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K5: Kittens
Solved: Katie The Kitten


K7: Kittens, dirty
Solved: The Kittens Who Hid From Their Mother

K9: Kidnapping of the coffepot
Solved: The Kidnapping of the Coffee Pot

K10: Kingfisher family
Solved: Peaky Beaky


K11: Kittens from a cave
Solved:  Jenny's Surprise Summer
K12: Keeper

This was a science fiction paperback book that I first read in the mid to late 70's.  Truth be told, I wasn't able to finish reading the book, so I am not even clear about how it might have ended or what the details of the story line might be!  Nice one for you to try and figure out, huh?! :)  I vaguley remember that it was a coming of age story about a boy who lived possibly on another planet and either he, or someone close to him, changed into some other creature that floated slowly in the air.  That particular scene had a very dreamlike quality.   It was a great book that I have always regretted not finishing and having a copy for my own. Can you help?

Could this be The Boy Who Could Fly?  It was about a boy who had a younger brother that was very different, special, and could do weird things.  At the very end the boy levitates in front of many other witnesses, looking to the older boy like Buddha.  Very dream-like ending, and it was in the Sci-Fi area of our gradeschool library, (for lack of a better classification - today it would be called new age).  Some scenes you might remember - going on a train with younger brother to spend a month with their grandparents.  The older boy disliked his little brother for being so special, getting all the attention, etc, but comes to realize at the end that he IS special, and he loves him.
I haven't read this, so it's vague, but what about The Keeper of the Isis Light by Monica Hughes, published 1980? It's part of a trilogy (Guardian of Isis, The Isis Pedlar) set on another planet, or an a beacon in space. Olwen, 16 Earth years or 10 Isis years old, keeps the beacon by herself. She's the main character but there is a boy involved. She's also been genetically altered in some way to fit her for the work and environment, and there's some question whether the boy and his colleagues can adjust to dealing with her. No idea about floating, though.
K12 - this is defintely NOT Keeper of the Isis Light - no flying in that, I've just read it again for a children's literature conference.
Definitely not Keeper of the Isis Light where the girl who is the Keeper (whose name eacpes me for the moment) has been 'genetically modified' (!) by her robot companion to be able to survive the conditions on Isis without breathing apparatus, extra UV protection etc. But there is no flying except in 'floater'-type vehicles. Has the poster checked Penelope Farmer's The Summer Birds- though my memory of this is more 'magic' than sci-fi.
Isaac Asimov.  Story of a boy visiting a planet with his mother to decice whether the human colonists can take over the whole planet. He realises that the rock like creatures are intelligent by telepathy with one of the young ones. Coming of age involves flying. In order to convice everyone of their intelligence he suggests that the young rock creature make the shape of something to do with Christmas (angel?) in the sky, thereby proving that they must be intelligent to have understood his suggestion. It's the only children's book by Asimov that I know of
Robert Heinlein, Podkayne of Mars,  late 60's.  This is one of my least favorite Heinlein book for kids. In it there is a male main character, a female who is extremely bossy (I think) and a fairylike creature from another planet that the female character adopts. It may be far fetched, but when I read this discription and the other solutions...I thought of this book.
Robert Heinlein, Red Planet Maybe this book set on Mars. Definite coming of age story. As a part of it, a teenage boy has a pet "martian" named Willis who is small, cute, etc. Later in the book, Willis transforms into something else much different. The colonists never knew this would happen because they had not been on Mars long enough to see the creatures go through adolescence. Thought there were several species of Martians. Turns out it is one species but different ages take different forms.



K16: Kitten family
Solved: Nine Lives Collection 

K17: "Kitty carol"
Something to do with a little girl who was an orphan. I read it in the 1950's, but the book belonged to my mother...so the age of the book is unknown to me.

K18: Karen Kay
Solved: Big Little Kitty 

K19: Kubla Khan kids
Solved: Next Door to Xanadu

K20: Kate
Solved: Kate


K21: Kittens born in the city
Solved: Wild Cat 

K22: Katie Wants to Play
Solved: Katy Rose is Mad 

K23: King gets lost after dark
From what I recall, there was a king who got lost after dark.  The illustrations were quite memorable, simple basic colors.

King Nunn the Wiser, 1970?  Picture book - King travels through all sorts of adventures in the dark that are not at all what he thinks they are
Thank you.  I would like to find information of the title that you mentioned.  Do you know who the author might be?
I think the author of King Nonn (?Nunn) the Wiser is Colin McNaughton, but no longer have a copy in stock to check - thought I had and have been looking for it - hence the delay in getting back to you about it!
I haven't been able to find reference to this...
More on the suggested - King Nonn the Wiser, written and illustrated by Colin McNaughton, published Heinemann 1981, 32 pages. "King Nonn was very happy in his library, reading all day and getting always more short-sighted. But his subjects wanted him to fight dragons and right wrongs, so sadly he and his short-sighted horse went off in search of adventure. It was all around him - giants, haunted forests, distressed maidens, dragons - but he saw none of them. After unhorsing, by accident, his warlike neighbour King Blagard of Rong, he returns  home to find himself a hero. Thankfully he returns to his library." (Junior Bookshelf Dec/81 p.242)
Fred Gwynne, The King Who Rained.  This may not be your book title but Fred Gwynne wrote and illustrated a few children's books, word play, etc.



K24: Kangaroo mail truck
Solved: Too Many Pockets

K25: Knicker knick, Knacker knack
Solved: Nikkernik, Nakkernak and Nokkernok

K26: King and Cat
When my family moved most of my favorite books were lost or sold. The book I'm now looking for is probably from England. It is about a King who is to be receiving a present, specifically a cat. The townspeople guess at what the cat will look like, and even imagine it as an enormous fat mean cat who towers over the town like Godzilla. In the end, a giant box is delivered and a small kitten walks out.

K27: Kidnapped
Solved: Ransom
K28: Kids ride cloud meet turtle

Two children, a brother and a sister, are ustairs at home by a window.  They catch a ride on a passing cloud, which takes them far away.  They disembark at a strange place.  I believe there was a roundish building about.  There they meet and make friends with a huge, turtle-like creature.  The creature has a different object (such a phone, for example) hidden under each of the plates in his shell.  Eventually, the kids return home.  I remember the book's being a bit wider than it was tall, and there was a lot of orange in the cover (which, if memory serves, featured the creature).
K29: Kittens Found Inside Bus Seat

Solved: The Wild Warning


K30: Kumquats and pitter patter
Solved: Gunniwolf
K31: Kim and her dolls

I am looking for a beautifully illustrated book c. 1950's-1960's about a little girl and her dolls.  I think the little girl's name was Kim. Either the little girl, or her doll was Kim, and I believe it was the little girl.  I bought it for my daughter named Kim and she has always remembered how much she loved the book and we have looked for a copy of it for years.  Can you help me?

Kim Yaroshevskaya, Little Kim's Doll.  Might not be this one as it seems to be more recent, could be a reprint though?



K32: Know Nothings are key characters
Some kids have an underground/other world type adventure that involves some characters called The Know Nothings. I think the book was purple. Had it read to me in about 1973 and it was a library book, so may be much older.

K32 know nothings: could this be The Secret World of Og, by Pierre Berton, published McClelland & Stewart 1961, 146 pages? The first edition was illustrated by William Winter, with a green cover, but the 1974 edition with illustrations by Patsy Berton, does have some purple on the cover. The story is about Penny, Pamela, Patsy, Peter, and the baby Paul (Pollywog) who find a tunnel under their playhouse that leads to the world of Og. The Ogs are short and greenskinned with floppy ears who have learned about the upper world by stealing and reading comic books. There is no actual reference to 'Know-Nothings' but the Ogs are pretty ignorant.


2002

K33: Kitten finds a home
Solved: Up and Away

K34: Kathy Hicks
Solved: Cindy Bakes a Funny Cake

K35:  Katie Rose
Solved: Katy Rose is Mad 
K36:  Kids travel back in time from NY to New Amsterdam

Solved: The Magic Tunnel 

K37: Kitten Stories
Solved: Bedtime Stories 
K38: kids learn to eat foods they dislike

I'm looking for a book that I remember reading in elementary school in the 1950s.  It's about kids who end up away from their home in a fantasy land.  They can't get home until they complete three tasks, one of which is learning to like foods that they dislike.  I can't remember the other two tasks or anything else about the book but would appreciate it if someone else can.  Thanks!

Juliana Horatia Ewing, Amelia and the Dwarfs, 19th century.  The description sounds as though it *might* be this story, which was part of a collection of short stories by Mrs. Ewing, "The Brownies and Other Stories". Amelia, a naughty spoilt child, is spirited away to a fantasy land, where she has to complete several tasks, which, as far as I remember, include not learning to *like* certain foods, but finishing the foods that she has wasted. She also has to mend the clothes that she has torn  repair the conversations that she has interrupted (!) and possibly something else as well.


2003

K39:  King and Three Sons
Solved: The King's Wish and Other Stories


K40:  Kittens eat garden
Solved: Bedtime Stories


K41:  Kooma of the Jungle
Solved: The White Panther


K42: Krakatau
Solved: The Twenty-One Balloons


K43: Kids find hidden room in house, smugglers
Solved: Secret of Smuggler's Wood


K44: Kings and Queens (?) may be part of title
Solved:  Kings and Queens

K45: Koala bear in airplane
koala bear in airplane wearing a parachute sees the lights of Paris. Sepia illustration. Probably published mid "30's to 40,s.

K46: Kitten with Ribbons
Solved: Big Little Kitty


K47: kiki marie
Solved: Pinky Marie -The Story Of Her Adventure With The Seven Bluebirds


K48:  Kids mistakenly leave train
Solved: Dolphin Luck


K49:  Kids in London Thwart Thieves
I read two books at about the same time while in a catholic grade school. I enjoyed them very much and they got me interested in reading longer adventure stories (geared to pre-teen boys). One I found on this website and it was written in 1965. I figure this other book was written around the same time.  Some of the details I relate may be faulty memories, but what little I remember of the story was that it dealt with a group of kids from a working class (?) neighborhood in England - London I believe. They somehow become suspicious of a group of men who open a shop next to a bank. They finally put the clues together and discover that the men are tunneling from the shop to the bank vault in order to rob it. As I recall, they deduce this when they see one of the men come out of the shop wearing a mackintosh on a bright, sunny day - he is hiding tools or dirt under the mack. The kids develop some ruse to expose the robbers and the men are caught.

