Category Archives: Unsolved

228B: Child (maybe a “monster”) goes home for Xmas and discovers a secret passage in back of closet

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I am looking for a book for a friend. She describes it as a young boy (possibly a “monster”) goes home for from boarding school for Christmas on a train and discovers the house a secret passage in the back of a closet. There is a map in the back of the book with the secret passageways. She think it came out in the early 90s and was a scholastic title. The family was wealthy. The book was intended for children 9-12. Help!?

228A: A collection of short stories with a black and white cover

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My grandmother used to read this to me when I was a child. I don’t remember a whole lot of details but I’ll do my best. It was a very thin book and I believe it was stapled as opposed to bound. It was a collection of children’s short stories, and I mean SHORT. It was a black cover I think with a white border around it and white lettering, maybe some red? Two stories stand out to me, but there must have been 5 or 6, maybe more in the whole book. One was about 2 little girls, one was over at the other’s house I think and was a bit of a whiner or always trying to one-up her friend. The other was about an old man, I think he wore cowboy boots and hat and had like a long stalk of grass he chewed on in his mouth, and lots of different characters in the town including animals. Illustrations I believe were only black and white, and were very Shel Silverstein-esque, but it wasn’t his. I don’t even know if all the stories were written by the same person or not. My grandmother used to own a bookstore in Hartland, WI the early 80s so I suspect it was from there around that time, but could have been older, I don’t know.

227L: Old lady and her mysterious envelopes

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Greetings!

I am looking for a children’s book from the ’40 or ’50s about an older woman who prepared for the week by putting items into envelopes that she would need for each day.  On Monday she got a paper cut; in Monday’s envelope was a handkerchief to press against the cut.  On another day, several tiger cubs showed up at her door; in that day’s envelope were the right number of pieces of shewing gum for each of the cubs, to occupy them.

 

227K: Lavishly illustrated fairies

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I am looking for a childhood book my mother read to me around 1954 when we lived in Virginia.  It was about fairies and lavishly illustrated.  My favorite was the center fold illustration of fairies in the forest dancing under a moon that had a gauzy ring around it.  It was not Golder Books Treasury of Elves and Fairies by Garth Williams.  Any ideas?

Thanks.

227J: A girl and a woman live in a harem

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Description: This book would have been published before 1954, probably in the 40s. (I checked it out of a public library, children’s section, several times between 1949 and 1954.)

A girl and a woman (the girl’s mother?) who live (as slaves?) in a harem know the mood of the master by the color of the horse he rides that day.

I can’t remember the title, but The White Horse comes to mind. (Not The Little White Horse.) The girl was probably European or American, and I can’t remember how she came to be living in a harem. The Arab master’s mood was demonstrated to his slaves by the color of the horse he rode on a given day.

This was not an easy book. It was longer and harder than Estes, e.g., or Streatfeild, etc. It was a novel, really, with an (obviously) advanced theme. I can’t remember anything else about it. I don’t know if the girl and her mother were rescued at the end.

227I: Told from a doll’s point of view

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I am looking for a children’s book that I read when I was in grade 3 in 1955 in Toronto. C. 1953? American?  It was a small short picture book/easy reader chapters 5.5″x5.5″, black and white illustrations and hardcover.

In the attic, in a trunk there is a doll (old) who wishes that a little girl will find her and play with her. Emily? is playing one day and wanders up to the attic of her house and discovers a small trunk.  I can still feel the hope and excitement of the doll (Henrietta?).  Emily opens the trunk to reveal a beautiful doll with a complete wardrobe of clothes and a parasol.

Thank you so much for searching for this book for me.

p.s. I named my daughter Emily after the little girl in this book!

227H: Plants go crazy!

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A little boy offers to help his neighbor take care of their houseplants while they’re away, and as each day passes the plants grow and grow, until they’ve filled up the house and are spilling out the windows and doors.  I would have seen it as a child in school or at the library in the early 80s, but the book may be from earlier.  I believe hardcover, with color illustrations ( I want to say ink and/or colored pencil?)  I’ve always been fascinated by plants and this book was my favorite!

227G: A book with an alternate ending

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It is middle school aged, maybe 5th and 6th grade, and very much like a Beverly Cleary book, and it was in the mid to late 60’s that I read it. You flipped it upside down to read the alternate ending, which had a different cover. I loved it back then because it showed that bullies and the bullied are not so much different. The boy had a major challenge…to play in a school concert, it was either a bugle or a trumpet, and that was the end of both versions of the story.

I’ve looked all over and it seems not to be Beverly Cleary. I know I read it about the same time I was reading Beezus and Ramona.

227E: City boy and crusty mountain man thwart horse rustlers, catch and tame wild mustang

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Young adult book; city boy spends the summer in the high country with aunt and uncle who are about to lose their ranch; crusty loner/family friend takes boy into the mountains for a few weeks; they catch and tame wild a mustang and thwart horse rustlers and save aunt and uncle’s ranch.