Category Archives: Unsolved

198H: Black cat escapes from pet carrier

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Late 60’s, early 70’s I want to say. As I remember, it was a black and white picture book about a black cat that gets out of it’s pet carrier(?) an walks through the city. I remember the pictures in this book being high quality black and white photographs. The most I can recall about the “plot” once the cat somehow gets out of it’s carrier it travels through the was once referred to as the “ghetto.” Anyways, it’s a long shot but the book had a huge influence on me about inner-city strife and that we as a people need to try to keep trying to improve everyone’s lot in life. I think this is a great little service you have. Cheers.

198F: Hot air balloon moving book

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Hi! Looking for a childhood book, I grew up in the 80’s. It had a cut out hot air balloon that moved from page to page under flaps and through slots. The premise was children searching for something (a kite I believe?) I remember the hot air balloon cut out being red and yellow striped (and in our familys case very well loved and taped many times). The reader had the balloon follow a dotted path on each page I believe, so that it landed in the right pocket or slot. I dont remember much more, hoping you can help me I’ve been searching for a long time

198E: Picture book 1960s, tic tac toe game

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We borrowed this strange book many times from the library when my sons were small in the late 1960s. It was an American publication, as the creatures played ‘tic tac toe’ which we would call noughts & crosses. Quite a large picture book – little text I think, very detailed soft grey illustrations with small animal characters in greyscale photographic collage on (pencil-drawn?) landscapes. A very peculiar book indeed, dream-like with a minimal plot and not like anything else I’ve ever seen.

198C: The Changeling (I think).

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I read this book in the 70s. It was a chapter book. I’m a little vague on the plot, but I think a few kids get sent away to the country (might have been England wartime a la Lion Witch and Wardrobe). They go outside, and they are in a different world. There are SO many books named Changeling that I’ve been unable to find it. It is NOT the Snyder book.

198B: Dog saves cat from fire

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My brothers and I are trying to recall the name of a book that we read when we were small in the 1950’s. Of course, we would also like to find a copy of it.
The book was about a dog (perhaps a German Shepherd) and a cat who were “friendly enemies.” My oldest brother thinks the cat might have been named Queenie and she might have had three legs. They lived with a family in a cabin near the woods. The story ends with a big forest fire where the dog, despite the abuse he took from the cat, saved the cat from the fire in an heroic sort of way.
For whatever reason, this story rekindles lots of emotion for us. My oldest brother is going through chemo and I am hoping we can find this story for him.

197H: Boy survives wilderness attack and tries to save friend

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I used to read this as a kid so I’m assuming was published pre-1980. At the beginning the setting is of a boy and a man in the wilderness (in a cave?)(set in 1700s-1800s). Either as part of the initial story or as an event that already occurred the man is attacked by 2(?) other men and left to die. The boy makes it out alive to a town and initially recuperates in a feather bed (there was a lengthy description of the bed). He then returns to the house where he lives (step child or orphan?) and after going upstairs hears his mean stepfather(?) talking with the very men that were the attackers. They describe returning to the scene to recover some loot (maybe to finish the job or kill someone else?). The boy escapes to try to beat the men to the destination and provide a warning, cannot remember how it ends.

197F: Orphan gilrl and janitor´s son rescue children from beeing stolen their hearts and turned into ravens / crows

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I´m looking for an english Children´s book, which my aunt used to read (in it´s german translation) before 1960. As long as she remembers is the story about an orphan child (female). This girl is sent to her uncle who lives in some kind of castle or gloomy manor house on an island. A janitor, who´s gatehouse lies at the end of a tunnel and wolves seem to play an importend role. A vicious man steals the hearts of the children in the village and turnes them into ravens / crows. The girl contracts a friendship to the son of the janitor and they rescue the children. The story brings in mind A. Lindgrens „Mio my son“ or J, Aiken „The Wolves of Willoughby Chase“ but it´s none of them.

197D: Mattressland Adventure

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My dad read this book in England in the late 40s or early 50s. It’s about a boy who is sick in the summer and he’s hot in bed (possibly in an attic bedroom). His grandmother keeps piling blankets on to him despite his being too hot. He eventually falls asleep, but when he wakes up, he’s not in his bed. He’s in a world that’s covered in a mattress (i.e. the ground is a mattress). He stabs a knife into the ground and feathers come streaming out. He has adventures in this magical place. My dad is the one who was delivering plot points, and that’s all he can remember about the book. Publication will not be later than the late 1950s.

197C: Man awakes from cryogenic sleep to a dystopic future

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I’m looking from a book that I think would have been published in the 80s, maybe very early 90s (I read it in a school library in 1994)

It’s a first-person narrative about a man who was experimentally frozen in modern times and then woken up in the future (100 years maybe). There’s an ostensibly benign non-elected government in charge now and society is divided into worker-classes. He’s a curiosity when he is un-frozen, so is assigned to the highest class of citizen.

Over the course of the book he begins a relationship with a woman and finds out that (surprise) the luxury lifestyles of the upper class are sustained only by terrible exploitation of the lower. He makes plans to escape the country (or maybe just city) but as they’re fleeing he finds out she’s been replaced by an android version of herself (this is how dissenters to the regime are removed). He knows it’s not her because when he holds her hand he can’t feel the scar on her finger.

The only concrete detail I can remember, beyond the scar on the finger, is at one point he is explaining how voting worked to the woman, and he says that even though people at the time complained about politicians, at least everyone had a part in the political process.