I read a wonderful book in the late 80s/early 90s that was about a little mouse who learns about the scientific explanation of thunderstorms. He walks around with a little umbrella and even gets to ride on some birds (geese?) into the clouds to see the positively and negatively charged air that causes the sound of thunder, etc. Please please help me find it!
Looking for a children’s book, possibly dating from 1930’s, about a brother and sister, one of whom is named Bunney, who help an older couple clean up their store – washing windows, dusting, rearranging the shelves- to get the business going again. Might be one of a series. Hardback.
This stumper is a children’s picture book that I think was published either in the late 80’s or the early 90’s. I live in Australia, and I’m afraid I don’t know if it was an Australian book or not. If it is I suspect it will make it even more difficult to solve!
I originally thought the title was “Lucy’s Beach”, but I’m obviously wrong about the name because I have not been able to find any record of it. I am pretty sure it’s a girl’s name followed by the word “beach”. I don’t know who the author is.
The story began with the main character, a young boy, in the kitchen at his house with his family. The weather is good, and he comes to the decision that today he will cross the red cliffs to the beach. His family listens to his announcement very seriously. You got the sense that it was an important thing the boy was doing, and that it’s the first time since some kind of significant event that he was returning.
He leaves the house and crosses the cliffs. He navigates the narrow ledges of the red cliffs and finally arrives at the beach. He searches in the beach until he finds a stone covered by the sand, not red like the cliffs, but flat, smooth and polished. It has a name engraved in the top of it.
Finding the stone makes him remember playing at the beach before with his younger sister, and the boy remembers his parents telling him to watch his sister in the water to keep her safe. I think he got distracted playing his own games, and his little sister ended up drowning. The stone is a memorial marker for her. He lifts up the stone and finds a compartment with some kind of plant or flower seeds. He removes the seeds from the box and blows them into the wind, and they rise up above the towering red cliffs.
I think that’s pretty much the end of the story. Pretty sad for kid’s picture book. I really hope you can help me solve the mystery of this stumper! I’m certainly looking forward to hearing from you.
I read this book sometime between 6th and 8th grades, so between 1976 and 1979. It was not great literature but catered very much to pubescent and pre-pubescent girls. It was a mass-market paperback anthology of short stories, and I think they all dealt with romance and/or the characters’ first kisses. There might have been some that were just about the trials and tribulations of being that age, but if so, I don’t recall specifics. I do remember one of the stories mentioning chocolate pudding. In another -or maybe the same story- the protagonist went on her first date (possibly a school dance?), and when she and the boy walked home, he kissed her, and she said his lips tasted sweet like Coca-Cola.
Children’s story set in 40’s or 50’s in America. Two children move into an (old?) house and meet two other children, now dead, who had lived there in the past. There was a garden. I read it 1980.
In the late 1980’s when I was in high school we were assigned to read this book, it’s possible that it was a few years earlier in middle school. There was a young Asian boy, I remember him being Chinese or Vietnamese but he may have been Japanese because I also remember him talking about wanting a lot of “yen”. I remember it because I don’t think I ever really heard of yen before that book. Another thing I first heard of in this book was rice paddies, I don’t remember if he was running away from work on a rice paddy or if he passed by some on his journey.
I’m not sure he was running away at all he may have been on a quest of some sort, it may be that he was wanting to sell something the get money for some reason because I seem to remember he had a destination in mind.
Also, I remember a pig. I thought he had a pig with him or met a pig along the way that followed him but my mother read the book also and she doesn’t remember a pig. She doesn’t remember any more than I do about the book, all she knows is that I liked it so much I gave it to her to read. I’ve thought about this book several times over the years trying to remember it and I’ve looked all over the internet for it and I’ve asked people about it with no luck. I’m hoping it was on a lot of high school or middle school reading list and you will be able to help me.
Early to mid-1960s children’s picture book. Story about some kids (maybe one’s a young teen?) and their friend, a small troll who, I believe, wears a sweater and has a ’60s Beatles haircut. BIGGEST DISTINGUISHING FEATURE: It breaks the fourth wall — they know they’re in a book. Colorful, hip.
In the early 1970s, as a kid, I came across an extraordinary cloth-bound picture book: The story of a girl from another planet–a girl whose hair is made of actual gold. She is befriended by a young Earth boy who learns her secret, and tries to help her get away from bad guys who want to lock her up and harvest her hair.
The illustrations were photographs (or else very photo-realistic drawings).
I was fascinated by this little sci-fi tale. Years later I went back looking for it, and it was long gone.
I suspect it was not a new book even in the early 70s. It had the wear and tear of something that had been in circulation for years.
I would be grateful and astonished if you can find a title and author for this book!
I am looking for one of my childhood favorites from the 80s possibly 90s. It’s a picture book about a highway that always takes a family to the city (I think) for their summer vacation. One summer the highway decides to take them to the beach because the highway wants a vacation. The pictures that stand out in my mind are of a road twisting and turning, bumping a family to the beach. The road ends up in the waves of the ocean at a crowded beach. I feel like the title is something like Highway 101 Goes to the Ocean.
From the 80s/early 90s? This kid (cant remember of it was a boy or girl…possibly siblings) would somehow time travel back to when their parents were his/her age, the 1950s I think. They would wake up in a house where the owners were away so they could stay there while back in time. It was winter.