This book is likely 25 years old or more, written by a man who got kicked out of Marine boot camp, and had to wear a pink suit of some sort in front of his former class of recruits. That was one of his low points. I saw an interview of him on television after he had made good in life. It is his story of redemption.
This book was probably printed in the late 1960s or early ’70s and probably took place at the same time. I remember it as one of those very inexpensive quarter of a normal sized books, with a dark olive background and a fluffy white bluish cat with a pink ribbon and candy behind it.
A little girl has just started a new school or just generally goes unnoticed. I think she is extremely shy and lacks self-confidence, and her family may also have less money that the other children. I’m not sure about that. Her school is having a cat show which seems unlikely, but that’s what I remember. The owner of a nearby candy store has a litter of kittens and all of the other children rush in and claim the beautiful and lively kittens. Our main character hangs back, but the kindly store owner gives her what is obviously the runt, a bedraggled white kitten to take home. I think the girl may have named it Peppermint.
Her mother comforts her and gives it bath and adds bluing to the water. The cat turns out to be a beautiful long-haired kitten and wins first prize.
I loved the picture of the light blue cat with the pink bow around it’s neck, especially since my grandmother told me about doing the same thing to her white poodle during the Depression. You took your fun wherever you could get it back then. I’ve despaired of ever finding a copy of this book because it was in such a “throw-away” format. Thanks in advance if you can help!
From the ‘70s or early ‘80s. A girl goes by herself to live with a relative (grandma or aunt) but when she arrives, the relative isn’t there for some reason, and nothing was communicated to the girl’s mother, so she decides to stay in the relative’s house and do things on her own. She cooks, cleans, does grocery shopping, etc., and tells the people of the town that her relative is at home and the girl is just doing all the errands. It’s NOT Charley or The Girl Who Ran Away.
A group of teenage outcasts believe they are being sent by their parents to an OutWard Bound type boarding school. They come to realize that their parents have decided they would rather have them dead and the “teachers” are out to get them. Coming together, they attempt to cope with this fact and escape their fate.
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)