Category Archives: Unsolved

154A: Green and gold book about the sea

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I was in second grade around 1963 or 1964 in Los Angeles Unified School District.  I remember in the school library there was a book on a book stand.  It was hardcover, green, with gold etching, about half or three quarters inch thick, a bit over-sized.  I desperately wanted to take home that book but couldn’t.  Now I think I dreamed it up.  The words “sea” and “star” and “world” sometimes flit before me.  (It’s not Sea Star by Marguerite Henry or the Sea Around Us by Rachel Carson.)  It was not heavy on text.  I had another epiphany with Holling Clancy Holling (Paddle to the Sea?), but I’ve looked at all of his titles and it’s none of them.  It’s size and feel were definitely Holling — green library binding — but not so wordy.   I can’t get any farther than this, but I MUST find that book!!  It is a true needle in a haystack with no author or title.  I have searched thousands of images of vintage books and can’t find this. 

 

153E: Looking for 70s environmentalist novel

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I am trying to find a book I started to read in middle school, but it is hard for me to remember all of the details because I didn’t finish reading it. It was a novel, I think from the 70s, with a strong environmentalist message, “save the trees” etc. It was about high school students (?), and had intermittent poems throughout the text, including one that went something like “acid rain, like a single tear drop, rolls down the flower”.
It appeared old and worn to me when I was in middle school in 1998, a small hardcover book with blue binding. I think the latest date of publication would be 1980, as it was about environmentalism and the messages were similar to the messages of the 1970s. Sorry I don’t have more details, but let me know if this jogs anyone’s memory.

Thank you!

 

153D: Pulp explorer adventure puzzle book

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At some point during my childhood, early grade school I would guess though I can’t pinpoint further (so circa 20 years ago?), my older brother brought a book home from the college book store at his college, Harvey-Mudd in California.

It was mainly an art book, depicting various Indiana Jones-esque archaeological adventures. The one I most vividly remember was a battle on a rope bridge, with unfortunate explorers tumbling over the side into some great chasm. There was also an introductory page depicting the top of a desk or table, strewn with artifacts obtained from the scenes on the later pages. But beyond that, it was a sort of puzzle book: the pictures were overlaid with what looked like torn-up pieces of a journal or memoir. When pieced together, they provided… something. The backstory of the pictures and artifacts? Clues to some further puzzle or objective you needed to find by hunting for clues in the pictures? I don’t remember ever attempting what was needed to put them together; you’d have to either photocopy and cut up the pages, or trace the fragments with paper and pencil.

Via my own research I’ve discovered there was also a pulp space adventure in the same series. Both had a sort of “many explorers left on this perilous voyage; only I survived” feel to them, so it had to have been aimed at young adults at least.

 

153B: Golden Ball Book

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My book is a fairy tale that is written about a girl who displeases her father and so she’s sent by him to the bottom of the sea in a huge ornate ball.   I know that she meets a prince who eventually gets the ball out of the ocean but that’s all I can remember.

The style of the book is ornate and looked Russian in design.  It must have been prior to 1990 when it was written.  Thank you.

 

153A: Fairy tale and nursery rhyme book

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I had a Fairy tale and Nursery rhyme book when i was a child in the 80’s so i’m assuming it was printed before or up to the late 80’s. It was a big heavy red book and the title included Fairy tales and Nursery Rhymes. The cover had little red riding hood and various characters from all the stories inside. Stories included Cinderella, snow white, heidi, jack and the beanstalk,sleeping beauty, tom thumb, little red riding hood to name a few and some of the rhymes included the old woman that lived in a shoe, little polly flinders, jack and jill, little jack horner, twinkle twinkle little star. I managed to find some of the illustrations on the net but they had no information as to where they came from. I’ll include them with this post. They’re all beautiful color illustrations. So if any one has any idea of the name of this book it would be hugely appreciated

 

152E: ISPY type Children’s Book

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There was a book I owned as a child in the the early/mid 90’s.  It was a hidden objects, interactive book, where I believe each page represented a different country.  There was definitely something about hidden treasures.  I believe after you finished the book, there were extra challenges at the end.  One of them was to find a particular man on each page.  I can’t remember if he was a good or bad guy (i.e. a detective or a thief.)  The one thing I remember absolutely is that on each page there was a capital letter hidden somewhere on the page.  After you found all the letters, you had to unscramble them and it would tell you the location of some hidden treasure ( I think it was some type of goblet.)  I remember that Brazil and China were two of the countries- I believe Russia was there too.  I think the answer to the riddle was that the treasure was hidden in Brazil.   It was a large hard-covered book and title completely escapes me. It might have been Treasure Hunt or something like that.  Any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

152D: Children’s mystery: missing books, secret room

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The book I’m looking for is an English, children’s mystery novel set in an big rambling house, attached to a village bookshop. The main character is a boy whose family has moved there because an aged relative has recently died and left the house and the business to the boy’s father. Either the father, or the boy, is called Kit. The boy has at least one sibling. It was the first book that I’d ever read that mentioned Evensong (what? – my family is Australian and Methodist!). The house is quite close to the village green.
Anyway, the central mystery is that when the family arrives at the house/shop in the new village (I think they’ve come from London), all of the books that should be in stock in the shop – as well as all the books from the house’s library – are missing. Eventually, the boy (with other children, maybe?) discovers a hidden or secret room, with overgrown vegetation hiding the outside windows and a papered-over doorway in the front hall. Obviously, this hidden room contains all the missing books. It’s possible that A Clockwork Orange is mentioned amongst the recovered books.
I read it when I was about eleven (in the early eighties), and the copy I had was a small, second-hand, hardcover edition, with the edges of the pages stained red (I don’t remember the cover’s colour or whether it had a dust-jacket). My father was in the army, so every time we moved, mum would make me rationalize my book collection – this novel was one of the sacrifices! I would love to know a title and author, as it’s been bugging me, since I tried to describe it to a friend, over a week ago.