I may be way off base, but if the book you read was heavily illustrated, it was possibly the Adventures of the Black Hand Gang.
No, it wasn’t Adventures of the Black Hand Gang. I checked into that one and it isn’t the same book. Someone told me about a series called The Secret Seven by Enid Blyton, but I’m not familiar with it and don’t know whether any story is similar to my recollection. I looked up some information about her and the description of the kids and types of adventures in the series sounds somewhat similar. I’m not sure how much my memory melds different recollections into one, but the detail I recall as being in the story most is the incident with the man wearing the mackintosh in the warm sun as what the kids notice to solve the mystery.
I am not sure, but am wondering if this could be one of Roy Brown's books. He wrote quite a few mystery/ adventure stories about working class London children. Titles include A Saturday in Pudney, The Day of the Pigeons, The Viaduct and several others.
Robert Martin, Joey and the Mail Robbers.  The "Joey" series by Robert Martin was about a group of working class kids in London who solve mysteries and prevent crimes. There are many titles in the series and the author wrote similar books under other names as well as "Robert Martin". "Joey and the Mail Robbers" is a likely title but there are other possibilities including non-Joey books by this author.
Astrid Lindgren, Bill Bergson Lives Dangerously.  I have the vaguest feeling that the raincoat scene is in this book or one of the other two Bill Bergson books.
Kind of a longshot, but some elements are the same. Here's teh plot synopsis: "A bunch of French children with a headless wooden horse get involved with a gang of thieves who plan to rob the Dijon-Paris Express. The theft completed, the money is hidden overnight in a nearby novelty factory and the key to the money inside the wooden horse. Helped by a horde of dogs the children manage to catch the crooks before they can get away with the money."  Working class children, adventure, crooks- but in Paris. And its probably not right because I would tink you'd remember the horse
C. Day Lewis, Otterbury Incident. This could be it.  Try it anyway it's very well written. Two English working-class kids groups play war games with each other (this was pretty soon after WWII) but then work together to catch the bank robbers.  Very well done.  I believe Ardizzone was the illustrator.



K50: Kids on an island in summer; lagoon;  adventures; cove
Solved: Gone-Away Lake


K51: kangaroo gives other animal an apron with pockets
Solved: Katy No-Pocket

K52: Kitten named Socks
Solved: Socks (Cleary)


K53: Kitten-Sewing Machine Swap
Solved: Me and Emily and the Cat


K54: Kids Paint old lady's apartment in the 1970's
There were some city kids that paint an apartment of an old lady. I don't know why, but on one page there is a huge lion. And all the colors are oranges and yellows and greens. And there is a sun behind the lion and lots of other animals, a rabbit in the bottom right hand corner, and lots of tropical plants. That's all I know. 

K55: Kids meet mysterious woman in the Old South
Solved: Zeely


K56: knotholes cats windows secret-passages
Solved: Mansion of Secrets


K57: kite that flew?
Solved: The Toy That Flew


K58: Kids build tree house
A group of children build an elaborate tree house and develop a secret morse type code. Seems like it is summer and they are on holiday in country house that is unfamiliar to them. Teacher read to us in 1971 and I read on my own.  Much detail.  Kids not all in same family.  It is not a Swallows and Amazons book. Pretty sure set in America.

K58 is NOT Longman The wonderful tree house
Gertrude Chandler Warner, Tree House Mystery (Boxcar Children #14).  All of the Boxcar Children mysteries take place during the summer, so that part fits.  In this one, they get new neighbors and the 2 sons on the family want to build a treehouse, so the Aldens help them.  The new boys have a spyglass, and the group discovers a hidden room in the house when they see a window in the end of the house that is not visible from inside the house.  They discover a child's room that was boarded over because the child moved away for some reason.  The room contains toys the child played with.  I think they used a flashlight to signal the Alden children from the treehouse, which would have probably been the morse code in the description.
I am the person who wrote the stumper.  I had not checked on this in a while and I now see that my book is in the solved pile.  Sorry!  It hasn't been solved!  The book is not a Boxcar Children book.  At the time I loved that series and if a teacher read me one that would have registered and this would not be a mystery to me. The book was entirely new to me, not part of a series I had read before and loved. Most definately not the Box Car children.  A lead from Chinaberry has me wondering if the book isn't Either Then There Were Five or The 4 Story Mistake by Eizabeth Enright.
Peggy Parrish, Clues in the Woods.
Maida's little . . .This sounds like a series I read when I was a child, based on the lives of a group of friends. The central character was Maida, who, I seem to remember, had a limp. There were books like Maida's Little House, etc. And your mention of "then there were five" reminded me of another series I read, about the Five Little Peppers. Hope one of these suggestions hits the mark.


2004


K59: Kindly, elderly bear finds boy lost in woods
Solved: Parade of Stories


K60: King/Emperor helped by animal
Solved: The Wisest Man in the World


K61:  Kids meet friendly scarecrow
Solved: The Cheery Scarecrow


K62: kids in a town of food
Solved: Trip to Lazibonia


K63: Knight beheaded while young friend watches
It's about a young boy who becomes homeless, medieval times, and finds the world a very rough place.  He is befriended by a young warrior or knight, a wanderer of sorts, and they have some really scary adventures.  In the  end, the boy's protector/friend is captured and beheaded, and the boy sees it happen.  It was a good book, I think it was by a fairly well known writer but maybe not.  That's all the details I remember.  This might assist in finding my other stumper (S-308), because they were both new around the same time, approximately the late 1960s.  Another title from the same approximate time might be, "One is One," by Barbara Leonie Picard, which was published in 1965.

Rosemary Sutcliffe, Knight's Fee.
Knight's Fee may be it, but the reviews I found of it on the internet say the boy's benefactor was killed in battle...still a possibility depending on how many benefactors he had.  In the book I read he was definitely captured and beheaded by a band of renegades or marauders or something.
K63 Isn't it just Sutcliff?
Rosemary Sutcliff's Knight's Fee is definitely not the solution to my stumper.  The book I'm looking for is not about knights, courts, and squires, it's about common people alone together in a real scary world.



K64: kingdom becomes beautiful
I am looking for a children's picture book - the story is about a king who's kingdom is not doing well.  Someone comes along who can "see" the kingdom to be beautiful (I believe that there may be a pair of glasses involved).  By viewing the kingdom in this new way, the king is able to direct his kingdom in this positive new direction.

Richard Paul Evans, The Spyglass, 2000.  Could this be it?  "K-Gr 5-This original fable offers a lesson about faith through the fall and rise of a kingdom. A once-great realm has declined into poverty, both of wealth and of spirit, until a passing stranger loans a magical spyglass to the king. Through it, the ruler and his subjects can see "what might be." A barren pasture appears as a fertile field and a crumbling cathedral looks magnificent when viewed through the spyglass. These images restore faith to the people, who then work together to restore the land to its past prosperity."



K65: Kittens Swapped for Other Pets
Solved: One Kitten for Kim


K66:  Kitten Dispersement
had a book as a little girl about a little girl whose cat had a litter of kittens that she wanted to keep but her mother said no.  So she loaded up the kittens in her wagon and took them around her block (because she wasn't allowed to cross the street) to give them to her neighbors...she gave the kittens away to people who looked like the kittens, for instance if a cat was white with black circles around it's eyes she's give it to the neighbor with black rimmed glasses...in the end I believe she gave them all away.

Newberry, Clare Turlay, April's Kittens.  NY Harper 1940.  Perhaps this one. April's family lives in a one-cat apartment. When her black cat Sheba has three kittens, April must decide which cat to keep and find homes for the others. The kittens are Brenda, Butch, and Charcoal. I don't know their markings, but the kitten on the cover is all black (Charcoal?).
I don't think April's Kittens sounds right she doesn't give them away to matching people.  At the end of that book her parents agree to let her keep one of the kittens along with the mother cat since they have decided it's time to move to a two-cat-sized apartment.
Kate's Kittens. Not sure if this is it, but I had a book about a very small girl named Kate living on a city block (it listed all the neighbors - she was much smaller than the grocer, etc).  She finds an orange cat with kittens and puts them in her wagon and gives them to all the neighbors, and at the end she feels big.  The colors were mostly black, white, brown and orange in the pictures.  I can't remember the title or author, unfortunately!
Phyllis LaFarge, Kate and the Wild Kittens, 1965, copyright.  I found this book!  Randomly, at the library, displayed on a shelf... All the cats in the neighborhood are disappearing, and only little Kate can find them.  They are with a mother cat and her kittens, and she must return them all to their owners, keeping the mother cat and kittens for herself.  Very New York/Eloise style.  Hope this is your book!



K67: Kittens: chocolate-drop, lollipop, lemon-drop
Solved: Peppermint


K68: Kat in London
Solved: Stairway to a Secret


K69: Kittens
My daughter-in-law has talked for several years about a small book, maybe a Little Golden Book with a kitten story.  The book may have been pink.  Toward the end of the book the kittens are on the bed making it dirty and also there is a floppy hat on the bed. There are three or four kittens.  That's as much as she has told me!

Beatrix Potter, The Tale of Tom Kitten.  Any possibility it could be a Beatrix Potter book?  In The Tale of Tom Kitten, Tom and his sisters Moppet and Mittens are sent upstairs as punishment, and they end up making a wreck of the bedroom there's an illustration with them all over the bed and one of them is wearing a bonnet.


2005


K70: Killer Persian Cat
A killer persian cat and a group of rabbits are living in the woods--perhaps together?  There is a gamekeeper who possibly strings up the cat with magpies?  It is a spooky, sinister book with silverpoint illustrations.  Large, rectangular with fine paper. This is a book that an older colleague of mine remembers with fondness. I would like to be able to find her a copy for her retirement present.  She read it when she was a child.  She associates the name Collins with it, but I think that might be the publisher, not the author.

K71: kids visit grandma and grandpa
Solved: We Like To Visit Grandma and Grandpa


K72: Kentucky Settlers
Solved: The Young Trailers series


K73:  king-smallest but most knowledgable
Solved: May I Stay?

K74:  Kay Thompson?
Solved: Kay Tracey Mysteries


K75:  Kit and Carlos
Solved: A Time for Tenderness


K76:  King Arthur's Dragon
Solved: Green Smoke


K77: kids find forgotten street and old couple
Solved: Gone-Away Lake


K78: Kittens meet cannibal at sea
 This is a children's book, beautifully illustrated, about a few kittens (don't remember the exact number) that live in an upturned boat on a shoreline, and then take a voyage out to sea, or get lost a sea. At the end of the book, they land in the South Seas somewhere and meet a friendly cannibal, a character with very big lips and many huge ostrich feathers. The art is very intricate and full of great details, such as many little sea creatures, crabs, etc., with their own little personalities, running around the bottom of the pages. I think there is also a bird that goes along with them. I had this book in the 50's or 60's, but I don't know the title. It is NOT the two-page story by Clarence Mansfield Lindsay called, "The Three Little Kittens Who Went to Sea", which was published in the 50's in a magazine entitled "Wee Wisdom". I saw that reproduced and it's not it. This is a book of its own with several pages.

I was thinking it could be cats instead of kittens.



K79: Kid on peanut butter (and jelly?) river
I read it in the late 70's /early 80's. It's a book about a boy(& friends?) floating down a river of peanut butter (and possilby jelly) on a slice of bread, and other adventures.  Hardcover (approx. 12H x 9W).  May have had pictures of flying pigs on inside front & back cover.

Louis Ross and Margot Apple, In the Peanut Butter Colony,1979.This could be a long shot, but this may be this book which was about a boy who traveled to a land of peanut butter creatures who battled jelly creatures.  He traveled there by means of a saltine cracker on a tomato soup river, using a spoon as an oar.  Was mainly about a young boy's lunch time fantasy.  It happened to be a child hood favorite of mine that I also can not find.



K80: kittens
Golden Books  (?), 70s-80s.  Book about a farm family - the mother sends her children out one at a time to tell the others to come in for supper.  Each gets distracted by new baby kittens in the loft of the barn.  Finally the mother comes herself and discovers her children and the baby kittens.

