Category Archives: Solved

120A: Girl with Real Golden Hair (solved)

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!

 

119B: Highway Wants a Vacation Too (solved)

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.

 

119A: Time Traveling Children (solved)

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.

 

118L: Ghost boy, lake setting, island playhouse (Solved!)

I have been searching for this book for years.  It captured my imagination during childhood, and I must have read it at some point in the 1980’s – may well have been published well before that.  I am sure I have some details wrong, but the plot involves a child coming to visit a large home near a lake for the summer, with an older woman as the guardian for the summer.  This woman had years ago lost her own child, her son, who I believe drowned in the lake.  The details I remember more clearly involve a special lake island playhouse that she built especially for her son – the playhouse had its own furniture, dishes, silverware, etc.  This special playhouse and island was off limits now that the son was dead, and the woman did not want to talk about him.  I believe the dead son’s name could have been Trelawney, or something like that.  The child now visiting for the summer sneaks to explore the world of the island and the playhouse, and falls into some sort of danger.  The ghost boy (? Trelawney) helps save the day.  For some reason I am thinking the word “green” may be in the title, but that could be wrong.  Please help!!  Thank you!

118K: The Bucket in the Attic (solved)

A girl has a secret refuge, either in the attic of her house or a loft in a barn, where a wise, nurturing grandmother type lives. There is a beautiful, soft bed where she can rest and a magic tub, where she can wash away all cares and fatigue. But when she shares the refuge with another girl, this girl tells her there’s no grandmother, the bed is just a pile of straw and the tub is just an old wooden bucket. However, the main character still believes what she has seen and experienced. I think the book is British and was probably written in the 30s or 40s, although I read it in the early 50s. It may be part of a series. I remember it was included in a New Yorker Christmas books for kids article in the late 80s (should have saved that article!) so maybe some kind of anniversary edition was issued then.

117D: Mystery of hidden brooch (Solved)

Mystery of the Hidden Brooch was a book I read in elementary school in early to mid 70’s.  It was a mystery about a missing brooch.  There was an old house with a brick wall or chimney upstairs, possibly covered by wallpaper.  One of the bricks was a drawer, where I believe the brooch was found.  The mystery was solved by a young girl, possibly other children also.  I could be confusing a couple of books.

 

115B: Boy and Mountain Lion book – Solved

I’m looking for a book that I read as a young boy but whose name now eludes me. I have no recollection of the title but can provide some detail regarding the story and the cover art (at least the version I had).

 

The story is about a young boy who moves with his family (father and mother) from a city to a country farm/ranch, despite his initial misgivings. One of the first thing he experiences is a hunt for a mountain lion which has been killing livestock in the area. He sees a mother mountain lion killed and then two cubs thrown to a pack of dogs. Later, he finds a female, runt cub in the mountain lions’ cave (she was too weak to come out and, therefore, escaped notice). He takes her home and secretly raises her. I am fairly certain that he calls her “Beauty” but I am not 100% certain. The book continues with the boy raising the cub to young adulthood, including teaching her how to hunt. Near the end of the book, the father is injured and the mother is somehow incapacitated so the boy (and his secret mountain lion companion) have to walk several miles to town to get a doctor/medicine. Finally, the boy needs to release the mountain lion back into the wild. The book ends with their separation.

 

I believe the book was published by Scholastic Reader and would have been published sometime in the 1970’s (I think). The cover has artwork that shows the young boy crouching up on a rock to feed or pet the mountain lion who is standing on the top of the rock.