50’s children’s book about a “Trojan” style elephant, I think named “Packy” for pachyderm, carries kids through a forest on an adventure.
I have looked for this book for years. Was read to my class in third or fourth grade in mid-50’s in Fort Lauderdale.
Thanks for helping.
290V: Transcendental Meditation (Solved)
I just read about your bookstore and the Book Stumper in today’s New York Times. Amazing! And I have a book: written perhaps in the 1970s or early 1980s, it concerned two kids, an old house, and a crystal or other glass ball on a pedestal in the yard of an old house, and the kids used transcendental meditation to perhaps travel into the ball, maybe solve a crime or something.
290T: The colours mix and all is well (Solved)
A book bought in late 70s Australia (possibly UK published) picture book about a kingdom in black & white & wizard. Under the direction from the king who decides to make it colourful, first turns blue and everyone is miserable, then red and everyone is angry, then yellow everyone becomes ill. Eventually the magic goes crazy and the colours mix to give full pallet and all ends well.
290N: Ring Around the Moon (Solved)
A large (10” x 12”?) hardback book of fairy poems. I received this book as a a gift in the late 1950s. There is a poem, “Ring Around the Moon” inside, and a large illustration either on the cover or inside of a tree with fairies. It is illustrated throughout with fairies in magical landscapes.
290F: Run for Your Life (Solved)
When I was in second grade around 1980-1981, my teacher read a book to the class, and I’m 99 percent sure it was called Run for Your Life. It was scary and suspenseful and it was a chapter book. It took at least a week if not longer for her to read.
I’ve never been able to find this book. Can you help?