Category Archives: Solved

207F: A Medieval king who may or may not live in a castle or something (I think) (Solved)

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I’d like to identify and locate a favorite from my childhood but, as I enjoyed it before I was literate, can’t recall the title. Here are the details:

• I’m guessing it was published between 1970-87.
• It is set in the middle ages.
• The hero is a king who lives in a castle.
• There are multiple very short stories, the total being the average for a picture-based pre-literate children’s book.
• The title has a phrase like “…and other stories,” “…other tales,” or “The adventures of King…”
• Arrows and fire feature prominently in some of the multiple stories.
• It was from a popular, prominent kid’s book publisher; I don’t think it was a Little Golden Book, but could be wrong.
• To the best of my knowledge, it was not based on a prior story/book/legend/film/TV show.

That’s all I can remember, but I would recognize the cover if I saw it and hope this evidence is sufficient.

204E: whatever these kids think about is displayed on the walls and then comes to life (Solved)

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Another short story where there is a special room with full-screen walls, and whatever these kids think about is displayed on the walls and then comes to life. They end up spending a lot of time in the room. The parents threaten to lock the room off. The story ends with the kids resolving the conflict by tricking the parents and locking the parents in the room. Then the kids think about tigers, and the parents are eaten.

203F: 80’s Haunted House book..Scholastic or Dell/Yearling? (Solved)

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I’m looking for a kid’s/teen book from the early 80’s. I believe it may have been a Scholastic or Dell/Yearling book, and if I remember correctly it had a yellow cover. It was about a family that puts on a haunted house at their home, and they have the customers put their hands into a hole to feel things (grapes are peeled eyeballs, spaghetti is brains, etc.). I also think they may have hung sheets up to divide the house into walking areas. There is a similar, newer book I found called Tuck’s Haunted House, but the character in that is a pig, and this was definitely a human family. For some reason I remember the name as being like ‘The Millers Haunted House’ or ‘The Wilsons Haunted House’, something with a surname in the title, but I could be wrong. I read it around the same time that I was into Choose Your Own Adventures and Encyclopedia Brown. Thanks for the help 😉

202E: Brightly illustrated story book (Solved)

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I am looking for a book that may have been published in the 1960’s. I think it had a red cover. The book was illustrated with very bright colors. It had several stories, but there are three I remember most clearly.

One was a story of a little pine tree that wanted different leaves. The illustrations included gold coins being plucked off the tree, a goat eating the oak leaves, and glass prisms hanging from the tree.

Another story was of a stingy old woman who was baking at on oven. She would not give visitors any of her pies. The picture of the pie she baked was huge. She was eventually turned into a woodpecker to peck out a living. There is a picture of her as a woodpecker: her red hat became the birds head and her black dress with a white apron became the body.

The last story that I can remember is one where a little girl went through the woods with a tin pan to fetch water for her sick mother. As she walked back giving sips of water to various thirsty people, the pan became metals such as silver then gold and then a diamond and then a group of stars (the big dipper).

201E: Self portrait with mice (Solved)

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I’m looking for a picture book that has the artist’s self portrait throughout. The image of the artist is looking at the reader are the subject behind him is one mouse or mice. I remember the mice or mouse driving a classic black convertible. There may be more, but either way the mice were up to no good. I think the mice were doing various bad things, but I’m not sure. In his self portraits, the artist does not look amused by the mischief. This book has a sixties feel. The artist is heavy set and wears glasses in his pictures. He looks like he’s in his sixties. There is a lot of white space in the pictures. The art is very precise and in the realm of realism. I’m pretty sure the artist/author is very famous.

201B: Children’s book, navel oranges, sharing. (solved)

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A boy receives an orange as a gift, and he generously gives away its segments to others, only to find himself with none left. Someone tells him that it was a navel orange, and there was a hidden baby orange within the skin, enough for one bite. I read this around the 70’s, a beautifully illustrated book. The author might have had a Spanish name, or perhaps Jewish? I don’t recall any Christmas themes and he shared his gift mainly with older relatives, neighbors who seem European…

199H: Girl enters magical kingdom, fights off goblins, rides dragon (Solved!)

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I read this book somewhere between 1963 and 1966 when it was new. It was sold through an elementary school book fair. A girl wanders off and finds herself in a magical kingdom. There she is a princess. There’s a fight in a castle. Goblins enter the castle by turning themselves into doorknobs. At some point in the magical kingdom, she wanders up a hill and finds a dragon cave. The dragon turns out to be peaceful, although misunderstood, and she has tea with him and they become friends. He flies her around the kingdom and alights on the roof of the castle with her.

The book was paperback with a light blue cover.

199E: 3 Siblings worship magic dough/bread man (Solved)

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I read this book in middle school, 1995. so book is late 80s-90s. Three siblings, 2 girls and a boy, with the boy as the middle child. the youngest sister is ill/sick/crippled in some way. home life is not awesome, and they may or may not have moved to a new house- a huge tree in the backyard, they each find different items in the “new” backyard and decide to bake all of them into bread that mom or grandma was making. i think one of the items was a wire in shape of a crown, and another thing for the heart and something in the dough mans hand. this became some kind of magical talisman that made the little sister stronger and or able to perform magic. i also distinctly remember (i may be wrong) them having an entity i thought was rowan or something with an “R” that they worshipped for giving them this magic, and it became mad for some reason, resulting in the little sister climbing the tree to give back the dough man, and her falling…

199D: Children’s fairytale/fantasy book with illustrations *possibly* by Paul Klee? (Solved)

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I had a picture book, squarish proportions, about knights who set off on a journey to confront “the wizard Bone,” depicted in the book as a rather dragon-like creature. The art style is VERY reminiscent of Paul Klee paintings during his Bauhaus period – very geometric, abstract; the ‘wizard/dragon’ is sort of like a Pac-Man with sharp teeth – or something like Klee’s ‘Death and Fire’ – the lettering in the book was by hand, with a very stick-figure style almost like Viking runes; flattened picture-plane perspective, etc.

I do seem to remember seeing the word “Klee” on the cover; but given that he died in 1940, if it wasn’t him, it was certainly inspired by his work. Oval eyes like ‘Senecio,’ panels like his ‘Sinbad the Sailor.’ and generally geometric backgrounds like ‘Castle and Sun’.

It seemed to have been published new in the early 1970s, late 1960s maybe.