Category Archives: Unsolved

319I: Mid-1800’s Mystery Girl’s Biography

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This book is a biography.  I thought it was a Discovery book, but looking at the available titles from that series, I cannot figure out which one it is.  It is a biography of a woman.  She was either a niece of Henry Clay, or the Senator was family friend, so she might have been a child in the 1830s or 40s.  One of the chapters in the books describes her and a friend getting into trouble, because they wanted to be fancy and they made hoop skirts out of willow branches.  Also, maybe a chapter about playing at her father’s flour mill making cakes and pies – but maybe they were mud pies?

Thanks for any leads you can offer!

319H: Teenage Girl Deals With Kangaroo Court

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I am looking for a book that was probably written in the 1950s or early 1960s.  It was a part of my grade school library, a school that converted from a K-12 school to a K-8 in 1965 or so.  The book might have been written as a young adult novel.  It was about a teenage girl and her dealing with high school life (boyfriends, homework, mean girls).  I do remember that one chapter was titled “The Kangaroo Court”.  I do not remember the very much more about the book, but “Pink” comes to mind – either part of the title or another chapter.  I hope this jogs someone’s memory!

319E: Getting Swallowed By A Whale

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I vaguely remember the book.  I read it at a very young age, and I was born in 1997.  I brought it up to my mother and even she vaguely remembers, but we are both so stumped, and Google has produced nothing.
The layout of the book was to be landscape format, I believe, and I am pretty sure it was not hard covered, but soft (I am sure that does not even matter).  The artwork, however, I remember is dark colors and what I would assume to be an oil style of painting?  Maybe acrylic, but very Van Gogh-esque with swirls of red and blacks with slight bits of yellow.  I am pretty sure it is a woman, maybe a witch?  I know there is some sort of magic involved, but I think she lives in the belly of a whale, and a man gets swallowed and finds her in there, or he just lives in there.  All I know is someone gets swallowed by a whale and lives in it and the swirls, so many swirls and so much red.  The tone of the book was a bit darker, and I think there may have been a storm at night?  I cannot get this book out of my head, at all, for the last few years.  Please help!

319D: A Young Ballerina’s Struggles

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The book is juvenile fiction about a young girl, age 9, who dances ballet.  She wants to start using toe shoes but everyone tells her she is too young.  She goes on a summer vacation to the beach and meets a famous ballerina and her choreographer husband who decide to stage a shortened version of The Nutcracker at the grand hotel where they are staying.  The girl is invited to participate even though she is not staying there.  The owner’s spoiled daughter makes a fuss and is cast as Clara.  She had started dancing with toe shoes but it is causing too much stress on her developing feet and she can’t dance very well.  I think her name is April.

319B: The Witch Sisters Scare Their Neighbor

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Looking for a picture book my girlfriend read in the 90s. She says it was about two witches (sisters?), one nice and one "mean."  They had an uptight neighbor who got mad at the nice one about her vegetable garden and so the mean one made the pumpkin big and scared him. She thinks the mean one was named Madam Mehetabel and that this might have been part of the title.

319A: Aeronautical Adventures

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1930s or 1940s adventure books (of short stories) for boys featuring airplanes.  I remember a story that featured a crew of men attempting a record breaking non-stop (transcontinental? Transatlantic?) flight, in a 3 engine plane that could be refueled midair.  I remember a scene where one engine was shut down for in flight maintenance. 

One story featured two pilots flying an old biplane in a barnstorming content that was won because the co-pilot dumped itching powder down his partner's back.  Another featured WWII aircrew captured by Germans and they manage to escape and steal a German plane equipped with skis for the snow.  These books had belonged to my father, and were probably given to him by his uncle, who was a pilot.

318Z: Monsters In The Piano

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The title, actually the subtitle, was something like "OR, The Things in [girl's name, I think it might have been Susan]'s Piano."  It was about a girl who was bad at playing the piano, maybe willfully from refusing to practice, and inside the piano were monsters who were hurt or injured or horrified or angry or something, by her bad playing.  They may have been musical notes come to life.  It was a picture book in my elementary school library, so it was published before 1982.  Probably in the 70s.  It was sort of psychedelic and the characters were almost ugly, deliberately so.  I remember lots of teeth in big mouths.

318Y: He Fell Down In The Mud

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Greetings!  My “bookstumper” originates from a story my grandmother read to my brother and me in the 60s.  I don’t know how old the story is; I think the story might have been in an anthology of short stories.  The operative phrase is “I fell down in the mud.”  It could even be a bit of a poem, as I remember a dialogue between seemingly mother and son, as the mother rages on how could the boy have done this, how could he have gotten his clothes so dirty, etc.  After each of these Mom rages, the boy simply says, “I fell down in the mud.”  My brother and I have not been able to find hide nor hair of this on Google and other search engines.