{"id":4511,"date":"2017-06-13T10:34:22","date_gmt":"2017-06-13T14:34:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/w1.loganberrybooks.com\/stumpthebookseller\/?p=4511"},"modified":"2017-06-13T10:34:22","modified_gmt":"2017-06-13T14:34:22","slug":"297n-billy-and-the-spinach-fairy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/w1.loganberrybooks.com\/stumpthebookseller\/297n-billy-and-the-spinach-fairy\/","title":{"rendered":"297N: Billy and the Spinach Fairy"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I’m looking for a very old book called Billy and the Spinach Fairy<\/em>. It is a story that appears in a few places, but I’m specifically looking for the illustrated stand-alone book.<\/p>\n

Billy and the Spinach Fairy<\/em> is a book from the early 1930s or earlier. The latest it would be published would be 1936, but I suspect it is older than that.<\/p>\n

I found one unillustrated copy of the story in “A Story for Every Day: 365 Bedtime Stories<\/em>,” Whitman Publishing Co., Racine, Wisconsin, c 1931: Feb. 4 story, pp. 34-36. (No individual author listed).<\/p>\n

A reprint of the story, with slightly different text, appeared on page 67 in the October 31, 1943 edition of the Oakland Tribune. It was on a page of story submissions from children. It was supposed to have original stories, but a child plagiarized the story and submitted it as her own. I have attached a digital copy of the page, a digital close up of the story, and my own retyping of that close-up, which is difficult to read in the digital newspaper copy. I corrected two spelling errors in my retyping, but otherwise it is identical to what appears in the newspaper.<\/p>\n

If I could find this book, I would make my 85 year old mother very, very happy. She is an avid reader, and this book is the first book she learned to read when she was a little girl. She and her older sister remember it vividly and have described it to me in great detail, so I know it exists. They both speak of a detailed picture of a fairy living in a quilt on a little boy’s bed. The fairy has a hat with a feather.<\/p>\n

I have done an extensive search, including: AbeBooks (my query from 2010 is still posted on their website); I have contacted a rare children’s book dealer in NY; I’ve gone to the reading room of the Jewish Heritage Center in NYC, that has a book called The Story of a Boy Who Did Not Like Spinach<\/em>\u00a0by Abraham Hyman Friedland.\u00a0That was a Hebrew book and was a different story entirely. I’ve gone to the Princeton University rare children’s book center and looked at Lois Lenski’s book, Spinach Boy<\/em>, and that’s not it either.<\/p>\n

Billy and the Spinach Fairy<\/em> is out there. Somewhere. In someone’s attic; on a shelf; or in a box. Please help me find this book for my mom before it’s too late.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’m looking for a very old book called Billy and the Spinach Fairy. It is a story that appears in a few places, but I’m specifically looking for the illustrated stand-alone book. Billy and the Spinach Fairy is a book from the early 1930s or earlier. The latest it would be published would be 1936, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[7,19],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/w1.loganberrybooks.com\/stumpthebookseller\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4511"}],"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=4511"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/w1.loganberrybooks.com\/stumpthebookseller\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4511\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4512,"href":"http:\/\/w1.loganberrybooks.com\/stumpthebookseller\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4511\/revisions\/4512"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/w1.loganberrybooks.com\/stumpthebookseller\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4511"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/w1.loganberrybooks.com\/stumpthebookseller\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4511"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/w1.loganberrybooks.com\/stumpthebookseller\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4511"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}