Category Archives: Solved

186G: Children’s Book About Foxes (solved)

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I read this book around 1996 and it looked kind of old then. It was a hard cover, wide book and I’m pretty sure the picture on the front was yellow/orange. Very autumn like. The story was about a family of foxes, a mother, father, a son and a daughter (they specifically used the word vixen). The little vixen fox went and found an elderly couple who lived in a house and stayed with them. They gave her a red ribbon to wear. Her leg got caught in a hunter’s trap, and her mom came and lay down with her, where I think it snowed on them and they died together. Every year after that a certain kind of flower (might have been red) would grow in the shape of their bodies laying together.

185D: Creative Siblings on the HomeFront (solved)

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children during one of the great World Wars (probably ww2) spend a summer playing together. They put on a play, make the costumes out of cheesecloth. They also gather scrap metal for recycling and buy war stamps. They are living in a very old and large rambling house. One day they discover that the peeling wallpaper in a little used empty room is covering old newspaper clippings so they decide to peel more off to investigate. It turns out the entire room was once papered with newspapers. I have no memory of the title, just these random slice of life events. I don’t think there is much of a plot beyond these.

185B: Fox in a Box hunted by Joe (solved)

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My entire family thinks I’m crazy now. Was challenged by one of those ‘name 10 books that have stayed with you’ and could not think of the name of a children’s picture book that we read almost daily when I was growing up.

The book included the rhyme: A hunting we will go, a hunting we will go,
We’ll catch a fox and put him in a box,
And then we’ll let him go!

But I do not think it included the remainder of the rhyme, only that part with the fox in the box. As I recall the cover of the book was green, and about 1/4 to 1/2″ in depth. Maybe 12″ in length, and 10″ in height. Probably published in the 1960s, because it was something I learned to read as a child.

The plot of the book was that Joe wanted to go fox hunting, catch a fox and put him in the box, and then let him go. I believe, he was going to hunt the fox with a bow and arrow, and did shoot the fox in the leg with the arrow. He put the fox in the box, and the fox pleaded with him to remove the arrow and let him go, as Joe promised. But Joe wanted to keep the fox. Ultimately, the fox was let go.

I always thought the book was called Fox in a Box, but cannot find it under that name. It was definitely not a Dr. Seuss book.

Would be awesome if you could find this book.

184C: The musician and the horrendously ugly giant (solved)

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I can’t remember its name. I’ll title it “The musician and the horrendously ugly giant” for now.

This was a book about a small town terrorized by a giant. A mother tells her son to not go outside, but he runs outside with his musical instrument (banjo? fiddle?) and somehow drives away the giant. The book’s description of the giant with ugly nails and teeth was chilling. It had an accompanying book on tape. I listened every day, terrified, when I was in first grade circa 1996.

184B: Dark Fantasy Story Record (solved)

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I don’t know if you do storybook records, but…

Maybe it was a written book too? I have this very distinct memory of a children’s story record I used to listen to as a kid (probably in the early ’90s). It was a kind of dark fantasy adventure story where this outcast boy runs away from home with promises of wonderland and winds up in this awful, prison-like school. He winds up helping lead the rest of the kids to overthrow the grownups and escape. The reluctant hero (or possibly one of the other kids in the story?) has some kind of an OCD thing where he has to repeat things multiple times and I want to say his nickname was something to that effect, like Freddie Five-Times or Tommy Two-Times.

182C: Boy who could go into animals minds (solved)

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looking for a childrens book about a boy who can get into animals minds. Can’t control them , but know what they feel and think. He helps a local vet, figure out what’s wrong with various animals. Ultimately the boy gets killed while in the “mind” of a horse, and realizes he can go to other animals, as book ends with him going into a eagle and soaring away. I thought the name was something like “the boy who talks to animals” or something along those lines, but come up empty when I search. Can anybody out there help me figure this one out?

182A: “No School Tomorrow”? (solved)

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This is a children’s book that I believe was written in the 1920’s or 1930’s. It is a chapter book about a little girl and her summer vacation. She would play in her backyard and make little houses out of twigs and leaves for fairies, and cook out in the backyard. Her father calls her by the nickname of “Louella Pouella”. She is having her bedroom redecorated, and her father asks her if she would like to have her bedroom painted “sky blue pink”. I believe the book was titled “No School Tomorrow” or “There is No School Tomorrow”, but I have no idea who the author was. I purchased this book in 1966 at my grade school book fair. Any help would be appreciated.