Category Archives: Unsolved

135A: good witch bakes muffins for her next door neighbour

A children’s book with stories about witches & wizards from the late 80s/early 90s.

The book had colourful illustrations; one witch had striped leggings & funky punk clothing/ hair.

One story was about witch baking special muffins that turned a girl into a goblin to make friends.

Update . . . . . .

I think I mixed up a couple of stories from that book I had wanted to be found… I believe the good witch in that particular children’s book actually gives her neighbour-girl a hat that turns her into monster to make friends with the other little monsters that also live around the area… I hope you can find this book… I’ve been trying to search for it for many years.

 

134D: Readers Digest Collection

This was a collection of tales that had been published originally in Readers Digest. Included was a story about a family being slowly poisoned by the lead in a decorative pitcher they drank from every day. There was also one in which a car breaks down in the desert and the children coat their lips with the mother’s lipstick to avoid them drying out. (At one point they get so hungry they eat the lipstick, I think)

 

134A: Burgundy tooled leather children’s storybook set sold w encyclopedia 1950s

The books were regular sized, approximately 8.5 x 11″ and were numbered. Maybe 8 to 12 of them? Illustrations were art deco or art nouveau (I get them confused). Not lots of vivid colors. Heavy black lines/white/gray/yellow/rose colors. Each book had stories and poems. I am not positive that they came with a set of encyclopedias, but that is my general recollection. I could have been World Book or Encyclopaedia Britannica, since we acquired both around the same time. Any ideas?

133G: The Blue Chest

I am looking for a children’s book written between 1940 and 1965, for ages 10-12 years old. It is the story of a family that moves from a house to an apartment, I believe in New York City, and the children find a hidden room in the apartment behind a blue or pink chest. It may had a few illustrations in it. Also, the mother sews their clothes and makes matching outfits for the boy and girl. I read this book just when I moved to a new school, in 1967, and really hope to find it!

133F: Garbage spaceship

Hi! I’m looking for a children’s book – LIkely from mid to late 80’s.  It was hard cover with beautiful full page illustrations.  It was something about a boy who built a spaceship out of garbage – I remember a barrel being the fusalage – there was also a monster that was built out of garbage.

 

133E: Clickety Clack Train Book 1960-70s

Children’s book about a train. Published 1960-70s. Rhythmic/rhyming book with verse” Clickety clack, clickety clack…..train going (a)’roud the track” It is NOT the book by Amy and Rob Spence. It was definitely published before I was born in 1978.

Additional Details:  Approximate number of pages are less than 15; the colors within the book are reds/yellows. The verses were very rhythmic…you could almost sing them. It is also NOT the “Little Engine That Could” book.

 

133D: Thanksgiving(?) Children’s Picture Book from the 60s or 70’s

I remember a getting a book out from the school library in grades 4-6 (1967-1970), though it might have been an older book even then. Don’t remember much about it except it took place in the fall, I’m thinking around Thanksgiving? and it may have had a mix of humans and animal characters in it. The reason I say this is I distinctly remember on the last page that a little girl goes back to someone’s “ house” that may have been  in a tree stump? and had coffee and pumpkin pie. Definitely not “Cranberry Thanksgiving”, but had the same cosy, New England, kind of feel to it.

 

133C: Child creates mini world

Christian children’s book about a boy who finds a machine that lets him make a mini world and 2 beings. They have 4 arms each and one jumps off the edge of the world and the boy saves him. He shrinks himself to tell the being but they don’t believe him and throw him over thinking he will be saved to.