Category Archives: Unsolved

322Q: Daily Life In Ancient Civilizations

2 Replies

When I was in the 3rd grade, my language teacher would take the class to the library to check out books we wanted to read. My favorite were a series of children’s books which taught daily lives of people from ancient civilizations: who they were, what they did, what they were known for, & the tools and weapons they used in warfare. It was from these books which I developed a passion for arts & crafts and also the value of history at a young age.
I am 44 years old now and I would like to find these books to have them as part of my knife and weapons collection. It was those books which sparked my interest for this hobby.
I can’t recall the author but do remember the titles:
1. The Stone Age
2. The Aztecs
3. The Romans
4. The Vikings
5. The Egyptians
6. The Phonecians
7. The Greeks
8. The Celtics
It was around 1984-1985 was when I discovered these books. I was wondering if you can offer assistance in helping me find them or a publisher that can reprint them.
Any assistance you can offer is greatly appreciated.

322O: Girl Makes Best Friend, Gets Matching Puppies

1 Reply

Best Friend(s) - title, I think, children's book. I read it about 1960. 3-6th grade reading. Girl's mom is her schoolteacher and she gets called teacher's pet. Grandfather lives with them and she has a great tree house. Half-French girl moves in next door and they become best friends. Archenemy is Millicent. End of story the girls get "matching" puppies. Remembering where it was in library, the author's name began with A-H. Hardcover, minimal illustrations. I think the phrase, "no more sense of time than a cricket" was used.

322L: Historical fiction for teens, set in 1800s or early 1900s

Leave a reply

I purchased this book in the late 1970s or early 1980s. It was about a girl who started out very poor, but whose father somehow struck it rich (gold?). I don’t seem to remember a mother. The MC made friends with a girl who was from a proper family. Maybe they met at boarding school. The MC fell in love with the friend’s brother but it was always intimated that she might be too “new money” to be suitable for him. The MC also befriended a colorful actress named, Florie or Flossie. Her advice was to be flashy and I seem to remember the phrase “plenty of ooh la la”. But gradually the MC realized that the actress might be a bit gauche. One main struggle was the MC trying to seem well-bred and not like new, flashy money. I remember scenes of the MC being fitted for and purchasing new, elegant clothes.

322K: Math History For Children

Leave a reply

[author role=”private”]Toby Holtz, tholtz@barnard.edu[/private]

This was a large format hardcover book from 1950’s (maybe 1960’s). Cover had picture of yellow pyramid(s) against blue sky, with drawings of Egyptian, Greek, Renaissance mathematicians. Inside had chapters about math and science (astronomy, physics, etc.) through the ages, i.e. early man looking at stars, Egyptians building pyramids, Greeks measuring land, medieval development of arithmetic, Renaissance architecture and Galileo’s physics and Newton’s calculus applied to science, etc. Pages had text and colored drawings as illustrations, and some portraits of mathematicians. Maybe title was “Lore and Legend of Mathematics.” The name “Langston” may be one of the names of one of the authors. It may have been a type of Golden book. (There was another, similar book about the history of music, with a gray cover showing a drawing of a brown violin and a gold colored brass instrument.)

322I: Peter Rabbit, candy in the sky and other stories

Leave a reply

I am looking for a children’s anthology that likely contained a Peter Rabbit story and one about a boat sailing on a chocolate or candy bay. I remember vivid images of candy hanging in the sky. I believe it was the last story in the collection. I was born in 1986, and the book was hand-bound with thick ivory thread.

I submitted my original request back in 2011, but the Peter Rabbit information is new based on the illustrations in a book that I just found. F397 and B763 were the previous inquiries.

322H: “Peter, Please, It’s Pancakes”

2 Replies

I enjoyed this book beginning in about 1955 but had two older sisters (the oldest born in 1946) so it could have been purchased as early as that.  It was a hard-covered book and had stories for children of different ages.  Each story had, under its title, a number of asterisks (I think one through six) equal to the age of the child it was appropriate for.  For example, ******  was a story for a six year old.  The only title I remember from the book is “Peter, Please, It’s Pancakes”.  I would love it if you could identify this book!

322F: Town Loses Color

Leave a reply

I am looking for the name of a book, these the facts that I remember: 

Circulation early 1960s

Picture book

Subject- town loses color and becomes black and white due to bad behavior, color comes back when sun shines through the tear of a boy producing a rainbow.

Length was perhaps 20 pages

Detailed illustrations

Please let me know, I'd be so grateful.

321Z: Mother’s Rose Garden?

Leave a reply

I read this book when I was younger and think I had remembered it being this sort of title but considering I haven’t been able to find it I assume I’m wrong. The book is about a boy who is growing up with issues, having incestuous delusions of his mother, and at the same time her dealing with that and also trying to maintain some normalcy in life after her husband dies.
The story jumps with the boy now a young man but finding himself having mental issues and having numerous occasions with women where he becomes very sexually dark and it seems to always end badly. Throughout the story there are dead girls being found and the head of one of the girls is found in his mothers bushes at her house.
I think I remember at the end he accidentally killed the girl he was in love with and then there is a showdown where he falls off a cliff. Some of my memories are a bit blurry. Hope someone can help me figure out the book!