Cook, Bernadine.  Looking for Susie. illus by Judith Shahn. Young Scott, 1959.   farm life - juvenile fiction; cat & kittens in loft     This is not a Little Golden but the story definitely matches. It has been put out in several editions.
 Interpreting
Condition 
Grades
Cook, Bernadine.  Looking for SusieYoung Scott, 1959. library binding, slightly soiled, initials on endpaper  [SQ14486]  $12



K81: Kampbell
I'm trying to find a juvenile book (no pictures, geared toward young teens) about a teenage girl who used to act in a television show.  The show was about a fictional "Campbell" family, or that might have been spelled "Kampbell".  The show might've been called "The Kampbell Kids".  Anyway, after the show ends, she moves with her mother away from California and show business.  Her mother has either recently re-married, or is getting married, and the girl goes to live with her new step-family, in New England I think.  Her stepbrother is named Peter(?) and he has hemophilia.  Anyway, the book is a novel and it's about the former actress fitting in at her new school and with her new lifestyle.  Can you help me find it?

A couple of details I forgot to mention (sorry!):  the book was a paperback, regular size, and I read it around 1980 or so.  It was a new (i.e. modern day) book then, so it couldn't have been written before 1978.  Thanks!
This is definitely Starring Peter & Leigh by Susan Beth Pfeffer.  "When her mother remarries, 16-year-old Leigh abandons her acting career and tries to lead the life of a normal teenager. She is coached by her 17-year-old stepbrother, homebound with hemophilia."
Pfeffer, Susan Beth, Starring Peter and Leigh: A Novel, 1979.  When her mother remarries, 16-year-old Leigh abandons her acting career and tries to lead the life of a normal teenager. She is coached by her 17-year-old stepbrother, homebound with hemophilia.
Wow, that was fast!  Yes, that's the book.  Thank you SO much!!



K82: Knitting and reknitting
Solved: Socks for Supper


K83: kids adventure series brothers
Solved: Adventure series


K84: Kitten gets dyed blue and wins contest
Solved:  Peppermint


K85: Kitten
Title could have been "hello, kitten" or "karen's kitten"  or "The Kitten's Secret".  This book is pink and has a picture of a blonde haired girl holding up a white kitten.  The kitten is wearing a blue.  All I can remember about the basic plot was that the girl received the kitten either as a gift, or the kitten arrived at her home one day. It is also a small children's book.  Not the regular size of the books in the "Little Golden Books series".

Jan Biggers, Big Little Kitty, 1953.  Are you sure the kitten was white?  Because this sure sounds like Big Little Kitty, a Whitman Tell-a-Tale book. These books are smaller than the Little Golden Books (approx. 6 1/2" x 5 1/2"). The cover is pink, showing a little girl in a pink and white dress, with golden blonde curls held back in a little ponytail with a blue ribbon. In her arms is a yellow and white kitten with a blue ribbon around its neck and big blue eyes. The girl's name is Karen Kay.
Jan D. Biggers, Big Little Kitty, 1953.  Sounds like Big Little Kitty except the kitty being held by the little girl on the cover is orange, not white.  I believe one of the other kitties that appear at the end of the book is white.  It begins something like "Karen Kay is four years old, how about you?"  It goes on to tell about how she got the kitty, how it disappeared one day, and then how it reappeared on Christmas day with three other kitties.  Here is a picture of the cover.


2006


K86: Kansas City to California
Solved: The Wonderful Year


K87: Kids franchise "unused" airspace
'Brainy' kid and his friends discover that no one 'owns' the air, somehow claim the rights to said airspace and spend the summer franchising their discovery. One example I remember is charging the local bakery for all the 'space' in the center of every donut they baked. There were also various run ins with local government officials about the validity of their claim. I read this as a child in the 50's so I'm pretty sure it was not published later than 1960.

K88: Kelpies
Solved: The Kelpies


K89: Katie with depression
Solved: Gimme an H! Gimme an E! Gimme an L! Gimme a P!

K90:  kids search for missing letters
Solved: Mystery at Shadow Pond


K91: kidnapped
Solved: Judas Child
K92: Kitten tries to hide white "sock"

I am looking for information about my father's favorite childhood story (he would have been reading it around 1957).  It is titled Socks and was about a kitten with one white paw.  He was always trying to cover his white paw and my father remembers that at some point in the story, the kitten dips his paw in ink to try to cover up the white "sock".  Any information that would lead me to this book would be greatly appreciated!!!!  Thanks for your help!

Betty Molgard Ryan Florence Sarah Winship (illus), Socks. (1949)  I'm sure this is it.  Socks was published by the Whitman Publishing Company, and is a small book - about the size of a Jr. Elf book (5.5" x 6.5").  Cover shows black kitten w/ white paws & tail tip and big green eyes sitting on grass w/ daisies & violets, in front of a brownish board fence.  Only instead of 1 white sock, the kitten has 4 white socks and a white tip on his tail.  Some children and the other animals in the barn where he lives tease him about his white socks & tail. He wishes he were all black like his 4 siblings, so he goes to the cow, horse, and pig for advice on getting rid of his white feet.  Finally, he sees the farmer's wife using some black polish on a pair of shoes. She leaves to answer the telephone, and he dips his paws & tail into the shoe polish bottle to make them black.  He then writes a note saying "Thank you" to Mrs. Morgan (the farmer's wife) on the sidewalk in black footprints, before making his way home to the barn.
Betty Molgard Ryan (author), Florence Sarah Winship (illustrator), Socks. (1949)  Whitman Tell A Tale book,  #886-15.  Charming story of a kitten, Socks, with four white paws and a white tipped tail who was teased by the children and barnyard animals about his "socks", until he finally did something about it.  You can see what he did here.  It's shoe black, not ink, but this seems to be the right book!



K93: Knight finds seed
This was a book I read in the late 70's, it was oversized, I think. There was lots of white space on the pages and the drawings were always on the same scale, showing knights about an inch high (on the page).  The knight rides out of the little medieval town and finds a seed, or possibly just a spot on the ground. He goes back to get more knights, and in the end a huge yellow flower pops out of the ground (about twice the height of the knights).  I don't remember any text, so this is possibly a wordless book.
K94: Kids clean up messy uncle's house and boat

Solved: Summer at Hasty Cove


K95: King's shoes/boots
A children's book, probably from the 60's, about a king's shoes/boots that leave and go out and do the town and come back all messed up each day.

A couple of possibilities that might be worth looking into: In the King's Shoes by Enid Blyton, orig. published in the 1940's or 1950's, reprinted in 1999. Shoes Fit for a King by Helen Bill, illustrated by Louis Slobodkin, c. 1956
Just an idea -- could this be some kind of gender-reversed version of the 12 dancing princesses story?



K96: Karen Kay
Karen Kay is four and a little bit more, how old are you?  1960-1965  Someone has asked this already, but I don't think the answer is correct.  The book began:  Karen Kay is four and a little bit more. How old are you? Karen Kay remembers the day when ______ the kitten came to stay with _____Ben, the Teddy Bear, and _______ who lived under the chair." It was about a kitten who disappears, and Karen Kay is desolate. Then the cat comes back on Christmas Day with a present for Karen Kay:  Kittens! It was smaller than a regular Little Golden Book, and the cover had some blue in it.

Check in "Solved Mysteries" for Big Little Kitty by Jan D. Biggers.
Several googles [incl an old one of yrs] were of people looking  for Karen Kay and her kittens, but an expired e-Bay item had this:  >>(1953-Whitman Book-Tell-a-Tale series) Big Little Kitty by Jan D.  Biggers. Story of Karen Kay and Christmas Day when she received the  present of a new kitty named Muffin, who runs away (of course), but  comes back home to have her own kittens. Cute story for kitten and  cat fans.>>  Another entry implies that you had a K18 solved as the Biggers book.  And here is your solved mysteries B - referred to by Google so IO  think I'll stop: Big Little Kitty 



K97: Kendra in Seattle
1950's.  This is a novel set in turn of the century Seattle.  The main character is named Kendra. Plot is: girl from poor family falls in love with rich boy from Beacon Hill.


K98: Kidnapped
The book I'm looking for was read to me when I was about 12, 27 years ago...that would have been 1979, but I don't know if it was a new book then.  It was geared toward late elementary or ealry teen.  It was about 3 kids who were kidnapped together, a brother-and-sister and their friend, who was a boy.  The kidnappers had only planned to take the brother, but a change of plans had resulted in the boy's sister and friend walking home with him from school that day, and the kidnappers panicked and took all 3.  The book was mainly about their reactions to it and attempts to escape.  I'm sure they succeeded in the end though I can't remember that part.  I remember that the friend had some sort of breathing disorder in which he has spells in which he has trouble breathing out, and the children considered at one point deliberately triggering one of these episodes so as to force their captors to take him to a hospital, where they might get help (they decided against it as too dangerous).  That's about all I would remember.  I enjoyed the book very much and would love to find it and read it to my older boy.  Any help would be appreciated...Thanks.

Zilpha Keatley Snyder, The Famous Stanley Kidnapping Case, 1985, reprint.  This probably isn't the book you are looking for, but maybe it will help trigger someone else's memories.  In The Famous Stanley Kidnapping Case, the Stanley family is living in Italy for a year, and a local gang sets out to kidnap Amanda, thinking her biological father will pay their ransom,  but unfortunately ends up with her two stepbrothers,  David and Blair,  and stepsisters, Janey and Tesser(Esther), as well. I don't think anyone was ill, but the younger boy has visions of the Virgin Mary which spooks the (apparently Roman Catholic) kidnappers.  Good luck finding your book.
Richard Parker, Three By Mistake, 1974, copyright.  This is definitely Three By Mistake.  My family ended up with it from a library booksale, and I read it many, many times growing up.



K99: Kenny the pig
Solved: The Golden Story Book of River Bend


K100: Kids trapped in cave
Kids trapped in cave - - find underground prehistoric world with live dinosaurs, have adventures before finding way out

Is there any chance the poster is conflating parts of a movie with a book?  This sounds a great deal like "Journey to the Beginning of Time," which is described in detail here (Brief excerpt from that site: "Four young boys visit the American Museum of Natural History . . .After viewing the dinosaur skeletons, they rent a rowboat at the lake in Central Park. They enter a cave, and come out  . . . into a strange new world. They see a Wooly Mammoth, and realize they have traveled back to prehistoric times!")  I can't find any indication it was ever novelized, though.
Just wanted to respond to the previous comment....  Nope, not confused with a movie  :)   This book was about two (maybe three?) families on vacation together, and while the parents were busy with something (can't remember what) one day, they sent all of their kids on a cave tour.  I can't remember how many kids there were, but at least five (and definitely some brother/sister pairs).
This probably isn't it, because I don't think the dinosaurs are alive...but the first thing that came to mind upon reading your stumper was Question of the Painted Cave, by Winifred Mantle. But there are five kids from three families, and they do find a cave. It could also be The Narrow Passage by Oliver Butterworth, which is a sequel The Enormous Egg about a boy who hatches  a dinosaur.Whatever it is, I know this book exists, because I read it too!
This description rings a vague bell with me. I have a feeling that the book may have been translated from French, as when I read it I was young enough to be confused by the fact the male main character was called "Jean." Hope this may help.
Glyn Frewer, Adventure in Forgotten Valley, 1964. I am pretty sure this is it..."A group of children who have accompanied their fathers to South America find an archaeopteryx, a creature supposedly extinct for millions of years, wedged in a wall inside a cave. A rockfall pens them inside the cave and before they escape, they are involved with two separate eras of long ago-human cave dwellers and prehistoric animals"  I found it on this website after many years of searching, http://www.trussel.com/prehist/prehist3.htm#F, and for me the cover photo was enough to confirm it was the book I was looking for.  Good luck@


2007


K101: king and queen who wouldn't speak
Solved: The King and Queen Who Wouldn't Speak


K102: kitten, lost, badgers, Christmas, fire
Solved: Friendship Valley


K103: Korea, Su-Won, golden silk
Solved: Su Won and Her Wonderful Tree


K104: Kids in Autumn Leafpile
Solved: Babes in the Wood

K105: Kids don't want to live in a house
Solved: We Were Tired of Living in a House

K106: Kitten, 3 stories, small blue book
This was a children's book.  It was small and blue and was bought through one of the book magazines that go out to school children, possibly Scholastic. It had three stories about a small kitten.  One story he was being read a story and insisted on having all his toys on his sitters lap with him.  In another he was baking with his mom.  This book must be at least 25 years old and I've been trying to remember the title for years so I can find it.

