Tag Archives: short stories

358U: Book of children’s stories written 1930s-40s

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1. No Title (the cover is missing

2. Book is about 100 pages +/-; Chapters are individual stories with a moral such as: Page 17, The Storm, Page 2, The Burglar; Page 71, The Letter to Mama, etc.; also includes black/white photography of animals, children, people, scenes with captions & guessing the “origin” such as “@ Topical” or H.A. Roberts titled “It’s Lots of Fun Helping Daddy” page 64;  or Page 58 Gendreau “Feeding the Horse”;

3. There were at least 1 or 2 others books very similar to the above. Our mom would read a story at nap time or bedtime in the 1940s-1950s; The books we had were soft-back.

355S: Children’s Book, 60s, Green cover?

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I’m looking for a book that I had in the early sixties.
It showed a mom on the cover who was sitting on a sofa in a living room reading from a book.

On the cover of the mom’s book – there was also a picture of a mom reading from a book.

I can’t recall if the children were on the couch with her or were on the floor in front of her as she read.
I think the book had rhymes or poems or stories.  I thought it was green.
Thank you so much for trying to remember this book for me!

348Z: The Griffins Who Loved Tragedies and Other Short Stories (Solved!)

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Collection of magical and wacky short stories for children, I believe it was an anthology of different authors, but I’m not sure. The edition I read in the 2000s had a cover illustrated with dancing pumpkins entwined with various characters from the short stories. It was old, maybe 70s or 80s? One story was of the pumpkins, someone tended them too well and they danced around the town causing havoc, another involved too much bubblegum. The only story I remember in detail was one of an author who wrote comedies. Everyone loved them, but he dreamed of writing tragedies. Whenever he tried submitting tragedies to his publisher, he was turned down. Being the father of two boys, he can’t afford to stop writing his jokes. These two boys also wanted a swimming pool. One night the author threw his tragedy out the window, and the pages floated to the mountains. The next few nights he heard crying coming from the mountain – and finally he went to investigate. There he found a griffin, crying over a few pages of his manuscript. Griffins, apparently, love tragedies. So the author offers to write him more, and give dramatic readings, and the griffin brings his friends, and their tears flow down the mountain, and become a natural swimming pool for the author’s boys, who become the best swimmers at their school.

348Y: The Magician’s Windows and Other Short Stories (Solved!)

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Seeking a collection of magical, short stories for children illustrated with grayscale sketches. I believe it was one author. The edition I read in the earlier 2000s was older, maybe 60s or 70s, and had black and white sketches for each story. The stories I remember include one of an acrobat who had never touched the ground since the day they were born, and it ends sadly when their lover is hurt and they fall from the sky?; a magician who had different colored window panes in each room of his house, and to the children who visited each window looked out to a different world, a yellow desert, a green jungle, a blue Atlantis; and two sisters whose parents each separately made deals with the sun and the moon so the babies would live – when the girls were grown they were light and dark, life and death. The light girl was always singing and keeping the parents happy, but the dark girl never sang until the parents were tired of the light girl’s songs – then the dark girl sang her only song, a song of eternal rest. Mostly what I remember from the book was how mystical and melancholic it felt.

309U: Illustrated colour hardcover short stories from around world

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I am looking for a children’s book I had as a child. It had short stories (1-2 pages) per story and they were different stories from around the world. There were a lot of different stories – at least 25 plus.

I recall three – one was the leprachaun, another about a boy who had egg nest soup and I think there was one about ananzi

I got the book as a gift – it would have been late 1980’s or early 1990’s. I think it would have been published in South Africa.

308F: Straw Soldier in a Lollipop Field

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Large format anthology children’s book with 1930s or 1940s art deco artwork. The only details I remember about the stories is one involved a joey that ate a lot of lady fingers and sodas in a drugstore before being found by his mother and another story which includes a scene where a child gets chased by a scarecrow-esque straw soldier through (I think) a lollipop field. I was given the book back in 1970 and it was quite old then. The two scenes I described above were illustrated so they stand out as a memory. The pictures were in color but only in that two-color green and orange that was popular back then (the book may even be as old as the 1920s. . . the style of art was certainly in line with that era).

Thanks!

307J: Children’s anthology with a very big toe

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Children’s anthology, the edition I had in the 80s had a red cover, stories were all illustrated and included one about a king who couldn’t find shoes to wear because his Big toe was very long, eventually found a man that made him silk stockings with the toes done in black thread and shoes that had toes that curled up at the end so his long toe would fit. Another story was about a fairy that was sad because she couldn’t go to the fairy party (maybe a midsummer’s eve party) because her clothes were tattered. Her mice friends borrowed silk from the silk worms that they wove into a dress and dyed it blue with berries, then they found cornflowers for her to wear in her hair because her eyes were blue. Another story was about a little girl who lived in Holland and whose father was a tulip farmer. They grew every color tulip. Somehow her father created a bigger tulip bulb for her that grew into a larger tulip that was rainbow colored. There may have also been a story about an emperor and a nightingale, but I didn’t read that one as much as the other stories in the book. Thank you for your help!!