Boy has messy room. Hoarder. Parents unhappy. Somehow is left on his own in house, uses all dishes, resorts to eating from soap dish, puts all dishes in truck bed to get rained on. Also finds key to locked shed, puts all hoarded stuff in shed, keeps room neat, parents happy, 60s/70s. Line drawings.
A boy builds an airplane from a vacuum cleaner and flies off to rescue his dad. I think it’s to get him home for Christmas. On the way back home they stop off to buy presents for each other, and they buy the boy’s mom some perfume from Paris.
Addition: It’s a picture book – a fairly short story on large, colourful pages. I read it in the 1970s and it seemed of its time. Borrowed from my (then) local library, in fact. Would it help to mention I’m in the UK?
Do not know title or author or even exactly what it was about. I read this book sometime between 1979 and 1982 when I was a preteen, but it may have been published before that. Here’s what I remember: Very dark feel to it. The main character was a boy. It had the feel of Edgar Allan Poe, and there may have been poetry or rhymes but maybe not. It was a mystery perhaps? There may have been a mansion or an iron gate? It took place mostly at nighttime? Most vivid are the drawings — black and white, very similar to Edward Gorey, but I feel perhaps he is not the actual illustrator. I’ve looked through his books and nothing is ringing a bell but it could be him. This may also have just been a short story but I’m not sure. Desperate to find!
This book was published in about 1973 and I think it came from Scholastic. It was called something like “The Power of Three” (there are a few books called that on Amazon, but it’s none of those). Three Welsh(?) teens discover that they are psychic, and worry that they have caused a plane crash.
To begin, there are these gods in the universe that fight/argue with each other because nothing was named yet, either because the universe or the world was just created. So they create a boy/prince (or assign a boy) for the task of naming everything in the universe/world. So the boy goes on an adventures – traveling to many places with a method of travel I cannot seem to recall – assigning names to everything. It is similar to Le Petit Prince (Little Prince) in the fact that the boy does a lot of traveling to distant places (from what I remember). However, I know for sure it was NOT the Little Prince!
I’m pretty sure the boy had a name, the writer could have had influence from foreign stories/myths/legends (Indian/Arabic/possibly Greek?), so the names might have been unusual/unique. Or, there could have been no foreign influence and the names were just general fantasy/mythological-influenced. That part I’m not entirely sure, but it’s just one other factor to throw out there just in case.
Once again, the boy in the story I am referring to was assigned by creator gods the task of naming things. I believe the book had a limited edition printing from the 80s/90s that’s why its very hard to track down.
The copy I had was a hardback *may* have been a dust-jacket, but it was off-white and thick, (roughly 5/5.5 x 8″ dimensions, about .5″ thick). On the cover featured an image of the boy looking down on a cloud, with stars and the moon I think. Unfortunately, that’s all I can remember. If any title comes to mind please post it I will be incredibly thankful.
Published in the late 60’s/early 70s and set on the coast somewhere in England, I think in Elizabethan times. The flying machine (a Leonardo da Vinci type invention) only works properly at the end of the book, when it is used to escape from some people of horseback – it flies over the cliffs and the children escape (maybe to France)
Looking for a book for my Dad, possibly from 1950s/1960s. He only recalls an illustration of children dredging a river in a boat (I think) and the bucket of the dredging boat either had gold ingots painted on it and/or was full of gold too.
I am looking for a book I read back in the early 70s – the book could be from the 60s. It was about a young woman who takes a job as a “nanny” on a cattle farm East of San Francisco, for two young girls who lost their parents. An old woman with a broken leg lives in the house, there are two Aunts to the young girls living there, one is named “Beryl.” There are two hired men who work the cattle farm. There is something suspicious about the old woman and the hired men, as if they are plotting to take over the farm. There is a “maid” who is not very good at her job and this “nanny” title role character ends up taking over the cooking duties as well. She ends up falling in love with one of the hired men and the old woman and the other hired man are arrested for crimes, and the “nanny” and the “good” hired man take over the farm and raise the two young girls at the end. The plot takes place in the Summer as the book always talked about how hot it was. I remember the old woman, along with the two young girls, originally picked the “nanny” up in San Francisco and they ate a meal on Fisherman’s Wharf before departing for the ling car trip to the farm.
Probably 1950’s or earlier, a book with actual wood for front and back covers, like shingles, about life in a logging camp, with black and white drawings of the narrow-gauge railroad used, etc. I remember it as being from a child’s perspective, who was sent to or visiting the camp, and I seem to remember the cookshack and mealtimes as important.
My mom remembers a book that she read to me as a child and she has wondered what the title was ever since. I was a kid in the 80s, and the book was bought used, so: pre-1989 for sure.
The picture book is about a mother and daughter who hang sheets on a clothesline. Something about smelling the freshly washed sheets and then a storm coming.
Thank you for your help! It would be so cool to locate this for my mom.