Miriam Clark Potter, Bedtime Stories, 1951, copyright.  This is a Junior Elf book.  It has a blue cover showing Mama Cat, wearing a pink-and-white gingham dress, seated in a green chair on a yellow rug. Mama Cat is reading from a book titled "Cat Tales" to her three kittens, who are gathered around her, wearing their nightclothes. The stories are "Three Jumpy Kittens," about kittens who jump around on the furniture when they should be napping, until they wear themselves out and fall asleep, "Mrs. Groundhog's Grapevine," about two greedy young squirrels who devour all the grapes, then buy fruit and vegetables to tie to the grapevine as replacements, and "Mrs. Rabbit's Birthday Cake" about three little bunnies who bake a surprise birthday cake for their mother. Cute illustrations by Tony Brice.
The book suggested is not the one, unfortunately.  The book I am looking for had three stories about the same small kitten.  In one his mom was baking, in another he was being babysat, and I cannot remember what he did in the third story.  I’m wondering if the book was always small and blue.  I know the books offered by the school book clubs are sometimes in a smaller format.
Mary Chalmers, Harry and the Babysitter. I'm pretty sure you are thinking of a series of books by Mary Chalmers. The books were small and in different colors. Harry and the Babysitter (my favorite, where Harry piles all his toys on the babysitter's lap) was purple. Not sure which one was blue. Hope this helps.
Mary Chalmers, Take a nap, Harry. Me again. The story where the kitten bakes with his mother is Take a Nap, Harry. I vaguely remember reading an anthology of the Harry stories but can't remember what color it was.

Mary Chalmers, Be Good, Harry. I'm afraid I misinformed you. The title isn't Harry and the Babysitter  it's Be Good, Harry. Sorry for any confusion.



K107: Kids cookbook
Kids cookbook with flaming eyed ghost cake on cover.

Betty Crocker, Betty Crocker's Cookbook for Boys and Girls, 1957, 1975.  There are a few different editions of this with different covers. The one I remember from the mid-'70s had a kid holding a plate of food festooned with smiling faces. I don't believe there's a version with the flaming ghost cake on the cover, but that is the recipe/photo that stands out most clearly in my memory as well!  The description of the '50s version, which is currently available in reproduced form, doesn't mention the ghost cake, whereas other editions do, so be sure to check before buying.  While I was searching for this on the web, I came across a YouTube video of someone lighting the flaming-eyed ghost cake! Apparently they got it from a recipe in Amy Sedaris' book "I Like You."
I had this in the 80s!  I remember my mom wouldn't let me make the ghost cake for some reason.  I'm pretty sure it's a Betty Crocker book.
Thank you for posting this on your site. I just wanted to elaborate about the book a little.  I can't find what I originally submitted with my request, but the flaming-eyed ghost cake was on the front hardcover.  It was made using boxed vanilla cake, baked in a rectangular pan and with the top 2 corners cut off, frosted with vanilla frosting and decorated using egg shell halves which were set aflame.  Other recipes included in the book were Purple Cow Milkshakes, and a salad appetizer which was a canned peach half set on a bed of
lettuce.  You decorated the peach half to look like a little mouse by affixing raisins with toothpicks for the eyes and a maraschino cherry half for the nose, etc.  I loved this cookbook.  I received it from my Grandmother around 1982-1983.  I went to summer camp in 1988 and my mother gave it away or sold it at a garage sale.  I was crushed.  Now that I am a mother, I desperately want it for my own kids.  Could you please post the additional info to my request in hopes of helping jog somebody's memory?  Thanks so much!
Betty Crocker, Betty Crocker's Cookbook for Boys and Girls, 1975, copyright.  I own the 1987 reprint of the 1975 edition of Betty Crocker's Cookbook for Boys and Girls. The ghost cake isn't on the cover, but there is a full-page picture inside. There is a recipe for Purple Cow Milkshakes. And the peach with raisins and a maraschino cherry that looks like a mouse on a bed of lettuce mentioned by the stumper submitter is, in my book, a pear with a prune, a raisin and a maraschino cherry that looks like Snoopy on a bed of lettuce (though the book calls it Friendly Dog Salad to avoid copyright infringement). In short, I'm sure this is the cookbook you're looking for! Just be sure to get the right edition in case earlier versions are different.



K108: Kids sucked into computer/video game
I will be truly amazed if you can find this book, because I don't remember much at all. It was at least 10 years ago that i read this book. Some kids got sucked into a computer or video game and were trying to get out. all I really remember that there were letters and numbers, and i think maybe microchips?? I will be so eternally grateful if you can find this book!!

Richard Peck, Lost in Cyberspace.  This one is probably it, but there's also a Xanth book by Piers Anthony in which someone gets sucked into a computer game, but I'm not sure which one.
Gillian Rubinstein, Space Demons [or the sequel, Skymaze].  'Late 1980s, reprinted in the 90s as well.  When I read the description this came to mind at once... very special computer game  given as present to 12 year old Andrew (i think that is the name), who gets his friend to play and the game comes to life and they go into it... it affects them, haunts them, changes them.  Second book: life empty without thrill of Space Demons, then package comes-- new game--... Skymaze.  And this time it is not they who go through the computer into the game, but the game which comes out through the computer and into the real world...
Kidd, Ronald, The Glitch: A Computer Fantasy, 1985, copyright.  Your mention of there being letters and numbers made me instantly think of this book.  The letter "M" is a main character, and other letters, numbers and symbols appear.  "Eleven-year-old Benjamin Bean dislikes modern machinery, particularly computers, and is dismayed to find a new microcomputer in his favorite second-hand bookstore. There's a "bug" in the store's computer program, however, and when Benjamin casually picks up a loose electrical cable, he is sucked into the machine. Inside is a chaotic world full of regimented people and living data-animated numbers, letters and punctuation marks, etc. With the aid of the letter "M" and Professor Babbage (inventor of the mechanical digital computer), Benjamin travels through the kingdom, surviving encounters with a dragon and the police, until he finds the true bug in the system and returns home."
Vivian Vande Velde, User Unfriendly, 1990, approximate.  "Arvin and his friends risk using a computer-controlled role-playing game to simulate a magical world in which they actually become fantasy characters, even though the computer program is a pirated one containing unpredictable errors."  I think the mother ended up in the game with them, and they had to get out because she started having headaches and fainting.



K109: Kids catch criminals in school
Solved: The Mysterious Schoolmaster


2008


K110: kids travel to Jurassic to find Dad, save Mom from jail
A boy and a girl travel back in time in their father's homemade time machine.  Their mother is on trial because of the father's disappearance; she knits a really long scarf in jail.  I think that the kids bring back an egg/or baby animal that causes them trouble and is lonely, so they send him/her back.

Stan McMurtry, The Bunjee Venture,
1977, copyright.  This book is at my parents' right now, so I can't check the details, but they certainly share a lot of the same characteristics, so perhaps it's the one.  I don't remember the mom/scarf/jail part, but it does sound vaguely familiar.  There's a creature who runs words together when he speaks, so you had to work to understand what you were reading.  There's photos of cover of book on internet, maybe that would ring a bell with you. Good luck!
This is in follow-up to the solution I sent in 1/25/08 or so...  I found my copy of this book and was able to look up details.  I believe this is definitely the book you're looking for!  (One of my faves!)  Dad goes back to pre-historic times in time-machine.  Children build another and go after him.  Encounter creature, Bunjee, who runs words together like this: WHYDIDINTEYEFINKOFDAT?  Mom is suspected of foul play in the disappearance of her family and is knitting incredibly long scarf in jail. Bunjee and two eggs come home to modern times with the dad and kids.

 Interpreting
Condition 
Grades
 McMurtry, Stan.  The Bunjee VentureIllustrations by the author.  Scholastic, Inc. 1977.  "An Apple Paperback".  Lightly used; inside is clean, cover shows usual wear and tear.  G.  $3.
 



K111: King rules cardboard kingdom
As a child, I had an LP story album accompanied by the book read on the album. The book is my real interest; I'd like to find the illustrations again. The story (rather depressing, in my opinion) involved a young boy who sets out on a journey and meets odd people along the way. Among these people was a giant, but the one that really stuck in my memory was a king who ruled over a cardboard kingdom, complete with cardboard subjects. These were not magical, living, talking cardboard subjects, but rather just plain cardboard cut and painted to look like people, placed in the windows of cardboard houses so the king could pretend to have a populated kingdom. At the end of the story, if I remember correctly, the boy arrives at a beach/at the ocean and meets a young girl who gives him a little kiss. I cannot remember the author or the name of the book/album. It is possible that the title was just the boy's name, but I am not at all sure. It would be great if you could figure this one out--I'd like to use the illustration of the cardboard city in an essay I'm writing (with permission, of course, but that requires knowing whom to contact!)


K112: Kids sucked into TV villainous world
Somewhere in the 70's I read a book that involved some kids (2 or 3?) who were sent to their uncle's house.  Their uncle disappears and they are looking for him.  They go in to the attic and there are a bunch of TV's on there.  They turn one on (or it comes on by itself?) and there uncle is on/in the TV asking for help.  Then another TV comes on and the villain is spouting his villainy.  They try to turn the TV off but it won't go off.  They go to unplug it and (gasp) none of the TV's are plugged in.  Then they get sucked in to the TV and adventures ensue. At one point the older girl is captured by the villain and is promised food and a shower if she switches to his side.  She succumbs to the shower but half way through, realizes it's all a lie and she's showering with dirt and the sumptious food on the table is actually all rotten.  At the end, they save the uncle and return home, but the TV's are still up in the attic and one turns on....

John White, The Tower of Geburah, 1978, copyright.


K113: Kid Wars
the book involved a group of kids split into two groups of a war game; One side had a cardboard tank or something similar; one of  the characters was called Nick (I think) and some crooks turn up near the end.

Astrid Lindgren, the Bill Bergson books.  I am wondering if this could perhaps be one of Astrid Lindgren's Bill Bergson books.  The children divide into two teams, the Red Rose and the White Rose, and have "battles."
This sounds vaguely like a Paul Berna book; however I read them all a very long time ago and can't remember which plot goes with which title. His most famous book was "The Horse without a Head", but I don't think it was that one.  Still, maybe this will help narrow it down?
Cecil Day-Lewis, The Otterbury Incident, 1948, copyright.  Has a boy named Nick, the kids make a home-made tank and are playing war games with each other. Several reprintings since 1948.


