Category Archives: Unsolved

259B: Blind girl and a horse

2 Replies

I am looking for the title of a book I read over and over when I was in primary school. I am 50 this year so around 40 years ago. I got the book from the school library and borrowed it over and over again. The book is about a Blind girl who befriends a wild horse, I don’t remember many other details but the girl has a operation to restore her site, the horse goes wild while she is away and I feel the horse was shot just before she returned, not the happiest story line but this book had a huge impact on me when I was young. Any help would be appreciated.

258F: The Servant’s Quarters

6 Replies

I’m looking for a book that I read about 15 years ago that was already well aged at the time I read it, probably from the 70s or 80s. It was on a classroom bookshelf in my elementary school. It’s about a girl who I think moves… from the city to the country with her mother for sure, possibly her father has died. She isn’t too pleased about the move but eventually while exploring their new large country house she discovers the servants passage and a room where it appears an old lady used to live, I think. She also likes to play in the apple cellar, befriends someone at school, and there is a not well-liked older fellow who lives in a dark small house who I think may have lived in their house at one point? I may totally wrong on some of these things because I was young when I read it, but I think I’m right.

 

Thanks!

258D: Brother and sister make a perilous journey

2 Replies

The book I’m searching for is one I read as a girl. It was an old book then. I was reading it in the early 1950’s.

 

All I recall of it was a story of a brother and sister who had to make a perilous journey by foot, crossing a mountain range somewhere in Europe. They had the help of a kindly woman who sewed coins for the trip into the darts of the sister’s dress. This was so no one would steal their money. After they left her they made it to safety on the other side of the mountains.

 

The book was a standard size hardback, with a faded cover, as I remember it. I borrowed it several times from my aunt, who treasured the book.

 

257F: A girl befriends an otter

2 Replies

My mom is looking for a book from her early childhood that was destroyed in a fire.  She was born in 1952 in Ohio.  So this book was probably from the 50s.  She cannot remember the name of the book.  It was probably an early/easy reader (and not a baby book or chapter book).

 

The story is about a young girl who befriends an otter.  That’s all I know.

257E: Magical Gifts

2 Replies

This is a fairly recent book, having had my hands on it sometime between 1996-1998.  It was definitely a picture book.  I can’t remember if the classroom copy was paperback or hardcover, but I don’t think the book was published any time before 1985 and it was more likely to have been put out after 1992.

 

My clearest memory is of a page showing a slim girl with cropped black hair who, as a thief, had a magical belt or girdle that made her invisible.  The belt may have been silver.  The story took place in an imaginary land or in the past; I think she was dressed in a very sort of medieval page way.

 

I am certain there were other girls with other specific talents and magical objects in the book, but I am unsure as to how many.  Judging from trends in children’s literature it was probably 3 or 7.

 

Thank you so much!

257B: Children’s bedtime story about a man called Harum Scarum

12 Replies

The book was either published in the 1970-1980’s I believe, since late 1970’s was when I read it. It was a children’s story about Harum Scarum, an old man that was known by the children to be mean. Harum Scarum became nice and gave the children his candy. It was a beautiful short story about how the man was a good person, but just because the kids thought he was mean, they didn’t interact with him. They found out he was a nice person when he gifted them candy. If I’m not mistaken, the setting was a farm or the outskirts of town. The story was in a book that had several bedtime stories in it. I can’t find the title of the book or the name of the story. Any help will be greatly appreciated. Thanks!