{"id":3561,"date":"2016-06-21T11:00:57","date_gmt":"2016-06-21T15:00:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/w1.loganberrybooks.com\/stumpthebookseller\/?p=3561"},"modified":"2016-06-21T11:00:57","modified_gmt":"2016-06-21T15:00:57","slug":"266d-scary-picture-book-about-a-monster-that-constructs-itself-from-other-animalsplants","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/w1.loganberrybooks.com\/stumpthebookseller\/266d-scary-picture-book-about-a-monster-that-constructs-itself-from-other-animalsplants\/","title":{"rendered":"266D: Scary picture book about a monster that constructs itself from other animals\/plants"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I’m hoping you’ll be able to help me find a picture\u00a0<\/span>book from my childhood that I have been searching for for years. My mum borrowed it from our local library (in Victoria, Australia) sometime in the 90s, perhaps any time from 1997 onwards. It was a dark (both in theme and illustration style)\u00a0<\/span>picture book with detailed illustrations similar to those of Gary Crew’s\u00a0The Watertower<\/i>. I think it was designed for older readers (8-12 years). I used to think\u00a0the title was\u00a0<\/span>Is Any Body There?<\/i><\/b>, but I’ve searched so many libraries, bookstores and databases for it that I must have got the title wrong.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

In the book,\u00a0<\/span>the protagonist is\u00a0walking through different landscapes that have recently\u00a0been destroyed by something or someone.\u00a0<\/span>The protagonist\u00a0walks into the woods and says “Is any body there?” (or something along those lines). The wood’s inhabitants reply something like “Yes, somebody was here”, and the trees say something like “It\u00a0took\u00a0<\/span>our branches”.\u00a0\u00a0I think other animals in the woodland also said that they had parts stolen from them,\u00a0but I can only remember the trees.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n


\n<\/span>The protagonist\u00a0continues journeying and reaches a lake, where\u00a0<\/span>they\u00a0also say, “Is any body there?”. The inhabitants of the lake also respond “Yes, somebody was here”, and say that something stole their body parts too. I can only remember the fish saying “It stole our eyes”. The illustrations very vividly depicted the fish under the water, with empty eye sockets.<\/span><\/p>\n


\nThe protagonist follows the trail of destruction through\u00a0several other landscapes (sorry, I can’t remember them) and\u00a0arrives at a house in a forest (I think).\u00a0<\/span>The protagonist\u00a0makes\u00a0<\/span>their\u00a0way to the basement, where\u00a0<\/span>they\u00a0say for the final time, “Is any body there?”. A\u00a0response comes\u00a0from the darkness: “Yes, some body is here”. On the final page, there is a detailed illustration of a monster that is clearly\u00a0constructed from all of the parts stolen from the animals, trees and environments.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The illustrations were in dark, earthy shades and I think it’s possible that the narration was either first- or\u00a0second-person to heighten the immersion, but I can’t remember much more about the book than that. I’ve spoken to several librarians (including one who worked at the library we borrowed the book from originally) and booksellers, and no one knows of this book. Only my sister remembers it, otherwise I would have thought I’d fabricated it entirely.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Any help in solving this would be very, very much appreciated – this mystery has been annoying me for too long!\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Many thanks,<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’m hoping you’ll be able to help me find a picture\u00a0book from my childhood that I have been searching for for years. My mum borrowed it from our local library (in Victoria, Australia) sometime in the 90s, perhaps any time from 1997 onwards. It was a dark (both in theme and illustration style)\u00a0picture book with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[13,4,3,19,5],"tags":[271],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/w1.loganberrybooks.com\/stumpthebookseller\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3561"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/w1.loganberrybooks.com\/stumpthebookseller\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/w1.loganberrybooks.com\/stumpthebookseller\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/w1.loganberrybooks.com\/stumpthebookseller\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/w1.loganberrybooks.com\/stumpthebookseller\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3561"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/w1.loganberrybooks.com\/stumpthebookseller\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3561\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3562,"href":"http:\/\/w1.loganberrybooks.com\/stumpthebookseller\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3561\/revisions\/3562"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/w1.loganberrybooks.com\/stumpthebookseller\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3561"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/w1.loganberrybooks.com\/stumpthebookseller\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3561"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/w1.loganberrybooks.com\/stumpthebookseller\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3561"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}