K114: Kelpie Gypsy Pony
Solved: Kelpie, the Gypsies' Pony


K115: Katie Kitten book
My Mum can remember the following words to a book she has as a child (she learned it by heart), in the early 1950's. I reckon it's from the Katie (the) Kitten series, by Kathryn Jackson.  The words are below. She remembers that the theme of the story was that Katie missed a trip because she slept in because her bedroom was facing West. I want to buy the book, but it appears to be in a series of about 60 books, so I'd love to have a clue as to which one to buy.  Any ideas?  The book began with: "Katie kitten was always late. Wherever she was going or whatever she was going to do, she was sure to be late for it. She always began the day by being late for breakfast and of course all the nicest things had gone. She had to eat the bread that had been left on the plate and drink the milk that had all the cream taken from it."


K116: Kids travel to magical land where common things no longer work
I remember only the following of a book I read about 55 years ago, and want to find it for my grandkids.  Kids wind up in a place with a boy scout manual, matches and a flashlight.  But the manual is apparently now in a different language, the matches won't light, and, I think the flashlight doesn't work.  They eventually learn magic from a wizard or sorcerer to fight off the bad guys.  Thanks in advance for any help in finding this.

This sounds vaguely like Pamela Dean's "Secret Country" trilogy (but couldn't be it, because that came out in 1986). It has roughly the same ideas though. Five children who have an imaginary game about a secret kingdom, find places where they can cross over from earth to that world. (the tone is not Narnia but closer to E. Nesbit). They have to pose as the royal children whom they have played in their game. Most modern technology doesn't work there -- a flashlight becomes a lantern, and so on, the books are in a different language, one of the girls has to learn magic. While the story never loses a slightly whimsical tone, it also treats its main theme very seriously -- what is the responsibility of imaginers toward the worlds they imagine? You might like these books, either for yourself or the grandkids or both. More at http://www.strangehorizons.com/2001/20010101/pamela_dean.shtml.


K117: Kit Car, VW with 455 Toronado Engine Mid Mount
There was a book I checked out in college almost every month, about kit cars.  One article in it was about putting a front wheel drive engine out of a toronado or eldorado into the rear seat of a VW beetle.  There were other kits in the book, but this one was the one that always stuck with me.  I read it around 1985 or so, but it was likely published in the 70's.


K118: "King of the Cats" book
Scary (maybe Halloween), book of short stories by different authors.  One story in the book was King of the Cats.

C. B. Colby, Strangely Enough,
1959, copyright.  This is a collection of (supposedly) true short stories.  The "King of the Cats" story is called "The Bewitched Cat of the Catskills" here.  It was a Scholastic paperback.
There are many collections that contain the classic King of the Cats story.  To narrow down your exact book, can you remember ANY of the other stories in the book, or at least plot lines of some of the other stories?
Poppy Z. Brite, Are You Loathsome Tonight?, 2000, copyright.  This might be too recent, but it is a collection of short scary/macabre stories, which includes a story called "King of the Cats," and is not the more usual fairy-tale collection. The book is illustrated by J.K. Potter, with an introduction by horror author Peter Straub. Titles are: In Vermis Veritas; Arise; Saved; King of the Cats; Self-Made Man; Pin Money; America; Entertaining Mr. Orton; Monday's Special; Vine of the Soul; Mussolini and the Axman's Jazz; Are You Loathesome Tonight?  Front cover shows a bluish-toned picture of a man, from shoulders up. However, instead of hair, he has octopus-like tentacles curling around his head. These are not, however, children's stories - the book is written for an adult audience.
Kevin Crossley-Holland, Emma Clark (illus), Enchantment: Fairy Tales, Ghost Stories, and Tales of Wonder, 2000, copyright.  "A treasure house of folk & fairy tales that brings together the talents of a brilliant storyteller & a much-loved illustrator…there are stories to make you jump out of your seat, stories about some rather silly people and many stories of fairy magic & mystery, taken from all over England, Scotland, Ireland & Wales." Stories are: The Cow That Ate the Piper; Fairy Ointment; The Frog Prince; The Shepherd’s Tale; Tom Tit Tot; Billy; Three Heads of the Well; Hughbo; Monday, Tuesday; Samuel’s Ghost; The Changeling; Mossycoat; King of the Cats; Dathera Dad; Sea-Woman; Charger; The Three Blows; The Mule; The Dauntless Girl; and Boo! Cover and dust jacket show assorted small images from the various stories on a whitish background.
Claire Necker (editor), Supernatural Cats, 1972, copyright.  If it's possible that all of the stories in the book you are looking for were about cats, this might be the one. It is a collection of cat tales about felines with weird and wonderful powers and characteristics. Some of the many stories in this anthology include: The Game of the Rat and Dragon (Cordwainer Smith); Space-Time for Springers (Fritz Leiber); The Green Cat (Cleve Cartmill); Space Cat (Ruthven Todd); The Cat Who Became A Queen; The White Cat (Comtesse d’Aulnoy); Puss in Boots; The Troll Cat; The King of the Cats (Traditional); The King of the Cats (Stephen Vincent Benet); The Cat, "I Am" (Gerald Heard); Broomsticks (Walter de la Mare); The Bad Kittens (Elizabeth Coatsworth); A Demon Cat of Old Japan; The Demon Cat of Connemara; Balu (August Derleth); De Black Cat Crossed His luck (JD Corrothers); The Black Cat (Edgar Allan Poe); The Cats of Ulthar (HP Lovecraft); The Squal (Bram Stoker); He Didn’t Like Cats (L Ron Hubbard); The White Cat of Drumgunniol (Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu); The Language of Cats (Spencer Holst).
A few other anthologies (there are many more) that contain Benet's "King of the Cats": The King of the Cats, (ss) / Stephen Vincent Benet; Out of This World, ed. Julius Fast, Penguin 1944; Alfred Hitchcock’s Monster Museum, ed. Anon., Random House 1965; The Golden Road, ed. Damon Knight, Simon & Schuster 1973; Masterpieces of Fantasy and Enchantment, ed. David G. Hartwell, SFBC 1988.


K119: Kittens
Solved: The Secret Kitten


K120: Kids living next to spooky witches' house
Solved: The Haunted Cove


K121: Kids trick or treating, end up at an old couple's house, old man shows them magic tricks
Solved: Trick Or Treat

K122: Kittens hidden in garden shed
The book was about a little girl (may have been staying with someone) who, when exploring out in a backyard garden, found a cat (I think it was black & white).  She makes friends with the cat and then finds out there are kittens (maybe 2, maybe 3) hidden in a garden shed.  I think she is afraid to tell for fear somebody will drown the kittens.  I read the book sometime back in the 1950's and I remember it had very nice illustrations.

W.G. van de Hulst, Good and Naughty Kittens!,
1965, copyright.  This book was published in Canada, translated from Dutch. The story  is a little different from what you remember, but your description reminded me of this book.  The story begins with two kittens getting out of their own yard, into a dark shed filled with firewood, through a hole into the angry doctor's garden, frightened by a big dog, into the doctor's house where they break dishes, break his long pipe, step in ink and finally fall asleep.  Than the story moves to the two sisters who own the kittens.  They notice the open gate, the disturbance in the wood shed and are also frightened by the dog.  The doctor thinks the sisters have damaged his belongings and the sisters are afraid of the doctor's scolding. All is made right in the end with the girls making a gift of a new pipe which they see the doctor smoking with the big green ribbon still attached.
Nope, that is not the story I remember.  There was only one little girl, the cat was big and black & white.  It could have been one story within a book of stories, but I KNOW there were not two little girls.
I just looked up the book you mention on the internet and it is definately NOT the story I'm remembering.  I do remember the one you think it is, but that isn't it.  The one I'm looking for is probably much older than 1965 and the illustrations are WAY nicer than the ones in Hulsts' book.   Sure wish the one I'm looking for could be found!


K123: Kidnapped, taken to France
Kids kidnapped by gangsters and taken to a cave in France where there was an Aeolian harp in the wall to scare people off, and they drank "thick French coffee from a bowl, not like the wishy washy stuff at home". Really scary pen and ink illustration of the gangsters, gave me nightmares!

Ian Fleming, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.
  Really--the book is very different from the Disney movie.  From page 102 in our edition:  "The coffee with milk, which the French call cafe au lait, was, if you happen to like coffee, better than the wishy-washy stuff you often get in England."
Chitty Chitty Bang Bang - "Ian Fleming's only book for kids!" For those who don't know, the book is VERY different AND superior to the movie. It's even highly educational! (I'm so glad Fleming's 100th anniversary is this year, 2008. According to "100 Things You Didn't Know About Ian Fleming," "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang" was his last book, written for his son. As it says on the back, it's one of the most delightful and zany books about cops and robbers. And while mother Mimsie doesn't really come off as "adventurous," contrary to what Fleming himself says in the book, daughter Jemima pretty much makes up for that - she's the one who reminds her twin Jeremy that he has a knife "full of gadgets and things" when they're trying to figure out how to write a warning note without any kind of ink. Not to mention that Fleming even allows Jemima to say "I hate the stuff" - namely, lipstick. She has one or two other good scenes, too. Since Fleming included a guide on how to turn 1964 English pounds and shillings into American dollars, you may want to know what the final prices are after inflation. This may or may not be helpful to Brits, but according to the online Inflation Calculator at http://www.westegg.com/inflation/  $1 in 1964 would be worth $6.71 in 2007.  From an article: "......they go after big time baddies Joe the Monster, Man-Mountain Frank, and Soapy Sam, who are dead-ringers for Ernst Stavro Blofeld, Hugo Drax, and Auric Goldfinger."  And here are the 1920s racing cars that inspired the book! (There's a photo too. One was described in the book - though not as part of the story itself.) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chitty_Bang_Bang.
Ian Fleming, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.  You seem to be describing the more exciting details from the original book Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. (Not the horror of a movie they made!) BTW, Ian Fleming is better know for the James Bond books.  Check into this one, I think it's the one you're looking for!


K124: Kid Detective, Hi-fi shop, 1960s
1960s children's fiction about a kid being a detective. One day he asks to look at a hi-fi in a shop, the owner warms it up, the kid secretly decodes the serial number while the owner isn't looking and realises it is old stock, not brand new as the owner was describing it.

Clifford B. Hicks, Alvin's Secret Code
.  This is one of the Alvin series; I'm pretty sure it's "Alvin's Secret Code".
Sounds like one of the Alvin Fernald series.
Clifford B. Hicks, Alvin's Secret Code.  I know it's one of the Alvin Fernald books, and I'm pretty sure it's Alvin's Secret Code.
Clifford B. Hicks, Alvin's Secret Code, 1963, copyright.  You'll get lots of responses to this one -- it's a classic. There are nine Alvin Fernald books; this is the second, and one of the best. Look for the Wacky World of Alvin Fernald website.
I think this is one of the Alvin Fernald books by Clifford B. Hicks but I don't remember which one.
Danny Dunn??  This is one of the Danny Dunn books. The kids learn to decipher codes from a cryptographer and unmask a salesman trying to sell a "new" model tv that is last years model. Sorry, don't remember the title of this one.


