250A: A Long Lost Christmas Book (Solved)

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Greetings from upstate New York!
I hope you can help me identify and find a book I had as a child.
I do not know the title or what the cover looked like because my copy was missing the cover. But here are the facts as I remember them:

I was born in 1960, so this book had to be late 50’s early – mid 60’s
It was a Christmas book – containing many different stories/legends from the birth of Christ to the real Saint Nicholas to Christmas legends like the Christmas Spider
It was a large, oversized book, say 12″ x 18″ ish. It was not a thick book.

What was so great about it was the artwork – very beautiful renderings – not cartoony or modernish, more like realistic paintings. So the art was appealing for even adults, but the stories were short, maybe one or two per page. If I had to guess, I would say the art style was something similar to this picture below.

stumppic

As a child, the images I remembered the most was the story of St. Nicholas paying the dowries of three poor women. They were all sleeping in a bed and he threw a bag of gold in through the window.
There was also a story of this flying ( but I don’t remember it with wings!), hairy, red-eyed beast with sharp tusks/teeth, but I can’t remember the story. LOL – I don’t think it was Krampus, because it was more like an animal (wolfish) than a human devil guy.
Another feature was the rich colors of the end papers. Like a renaissance fabric pattern. I think red with a little blue and gold in a repeating diamond pattern, I think – it has been a long time since the book was lost or given away.

So I know these are a lot of random details – I wish I had the title and publisher, but maybe you can help me – my desire is to purchase a replacement copy to pass on to future grandkids.

249G: Treasure concealed in a barn

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I read this book in the 90’s but do not know if it was published prior.

There is a young boy whom begrudgingly goes to a family members home (may be a grandparent although I do not recall this aspect specifically). I think it was for his summer vacation. There is a local legend of missing treasure, maybe it was stolen? Many people have looked for the treasure over the years, but of course the boy finds it in a barn. I think the barn was on the property where he had been staying for the summer.

The treasure had been melted down and molded/crafted into items commonly found in a barn and covered or painted to conceal it. I believe he chipped off some paint of a candle stick or something, and the wagon in the barn actually was made of gold and also painted or covered in disguise. I hope this is enough to figure this out, I really loved the book as a kid and now want to read it to my children.

 

 

249F: A girl finds another world at the end of a tunnel (Solved)

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This was a three book series I read a few years ago. My library had them in the “young adult” section. I remember the book cover of one was green, I know one had vines on it. The book was about a girl and her family lived on a kind of farm and she finds this kind of tunnel. On the other side was a whole “colony” of these dwarf like things some of them had wings. There was this kind of Pegasus animal, it was small though and horse-like but had wings. I believe in the second book maybe the third the little girl gets sent to a boarding school and everyone thinks she crazy because she talks about these dwarf things.

One part of the book the Pegasus animal gets hurt and the girl takes care of it for a while in a sort of shed that her family no longer uses. At one point, I know, the two of them spend the night in a tree house sort of thing near the girls house. I know as you read the books it went back and forth of who was “narrating” like one or two chapters would be the girl side and then one or two chapters would be from the “dwarfs” side.

It was a kinda confusing series because it ended up that this little girl had had another life or something a long those lines. I don’t know how much help that is. There was something about a magical “touchstone” that guided the “dwarfs” they had migrated and at the end of the book they migrate again.

249D: On the trail of a stolen dog

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This is a book my 84 year old grandma talks about reading as a little girl, in the 4th grade– it would be so special to find it for her! She believes it was a golden book, circa 1940. The book features a man with a red and black plaid shirt that stole a little boys dog. The man denied stealing the dog, but eventually the dog got away from the mean man and made it back home. When he got home, he had a piece of the man’s red and black plaid shirt still caught in his tooth. The little boy and his father then had proof in the piece of cloth and confronted the mean man. Sorry I don’t have more details for you! Let me know if there is more I can do to aid in your search and I will ask my grandmother for further details.
Thanks again for your time and consideration.

249B: Pancake Shaped Creature

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The book opened with a pancake shaped creature taking a kid under the covers transporting them to another world. The cover was dark blue with the kid in bed pulling the covers up and the creature at the foot of the bed. It was more fantasy than horror.