Category Archives: Unsolved

191H: alligator or crocodile lady who is dressed in women’s clothes

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I’m looking for a children’s fiction book that my father used to read to me in the 1980’s. It’s about an alligator or crocodile lady who is dressed in women’s clothes. She has three parrots/birds and they are always telling her what to do. They say, “Cook spaghetti! Make popcorn!” At the end of the book, her house overflows with popcorn. It would mean the world to my father and I to be able to find this book and read it together again! Thank you!

191C: Dirty Little Pig ?

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This book was probably published between 1942-1965. It was about a family that lived near train tracks so that the soot covered everything in the house, including the family. The doctor was sent for and I remember he looked everything over and said, “Hmmmmm” which I thought was funny as a small child. The illustration I remember was of a pig sleeping in an open dresser drawer. I seem to recall the illustrations were not in color but more like sketches. I have searched for this book for 10+ years. Nobody has ever heard of it.
Also, if this helps, my mother belonged to something called the Junior Literary Guild and many of my books as a child were JLG books. Maybe this one was as well. My older siblings thought the book was called The Dirty Family or the Dirty Little Pig or that “dirty” was a part of the title.

191A: Orphans living with elderly relative, doorknobs made of diamonds

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A childrens book written before 1968 involving orphans living with elderly relative. all are poor. female child falls asleep in a turret room and is transported to a magical world where she and other children help the creatures in some kind of war. Upon return the doorknobs in the house are discovered to be real diamonds. There is a bad child that ends up in a gazing ball in the garden. I have been trying to remember the title and or author of this book for years. I loved it as a child and want very much to get a copy for my grandchildren.

190B: Schizophrenic Teen

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I’m looking for a book that was probably from the mid to late-1970s. It was about a high school girl, and I believe she was schizophrenic. There was a pond involved, and at one point she had her face down in the pond and was only saved when her older brother’s friend saw her and intervened. It was probably a Scholastic Books offering.

189C: Story about a woman turned into a mountain lion by a fairy

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This is actually a short story, from a collection of fantasy/SF stories probably published in the early-mid 1980s, possibly a little later.

It’s about a woman who rescues a fairy from her cat. The fairy casts a spell that, at the next full moon, turns her into a mountain lion. She escapes from her house, leaving blood on the shredded sheets, into the country, where she learns to hunt for food and encounters a male mountain lion (and a zookeeper) at a zoo. Meanwhile, stories of her disappearance center around an animal attack. After another cycle of the moon, she turns back into a woman.