K125: Kidnapped child, farmhouse, instant coffee
Looking for a young adult book I read in the late '70's/early '80's. A child is kidnapped, held hostage in an abandoned farmhouse in the winter. I remember something about instant coffee. Possibly attempted to escape by running across frozen ground in the dark when female kidnapper falls asleep.

Barbara Holland, Prisoners at the Kitchen Table,
1979.  This may be the book you're looking for. Two kids are kidnapped--one is kind of shy/timid, the other brave. The brave one gets scared, and the shy one arranges for them to escape.  I think the kidnappers sit around the kitchen table, drinking coffee when the escape happens.


K126: Kid's x-mas pop-up book
Kid's x-mas pop-up book read to me in the mid-1960s. First lines "It's Christmas, It's Christmas, that wonderful season, when children are good for a very good reason.  They almost have wings sprouting out of their backs and that's when their guardian angel's relax." Main character Katy or Katie.

Beth Vardon, Charlot Byj (illus), The Wonderful Window.
  Definitely this one. "It's Christmas, it's Christmas, That wonderful season, When Children are good, For a very good reason. They've almost got wings, Sprouting out of their backs, And that's when their guardian angels relax." All the children are good at Christmastime, giving their guardian angels a break - except Katie. When Katie accidentally breaks the stained glass window in the church, her guardian angel prays for a Christmas miracle to fix it in time. A delightful classic pop-up book that has been reproduced for a new generation.
Beth Vardon, Charlot Byj (illus), The Wonderful Window
. Definitely this one. "It's Christmas, it's Christmas, That wonderful season, When Children are good, For a very good reason. They've almost got wings, Sprouting out of their backs, And that's when their guardian angels relax." All the children are good at Christmastime, giving their guardian angels a break - except Katie. When Katie accidentally breaks the stained glass window in the church, her guardian angel prays for a Christmas miracle to fix it in time. A delightful classic pop-up book that has been reproduced for a new generation.
2009


K127: kids escape through flooded cave tunnel
Solved: The Weirdstone of Brisingamen
Looking for a  a fantasy story, the main characters (kids) in the story are being hunted(?) and escape through cave tunnels, one of which was flooded.  The title (I think) was 'Arkenstone' or 'Eyrkenstone' (?) which described a magical stone that had been taken or lost and had to be recovered.

Susan Cooper, Over Sea, Under Stone
Over Sea, Under Stone is part of the Dark is Rising series. Kind of a long shot, as the kids are looking for the Holy Grail, not a magical stone, but it has the tunnels flooding and the word stone in the title, anyway...
Plot sounds like Alan Garner's THE WEIRDSTONE OF BRISINGAMEN (1960).  (There is also a sequel, THE MOON OF GOMRATH, 1963).  See plot summary at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Weirdstone_of_Brisingamen.
Alan Garner, The Weirdstone of Brisingamen.  Think this could be the book you are looking for. I grew up in the next village to Alderley Edge, where the book is set, so it was always a favourite of mine.
I believe I solved my own stumper :)  I used Google book search to look for fantasy novels written between 1970 and 1980, and one title jumped out at me--"The Weirdstone of Brisingamen". I am nearly positive this is the book I am looking for.
Garner, Alan, Weirdstone of Brisingamen
, 1960, copyright.  You're mixing up two magical stones - happens to all of us sometimes :-).  The Arkenstone is from the Lord of the Rings, but the incident you are referring to is from The Weirdstone of Brisengamen. The author is obviously a caver, as his description of squirming through flooded tunnels is so realistic it gives me claustrophobia just thinking about it. The stone is called Firefrost.
Alan Garner, Weirdstone of Brisingamen.  I wonder if the poster is mixing up stories? The Arkenstone is the great treasure of the dwarves that Thorin Oakenshield is searching for in The Hobbit along with Bilbo the hobbit, and 12 other dwarves. It is part of the treasure of the dragon Smaug. Bilbo Baggins takes it as his portion and then gives it to the archer Bard (Smaug's killer) and Thranduil (Elevenking) to bargain with when the Dwarves refuse to share the treasure. But kids are not the main characters in this classic.  The story that comes to mind with kids and a lost stone is The Weirdstone of Brisingamen. The stone was to protect the Sleepers for the final battle with Nastrond, the Great Spirit of Darkness. The stone had several names. The wizard who was supposed to guard it called it Firefrost. Bess Mossock who gave it to Susan's mother called it the Bridestone. Susan, who with her brother Colin are the main characters, called it her Tear.  The place where the caves flood is called the Earldelving and in some places the tunnels narrow like a pipe where everyone has to manuver through space where the walls, floor and roof fit them like a second skin.
Alan Garner, Weirdstone of Brisingamen, 1960.  The Weirdstone of Brisingamen is a fantasy story by the English author Alan Garner, first published in 1960. The story of two children, Colin and Susan, who are staying on a farm at Alderley whilst their parents are overseas. Susan possesses a small tear-shaped crystal held in a bracelet: unknown to her, this very crystal is the Weirdstone of the title, and her ownership of it causes the children to be hunted by the evil forces of the Dark Spirit Nastrond.

K128: The King Who Rode a Bike
Children's story of a king who rides a bike and is happy. One day he stops riding and thorny vines grow throuhout the kingdom. Once he starts riding his bike again and smiles, the kingdom becomes normal again.

Dr. Suess, The Kings Stilts. If youre not positive about the bicycle it sounds a lot like the Suess book  the king happily clops about on stilts until an evil nobleman convinces him its undignified. The stilts are hidden until the kings pageboy sees how miserable the king is and gives them back. I dont know about thorns, but the kingdom, being rather marshy, is protected by mangrove-like dike-trees which hold back the waters. The trees are often assaulted by crows, which are kept in check by Royal Patrol Cats  the king used to inspect his cats after a walk on his stilts. Hope this helps.
K129: Kids that get locked in a bomb shelter
Read this book at least 30 years ago.  I recall in the book the kids go into the bomb shelter for some reason, to check it out or something.  There never is a bomb.  They get locked in by mistake.  In the book the shelter is fully stocked with food and has a ham radio.  They talk alot about hardtack.

James L. Summers, The Shelter Trap. This one was in my school library in the 60s.  A group of kids (and their teacher, I think) are either at school or on a class trip when they are accidentally locked in a bomb shelter.  The awkward but levelheaded teenage main character eventually emerges as the hero of the situation.
James L Summers, The Shelter Trap. I answered this last week but it wasnt posted in the last update, so Ill try again.


K130: kids book tv-shaped aliens fix spaceship inside moutain
 A kids book i remember having in 80s, i think was illustrated somewhat. Inside a mountain we're all these aliens, all shaped differently. Some shaped like tv sets etc. They were stranded and fixing their spaceship.


Andre Norton, Day of the Ness. This is your book.  Loved the TV-shaped aliens. 

K131: Kids in Rowboat
1970-1980 (or b4) kids bk. appx: 12"x10" about kids taking row boat thru cove and then run into pirates. All illustrated & story is printed on the page as the people saying the story.  Each child has own adventure w/ a certain pirate. mermaid tied to front of the ship talks. then kids head home.


K133: Kittens, Sailboat, Island Storm

I think the book was about a lost boat at sea an old style sailboat maybe 32-38 feet to be specific.  The boat was tossed around in a storm, and aboard the boat are small kittens. I think the storm ends, and the boat makes landfall on a small island with a house. The kittens are saved in the end.
Natalie Norton, A Little Old Man, 1959. A Little Old Man by Natalie Norton.  This was one of the first stumpers I sent in, so I'm happy to have a chance to answer for someone else.  A really lovely children's book about a little old man who live on island.  A storms washes away his home, but brings an abandoned lifeboat to the island.  Inside all is cosy and shipshape with a family of kittens who were hiding under the stove... seems like it might be out of print. It was a Weekly Reader Club selection.
Arthur Ransome, We didn't mean to go to sea, 1940. The four Walker children make an accidental crossing of the English channel.  En route, they rescue a kitten.


 K134: King and castle has garden of pinwheels that reaches to the sky
A book of the 70's.  Features a king and on the castle pinwheels are built higher and higher.

2011

K135: Katie, anorexia, romance, grandmother, enchiladas
YA romance novel about a girl named Katie who has anorexia. She lived in the Southwest, had a close relationship with her grandmother (there were descriptions of her cooking - green enchiladas?), a quirky best friend and a boyfriend. She played Scrabble. She spends some time in a hospital or clinic.

K136: king, contest, forest, magical creature
SOLVED: Jolly Roger Bradfield, Pickle-Chiffon Pie.

K137: Kids with behavior problems learn to use positive reinforcement on their teachers
I read a young adult fiction book in the late 1970s/early 1980s in which a class of middle or high school kids identified as having behavioral problems learn to apply the techniques of positive reinforcement on their teachers.  The plan works and the kids start to be perceived much more positively.
Gordon Swarthout. Just a guess...but this sounds like something Gordon Swarthout might have written. His most famous book was Bless the Beasts and the Children, but I don't think it's that one. You would definitely have remembered the ending.

K138: Kids book of questions or facts? circa. 1980's
The book was filled with kids q&a's - how does quicksand work? Who got the first speeding ticket? Glossy White cover, i think question marks on it.-construction paper pages, colored sections. Little cute pictures followed each question. Boldface font, looked typewritten. Please help find this book! Additional information: Circa 1980s - Childrens book of Questions or facts?As i recall, it had a glossy white cover, perhaps with question marks on it. Title was something like Facts or questions for Children but not sure. Everypage was construction paper. Colored sections, like blue, purple, orange, green. About 150 pages. There were questions, with pictures, and answers to the questions, sometimes more than one question per page. The font was bold as i recall. Very crude looking, but a great book nonetheless. Some of the questions answered were how does quicksand work, who got the first speeding ticket, really a hodgepodge of interesting facts. I will be forever grateful for help finding this book. Thanks.

Malvina G. Vogel, The Big Book of Amazing Facts, 1980, approximate. Could it be "The Big Book of Amazing Facts?"  We had a paperback copy that didn't have color-coded sections, but the format and sample questions sound similar.
William E. Siegmond, Once Upon a Question, 1977. Has the glossy white cover and different colored construction paper sections. Font is typewriter-like, includes small illustrations. I'm sure this is the book you are looking for.

K139: King wishes painless life for daughter
A king had a daughter he wanted to live without suffering pain. A sorcerer granted his wish. The daughter grew but had no love or empathy for others. The king complained to the sorcerer and she told him it is because she does not feel pain. The King had the sorcerer change her back so she could feel pain but also know love and empathy.


K140: Key In Trunk Under Frog
SOLVED: Wylly Folk St. John, Mystery of the Gingerbread House.


2012

K141: Kids decide to find another house

SOLVED: Liesel Moak Skorpen, We were tired of living in a house, 1969.


K142: Kids in treehouse dress as superheroes & solve mystery
Neighborhood kids have a treehouse they use as a headquarters (like the hall of justice in DC Comics).  The kids dress as superheroes (maybe similar to DC heroes like Batman, the Flash, etc.).  The kids had bikes decorated like vehicles and the treehouse has exits for each bike. Book pre-1990s.


K143: Kittens: Twinkle and Boo
Looking for a very old children's book (don't know the title) that starts: "There were two little kittens with eyes of blue, One named Twinkle and the other Boo. They tried to be good and do what was right but they got into mischief from morning to night."

