Category Archives: Unsolved

318M: Pitta Pat the Tabby Cat

Seeking child's book from the 1950's. Tall & narrow with a cut-out top. She's Pitta Pat the tabby cat, the cat who couldn't remember. She chews her soup and drinks her bread and sleeps in the bathtub instead of the bed. She's Pitta Pat the tabby cat, the cat who couldn't remember.

318L: British book about two pigs day in town!

This was a British (I think) book about two pigs whose parents were having a party, so they gave them each like a dollar to go out and have fun while they set up. They went out and went to the candy store and all these other places, and then at the end of the day they didn’t save enough money to ride the bus home, so the candy store owner gives them a ride home. And something about lollipops! And I think it has the word “town” in the title. Like, the pigs go to town, or a day in town, or something something town. It was purchased in the early 1990s in a small bookstore in New Hampshire, where we also got another book called Animal Party, which is also British. Maybe the same publisher?

318J: Poems Teach Kids English

Seeking hardback book from the late 60's early 70's for kids, I think had a yellow cover, with poems about parts of speech like "beware the dangling participle" and a snake dangling from a tree. Probably 8 or 10 different poems for different parts of speech. Seems like one of the poems has mugwumps but I am not 100% sure. Sorry I can't remember more.

318I: Large Bird Takes Away Overbearing Woman

I am trying to remember the title and author of a children’s book.  It had pictures.  It was about a little boy with an extremely overbearing mother.  Or maybe it was about a man with an extremely overbearing wife.  At a certain point, the woman is carried off by a large bird, and then the boy (or man) has a peaceful life.
I can’t imagine what the title might have been.  So-and-so’s mother?  The bossy wife?
I read the book as a child, in the late 60’s or early 70’s.
I remember the picture of the bird carrying off the woman – she was large but got smaller and smaller as the bird flew away.

318F: 1970s/1980s Illustrated Fairytale About the Plague

I’m trying to find an illustrated storybook set in a medieval fantasy setting. It may be a children’s book but the story and theme are very morbid. I think the book was published in the late 1970s or early 1980s. The illustration style is drawn in detail and colored, possibly watercolor.

The protagonist is a young hero, possibly a prince, who is betrayed or abandoned by the woman he loves. Perhaps their courtship was called off after he performed a great deed or quest for her father?

He somehow ends up heartbroken and dying on a small island in the sea.

He stays alive by sucking the salt and tears from the tattered and faded blue or black cloak that he wears. Eventually the cloak becomes magically imbued with a toxic curse and is blown on the wind to the kingdom where his former lover lives.There it spreads a deadly plague, possibly the Black Death. I vaguely recall an image of the woman dying from the plague with birds strapped to her feet (an ineffective cure meant to ward off the plague)

Does this ring a bell for anyone?

318E: Baby Sibling in Messy House

Picture book from 1980’s (?) about a preschool aged child’s relationship with a baby sibling. Illustrations depict a messy, hippy-ish house, perhaps in Vermont, with a frumpy, gentle mom. Specific pictures include: the outdoors with a steep path leading down to the home with baby in stroller and sibling walking; hall entryway with pegs on the wall where coats are hanging and shoes & boots scattered on the floor; frazzled mom cooking with baby on her hip crying and sibling playing on the floor; sibling helping button clothes on baby and maybe attempting to tie own shoe; sibling feeling tender toward baby in their shared bedroom and maybe text anticipating baby being old enough to play. Illustrations have lots of detail about the environment, which is a warm but messy home, e.g. baby socks on the floor, toys scattered, kitchen counters cluttered, etc. Aesthetic of home is alternative, earthy.

318D: Santa’s North Pole

I’m wondering how to find a children’s book that I remember having read to me. I was born in December of 1942 . I remember seeing an illustration ( in the book ) of hills made of sugar. Perhaps both white and brown sugar, that were supposed to be used to make Christmas goodies.

 

318C: Christmas Eve Tree

Story of a tree outside a little boy’s window that was to be cut down and brought into the house for a Christmas tree. The little animal inhabitants were told they had to vacate the tree by Christmas Eve. When the time came to cut the tree, the animals had completely decorated the tree.