Category Archives: Solved

282F: Boy and bearskin rug fight Mouse King (Solved)

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There is a children’s picture book about a little boy sent to visit his aunt, whom he is told has many wonderful old things. It looks like it will be tedious, but a bearskin rug comes to life as a kind of floppy bear, and then they are attacked by the Mouse King and an army of animate bric-a-brac. Then the aunt comes and says “I suppose the bear is in tatters again,” and they spend the afternoon drinking tea and stitching the bear back together, but the Mouse King has eaten all the cookies. Does anyone know the author or title of this book?

281F: Boy looks out a window and see different creatures (solved)

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A boy looks out of a window at night and sees different kinds of colored monsters (green goblin, blue unicorn, or some such, a new one every page) in the tree outside his window but isn’t scared because they aren’t real. Finally he sees a brown owl and IS scared (because the owl is real). I had this book in the 1980s. The words are a repetitive pattern each page until he sees the owl.

280D: YA Coming of Age (Solved)

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Girl 11-14 who has ESP (as does her clan), has to do something or loses it and dies, meets boy (older) from moon or sky city who has no powers, but lots of technology that does same thing.  They hook up (which I thought was odd for that age), and their two civilizations meet or something like that.  60-70’s I think.  Telepathy was part of it.

279G: Girl living in Purdah has arranged marriage (Solved)

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A story about a teen or pre-teen girl from  who lives in purdah (in India, I believe) who is being prepared for marriage.  She gets pierced (ears and nose I think) and undergoes other ceremonies that are apparently traditional for a girl her age.  She belongs to a well-off family, and her father has been indulgent and somewhat spoiled her up to this point, but now a young man has been selected for her, and she is expected to assume adult responsibilities and accept this inevitable fate maturely.  I think an older female relative (aunt, or grandmother) attempts to soothe her anxieties by breaking tradition and allowing her to meet the young man–chaperoned, of course–before the ceremony.  I seem to recall the book is rather open-ended, leaving the reader with a slightly optimistic feeling that the main character may face a happy future with her prospective spouse, despite her reluctance for the whole thing.  I have a vague feeling that there were some tiger cubs were involved somehow in the story (maybe one of the outrageous gifts her father had given her?)  I can’t remember the title, but I think it had the word “Time” in it, and the girl’s name, which for some reason nags at me as having started with the letter “Y”.

279E: A girl travels back in time by measuring herself in a closet (solved)

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A girl lives in an old house. Her mother is a servant there. The old nursery closet has measurements for growth from the children who used to live there. The girls can travel back in time to play with the children. She gets injured and stops growing in the past time. She also solves a mystery of a lost and valuable book hidden in a tree trunk.

279A: Children’s rhyming story about a king & his taxes (Solved)

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I remember a story (read in the 1960s – 1970s), and I’m not sure if it was a stand-alone or a featured story in a collection. It was a funny rhyming story about a king who started taxing everything in his kingdom, until finally the people revolted. I only remember bits and pieces, but the lines I remember are:

“A plague (?) on Max’s taxes! They are anything but fair. He taxes both our income and our patience, we declare!” and…

“So up they rose upon their toes…” and then something about going into the palace. The final line is something like “they stuck their tacks in Max!”.

Any ideas/suggestions?

 

278F: A picture book with a doll, a bear and a kitten (Solved)

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I read this children’s book in the 1960’s. It contained photographs, not illustrations, and featured a stuffed bear, not plush, a doll with long blonde hair and a kitten. I think there is a scene in a barber shop where the doll’s hair is cut and I also seem to recall a ball of yarn being involved. The book was large format and I believe it was in color.  The bear was one of those that had movable mechanical limbs. The doll was also mechanical in that her arms and legs could be positioned. She reminds me of one of the early talking dolls from that era that were about two feet tall.

278E: Young Chinese monk loses way while transporting books (Solved)

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This is a picture book probably published between 1988 and 1995 set in the distant past about a young Chinese monk who lives at a library in rural China. He’s always sleeping in, and one day the monastery needs to relocate because of a disaster (flood? war?). He sleeps in that day, too, and he and his donkey of books set out late in the day to try to catch up.
That night, he takes shelter in a cave where there are two old men playing chess with white and red pieces. They feed him and the monk stays up to watch their game. He falls asleep, and when he wakes up he’s been transported many years in the future.

He leaves the cave and soon comes across a huge battlefield with soldiers in white and red. Somehow, his arrival and the books he carries stops the battle. At the conclusion, he’s grown up to head a monastery-library of his own… and he always wakes up early.

278B: Girl returns to Malaysian rubber farm after the war (Solved)

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I read this book in my early teens and have been trying find it for years. A father sends a young girl away from rubber farm during the war. Upon her return from England, she finds she is an outsider due to not suffering the same pains those that stayed suffered. Her childhood friend (a boy) helped the villagers/prisoners by going night fishing to help keep people fed. The story resolves her relationship with the boy and her father.