Helen Wing, The Kitten Twins,
1960. I found this book by doing a google search of the first line of your poem. It looks like it's a match, but you can probably tell for sure by looking at some of the illustations (by Elizabeth Webbe). Someone has posted a few photos of the illustrations here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/trywhistlingthis/3309833171/
Helen Wing, The Kitten Twins. "In no time at all / those kittens were up / licking the milk / from Grandfather's cup.  / Then onto a shelf / they climbed very high / And Boo put her paw / in a blackberry pie."
Helen Wing, The Kitten Twins, 1960. Illustrated by Elizabeth Webbe, Elf Book.


K144: Kids Stuck in Mud
Looking for a book about a large family that moves to the countryside. The kids find a mud pond and jump in, only to end up stuck upside down as their parents try to get them out.

Fleischman, Sid, McBroom Tells the Truth,
1966. This is the first in the McBroom series. The family buys an acre of land, only to find out that all it consists of is a pond (the acre goes straight down). When they jump in the water to make the best of it, it's such a hot day that the pond dries up before they reach it, and they end up stuck in the mud.


K145: Kid's Series? Find parent's secret book in house wall. Secret cave, tree house
SOLVED: John Peterson, The Secret Hideout.

K146: King's pleasure boat on river
In the 80s I read my young daughter a children’s book by an English author about a girl who is taken by her nanny (I think) on visits to the river. If I recall correctly the book was set out in chapters with each chapter revolving around an adventure on the river. The king sometimes went by on his pleasure craft and was attended by a body guard. I seem to remember that there was also a river policeman who wore a plumed hat and dashed about in a speed boat. Eventually one day the girl was invited by the king onto his boat. It was set in the past with Victorian or Edwardian times suggested. The tone was humorous and the illustrations were line drawings. The copy we had was a paperback.

K147: Katydid did it!
Book has a recurring phrase of "Katydid did it!"  Katy is the youngest kid in a katydid family, and is always being blamed for various misadventures, thus "Katydid did it!".  Published in the early to mid 1980's at the latest.  Not the Lorianne Siomades book of 2009 or Susan Coolidge series.

K148: Kidnapping of boy with outrageous behavior
Story about a wild, rambunctious boy who is kidnapped. A ransom note to the parents results in the father offering to take the boy back for a fee. The boy carries out all sorts of injuries and insults on the kidnappers. In the end, the kidnappers return the boy without collecting the ransom (I think. Memory is fuzzy.)

This sounds like O. Henry's short story The Ransom of Red Chief.
O Henry, The Ransom of Red Chief. Definitely sounds like your story. Not only do the kidnappers get nothing, they have to pay the father to take his kid back, as the boy is having too much fun and doesn't want to go home.

K149: King needs best and biggest
 The King's Flower, Misumasa Anno.

K150: Kids live in shack by the sea
I'm looking for a british childrens book I used to read as a kid. Was oldish (like 1950-70). About a family of kids (maybe 2 boys 2 girls) who for some reason go to live at a shack near the sea by themselves. Think it had Pelican in the name. Was not a mystery, not Enid Blyton. Would prob be OOP

This description does sound very like one of the Arthur Ransome books (not Swallows and Amazons).  But  there were several others and ‘Pelican’ does ring a bell with these.
I've looked through all of Arthur Ransome's books but unfortunately none of them are the book I'm looking for.
Possibly: The far-distant Oxus, Katharine Hull, Pamela Whitlock http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Far-Distant_Oxus Very much in the style of Ransome.


K151: Kids meet and play in a tree, Southwest US, "Mama Bear rain"
Kids meet and play in a tree (evergreen?).  This was a young adult book from the mid 80's.  It was set in the Southwest US.  One girl has "whipped cream curls", may have been named Darcy.  In one scene, the kids play in the "Mama Bear rain."  A character may have been named Esperanza.


K152: King Cabbage gets eaten by worms
I'm trying to remember an illustrated children's book. All I can remember is a sad deposed king of the cabbages. Perhaps he's dead because his head is riddled with wormholes. Maybe he ruled over a kingdom of vegetables. Cannot remember the story or the protagonist.


K153: Kids live in apt building, eat ladyfingers
2-3 kids living in apartment building, other tenants are old & rich? Something mysterious is going on (perhaps they think a tenant is a murderer?), but maybe they turn out to be mistaken. One tenant, an older woman, gives them ladyfingers, there are dogs owned by the tenants living in the building.

Has the person ruled out one of Elizabeth Levy's books about the Bramford brothers? The first one was Frankenstein Moved In on the Fourth Floor. http://www.fictiondb.com/author/elizabeth-levy~series~bamford-brothers~17194.htm
I'm not sure it totally fits but in Judy Blume's Starring Sally J. Friedman as Herself, Sally and her friend do live in an apartment-type building in Miami.  At one point, they do eat ladyfingers (I think dipped in jelly) for dessert.  Sally has a very active imagination and believes that an old man who lives in the building also, is Hitler, in hiding.  Good luck!


K154: King, curtains
I read this book as a child between 1967 & 1969. It was about 3rd to 5th grade. The book was about a king who told the people they had to take the curtains off their windows, so he could see everything they did. Picture of king in tower looking down at people.





L8: Lonesome Traveller
Solved: Lonesome Traveler

L9: Looking glass, 3-way
Solved: The Multiplying Glass
L11: Looking strange

Solved: Bartholomew the Beaver
L12: Lucy Ladybug

Hi - I love your site and need your help. There was a book which contained a story my mother read to me in the 50's. I had a story about Lucy Lady Bug having a tea party. She invited all of her friends and got everything ready for the party. After getting everything ready, she decided to rest for a little while. She fell asleep and slept through the party. Grassy Grasshopper came to Lucy's house for the party but could not get in because Lucy was asleep. I would like to find the complete book to read to my 3 year old daughter.

Animal Bedtime Stories. I know exactly which book you're talking about, in fact my grtandmother used to read it to me. Unfortunely the only book I kow that it is in is Animal Bedtime Stories, and the only person I know who has it is my grandmother and she's not selling, sorry.



L13: Ladybug-shaped book
Solved: The Bug Book


L19: Little Mermaid variation
I remember a book that contained a story (the title story of a collection of stories) that was a variation of the "little mermaid" story. in this version, the little girl mermaid spies upon a small boy and girl on shore. the boy and girl turn out to be a prince and princess. the mermaid meets with them again in bbbbv. I can't remember the entire story, or any of the other stories. the book had a dark yellow or maize-colored hard cover with a color plate on the cover, and at least one color plate inside. there were also some black and white illustrations. the version I had was printed I believe somewhere between 1890 and 1925 (I had it in the 60's). I thought it might have been The Little Mermaid and Other Tales 1893, trans by R Nisbet, illus by JR Weguelin, but I recently saw the cover of the (1990's) reprint, and that's definitely not it. I've also seen references to a book published by Ward, Lock & Tyler c. 1890, and The Mermaid and Other Stories, Dugald Stewart Walker, pub Garden City 1923.  However, I haven't been able to find a picture of either the cover or front plate of either work (the easiest way for me to positively identify it).  I'd like to identify the book and then obtain a copy. Can you help?

L20: Little Old Man by the Sea
Solved:  A Little Old Man by the Sea
L21: Limpopo

Solved: Ginny and Custard

L24: Legend of the white buffalo
My aunt had a book that belonged to her that she would read me when I was little.  Therefore, it must have been originally published in the '40s.  It was an orange hardcover (minus the dust jacket) and the standard large-sized children's book.  It was called "(Name) - The Legend of the White Buffalo" or something like that.  I think the basis for the story was an American Indian spirit or legend of a white buffalo and maybe involving a young boy.  The illustrations were in black/white drawings maybe with some minor color.  I would like to find out the name of this to see if I can locate a copy to have.

#L24--Legend of the white buffalo:  Very long shot, but this legend is well-known among a number of Native American plains tribes.  A few years ago, a calf fitting the legend was born on a bison ranch.  The story was featured on "Unsolved Mysteries."  According to the legend, the calf was to be female (which this was) and was to be born white, but turn three other colors (I believe red, yellow, and brown or black, but don't remember the sequence) to show that it was really a magical beast and not just an albino or freak of nature.  The calf turned the proper colors in the proper sequence.  It's possible that the people now keeping this bison on their ranch may have collected literature on it and be familiar with this particular version, or know who might have it.
Title not quite matching, but there's The Great White Buffalo by Harold McCracken, illustrated by Remington Schuyler, published NY Lippincott 1947, 268 pages "It was in the days when the Indians had this country to themselves that a young Dakotan saw the almost unheard-of sight of a pure white buffalo calf with its mother on the grassy plain. His report of the powerful good luck symbol was not accepted by the Wise Elder members of the tribe and Wakan was sent away. He was to find the White One again and form with him a strong bond of friendship." (Horn Book Mar/47 p.120)
-------and the white buffalo. I received this book for my 7th birthday in 1944. It was the story of an Indian boy who found a white buffalo. The first word in the title was the Indian boy's name  I believe it was something like Tah-Neek-Ah.  I think this may have been a Platt and Munk book.
White Buffalo and Tah-Tank-Ka by John D.  Nicholson,  Platt & Munk, 1941?



L25: Little girl friends with the devil
One of the books from my childhood that is still quite memorable is about a little girl who gets into a lot of trouble because of her friendship with the devil. He was a small, brown beast with a pointy tail, possibly had horns. The little girl grew attached to her devil friend, but he always got her into trouble. She would blame him but nobody believed her. Finally she must tell him to go away, because it's time for her to be a good girl, and the devil starts crying when he has to leave her. I wish I could remember more. I'm desperate to find this book!! Who is the author, and what's the title? My mom read it to me dozens of times in the mid to late 70s, maybe early 80s. Thanks for your help!

Ann Lawrence, The Good Little Devil, 1970? sounds as if it might be this?? Know I've read this, and also know I've read something like the poster is asking for - but are they one and the same ...?
More on the suggested title - Good Little Devil, published Macmillan 1978, illustrated in b/w by Ionicus. "Humorous juvenile novel about an Abbey choirboy in the Middle Ages." Which would seem to rule it out.
could be The Devil Did It, written and illustrated by Susan Jeschke, published Holt 1975, 32 pages. "After Mama tells Nana that the devil made the tangles in her hair, only Grandma believes Nana when she says that the devil is hiding under her bed. The devil - small and furry, with curved horns, pointed ears, and long, sharp nails - gets Nana into a heap of trouble. He puts Papa's socks in the refrigerator and Cousin Joey's clothes on the dog. But gradually Nana learns to tolerate, outwit, and even like her devil - and then he leaves in a huff. As Grandma says comfortably, 'These demons, that's how they are. They come and go, come and go ...'" (HB Apr/76 p.149)
L25 Is the girl African American? Seems so familiar to me... but I haven't got the book right here. The one I'm thinking of includes an episode where the girl spills a pail of milk she is carrying home, possibly devil's fault, or possibly she just blamed him.



L26: Lame story
Solved: A Tree for Peter


L27: Little Witch
This book is about a little witch.  She either lives by herself or with one older person who is not present that often.  She is supposed to sleep during the day, but she longs to be a normal little girl, so she dresses like a human girl, and she slips out of her house, and she makes friends.  I think that there is something like she can't cry, or she doesn't know what crying is.

