Category Archives: Solved

291J: Boy befriends man with a donut cart (Solved)

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.

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.

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.