Check out the solutions posted on the solved mysteries pages to see if your book stumper might be Little Witch or Little Leftover Witch.  Possibilities?
Does sound like Little Witch by Anna Elizabeth Bennett, illustrated by Helen Stone, published Lippincott 1953. Minikin (Minx) lives with Madame Snickasnee the witch. At night she has to make Black Spell Brew while the witch goes out, and is supposed to sleep during the day. However, she sneaks out and goes to school for the first time. Her teacher tells her to wear a clean dress next time, but she only has one, until her friend gives her some clothes. However, she seems to cry without any difficulty, and I couldn't find anything in the book about witches not crying (though this is a point in several other books).
I'm not sure if it is Little Witch.  I've asked my mother, and she seems to think that it is.  I am trying to find a copy at the library to look at so I can confirm it.
Try  The Resident Witch.  about a little girl witch who sneaks out and goes to a carnival, makes a friend and gets into all kinds of trouble!  I have it at home, but can't remember the author.



L28: Lazy Boy
Solved: Lazy Tommy Pumpkinhead
L29: Little Boy From Shikshinney
Solved: Little Boy from Shickshinny

L30: Lamb learns to sing
I hope you can help me!  I am looking for two books from my childhood. They had the same illustrator: one was about a lamb who learned to sing and then lost her voice; the other was about a fat little fairy who got thin, then fat again.  The illustrations were so beautiful - at least in memory!

The lamb story is probably Barbara Lamb, written and illustrated by Cam, published Roy 1950, 32 pages "A gay picture-book about Barbara the lamb whose ambition was to sing so that tears came into people's eyes. There are colored pictures on every page filled with the kind of detail that children love. Ages 4-6." (HB Nov/50 p.466) No guess on the other one, though. "Cam" is kind of a pain to search online.
a possible for the other story, assuming that Cam is the right author/illustrator, is The Story of Buttercup Fairy, written and illustrated by Cam, published by John Lane Bodley Head, 1946. The second in this series of picture books (Barbara Lamb being the first). Pale blue pictorial boards. Bright colourful pictures every page.
L30 lamb learns to sing: there's another story on this subject! The Song of Lambert, by Mazo de la Roche, illustrated by Eileen Soper, published Macmillan 1955, Little Brown 1956, 51 pages. "The amazing adventures of a singing lamb, including a hazardous trip to the South Pole and a return to the farm of his youth." "Lambert is a little lamb with a lovely song, which very few can hear." Now to find whether Eileen Soper illustrated a book about a fat fairy ... Later - couldn't find a fat fairy book, but she did illustrate a lot of Enid Blyton.
L30 lamb sings: now that I've looked at The Song of Lambert, I don't think it's the right book. Lambert is a boy lamb, not female, and he doesn't have to learn to sing, it is a natural gift. Also he never loses his voice, though he doesn't sing for a long time after he leaves the farm. So Barbara Lamb sounds like the better bet, being about a female lamb who has to learn to sing. Also, Cam's illustrations are much more distinctive and memorable than Soper's.



L31: LGB holidays
Solved: The Little Golden Holiday Book

L32: Lars, Pip, Olaf and Britta
Solved:  The Children of Noisy Village

L33: Lemon soda and chocolate bar
Solved: A Penny's Worth of Character

L34: Lost duck or duckling
A friend told me about this book and gave me the title, but after trying to locate it for years I gave up and lost the informaiton.  Yesterday another friend was searching for Jonica's Island and came across a lost duck book, but she can't remember where or the title.  Perhaps the duck was injured or sick instead of lost.

Thornton Burgess, The Adventures of Poor Mrs. Quack.  Mr. Quack is missing, feared dead, during hunting season and Mrs Quack flees from the"Big River" to the "Smiling Pool." They are, of course, reunited in the end and all is well. This is a possibility for your stumper.
I'd suggest The Story About Ping, by Marjorie Flack, illustrated by Kurt Wiese, published Viking 1933, about the duckling who runs away and is found again. But perhaps that's too obvious?
L34 lost duck: Another suggestion, but a goose rather than a duck, is Rebel by John Schoenherr, published Penguin/Putnam 1995, 32 pages. "Soft, realistic watercolors evoke the bleakness of early spring and its dangers for newborn geese. The illustrations portray an individualistic gosling going his own way, while the narrative tells the parents' story of protecting their young from predators. Although almost abandoned, Rebel is reunited with his family as they prepare to join other geese at the brooding ground." (1996 Horn Book review)
L34 lost duck: another is Little Duck Lost, by Anna Standon, illustrated by Edward Standon, published Constable 1965, 48 pages. The story is set in Paris, and French words and phrases are introduced.
L34 lost duck: here's another, probably too recent - Have You Seen my Duckling? written and illustrated by Nancy Tafuri, published New York, Greenwillow 1984, 25 pages, "Cheerful, bright pictures depict a mother duck's search for an errant duckling."
The Little Wild DucklingsThis book is illustrated in photographs. It's about a family of ducks going to swim in a big pond. One in particular is curious and wanders off to explore. He is frightened by a larger bird but his mother comes to the rescue. At the end of the book they take a nap. Ends saying "Sleep tight little wild ducklings!



L35: Letter writing and pancakes
Solved: Nate the Great


L36: Leaf skirt
Solved: Date with a Career

L37: Little boy and his teddy bear
Solved: Charles

L38: Labor struggles in Buffalo
The book is about labor struggles in Buffalo during the late 19th or early 20th centuries.  I believe the word "Niagra" is in the title/ Julia is the author's first name.

Mrs. Richard Crowley, Echoes from Niagara: Historical, Political, Personal, 1890.  I wonder if this could be it... Mrs. Richard Crowley is how it appears on the title page, but her name was Julia Corbitt Crowley.  The book was published by Moulton in Buffalo, NY.  I cannot find any details on content, but there are several on the net.



L39: Little girls defeat witch coven
Solved: Mystery of the Black-Magic Cave
L40: Lot's wife statue

Solved: She Fell Among Thieves
L41: A Little Girl's Very Special Day

Solved: My Special Day
L42: The Little Red Hen in rebus

Solved: Better Homes and Gardens Story Book

L43: Little Golden Book blue treasury
Solved: Treasury of Little Golden Books
2002


L44: little people living in vegetables
I read this as a kid in the '50s, but it belonged to my mother or uncle, so I think it was published in the '20s or '30s. All I remember is great pictures of a vegetable garden, with small people living in the vegetables (which had roofs, doors, windows, etc.). I especially recall a pumpkin(?) up on stilts with a stairway leading up to the front door. Not much to go on, I know, and I don't recall the plot (troublesome animals?). Wish I'd found your site years ago!

I wonder if this could be the Teenie-Weenies series of books (don't know the author). In the 50's I know it was a book series and a comic strip too. The description of the homes in the vegetable garden sounds pretty typical, and they did have encounters with small animals/birds/insects. Don't know if it dates as far back as the 30's.
I've checked out the Teenie-Weenie series, and that's not them. My garden-town people were more nursery-tale fantasy types, not so realistic (if you can call 4-inch people that!).
L44 little people vegetable houses: maybe Twinkie Town Tales, by Carlyle Emery, llustrated by Arthur Henderson, published St. Louis, Hamilton-Brown Shoe Company, 1926 "This delightful book is Book I of the Twinkie Town Tales, The illustrations of the Twinkies are wonderful. The Twinkies resemble pudgie little elves or pixies." About 33 pages, 12 full page illustrations, the other pages are also illustrated.
Riesner, Charles Francis., Little Inch-high people. (1937) LC Control Number: 38004096 From the Library of Congress: Type of Material: Text (Book, Microform, Electronic, etc.) Brief Description: Riesner, Charles Francis. Little Inch-high people, by Charles Francis Riesner, illustrated by George Wolfe. New York, N.Y., Junior progress, inc. [c1937] 9 p. l., 7-97 p. illus., col. plates. 26 cm.  I have an original copy of this incredible children'\''s story, which included the rich illustrations your write describes: Read it myself as a child, and my children loved it as well!



L45: Lapis Lazuli is girl's favorite word
Solved: A Room Made of Windows 
L46: light

Solved: Destiny of Fire 

L47: little duck ran away
The first book I am hunting for is about a little duck that ran away from his home pond and went to see the world.  He had numerous adventures and ended up at the ocean which scared him  thoroughly, so he ran home again.  His mother, when he showed up, said, "Quack, quack, I'm glad to have you back.  Don't you ever run away from home again."  I expect it was printed in the early 30's, because I was a little girl when I got it.

The Little Lost Duck, Little Golden Book
I pursued that Little Lost Duck as a Golden Book, but this is not the right story.  I had talked to Strawberry Hill Books and they said that Golden Books started a little later, perhaps in the 1940's, so my book request is too early for this.  I'm sorry.  Perhaps somebody else will come up with an idea.  Thank you.
Adda Mai Sharp & Epsie Young, Downy Duck Grows Up, 1947.  I don't find where Downy Duck winds up at the ocean, but he does run away and has many adventures, then goes back home.  This is part of the Woodland Frolics Series.


L48: Lipstick-eating outsider girl
Solved: Honestly, Katie John!



L49: Large shouldered girl
Solved: Junior Miss 

L50: Los Alamos
Solved:  The Abracadabra Mystery

2003

L51a: Lost kitten
Solved: The Kittens Surprise 
L51b:  little golden book story about a kitten.

Solved: Peppermint


L52a: LITTLE CHICK BRUSHING HIS BEAK
That's all she wrote...

Dr. Almute Grohmann, Dragon Teeth and Parrot Beaks. 1998.  A little chick brushing his beak also sounds like it could be Richard Scarry or something by Margaret Wise Brown.  Can the customer give any more information?
L52 little chick brushing: maybe Little Yellow Chick, by Ian Munn, illustrated by Helen Adler, Rand-McNally Junior Elf 1961. or Little Chick's Story by Mary Deball Kwitz, illustrated by Cindy Szekeres, Scholastic 1978, 32 p.


L52b: little boy, little dog, big black umbrella
Solved: Happy Orphelines series



L53a: Li'l Hannibal
Solved:  Li'l Hannibal 
L53b: Little Golden Kitten Red Boots

My sister grew up in the 80s.  One of her favorite books she thinks was a Little Golden Book.  The story was about a kitten who got a pair of red boots.

Charles Perrault's Puss in Boots is almost too obvious.  The original Little Golden Books format was published in 1959 in an adaptation by Kathryn Jackson and with illustrations by J.P. Miller.  There was also a 1991 version with illustrations by Lucinda McQueen.
L53  Could this be about a bunny instead of a cat?  There is a Little Golden book called Bunny's New Shoes.
Edith Thacher Hurd , Johnny Lion's Rubber Boots, 1980s-currently in print.  Not a kitten, but a feline.  And the boots are red.



L54a: Lonely, lost train
Solved: Choo Choo, The Story of a Little Engine Who Ran Away

L54b: little bear and rocketship
Solved: Moon Cake


L55: lollipops
Small format book, grey-blue hardback cover, published 1935-44, illustrated in color with meadow of lollypops in many colors, possibly featuring an elephant. It had a companion book about a squirrel in winter. USA imprint.

Kathryn Jackson.  Author of a number of picture books with somewhat similar themes, though I can't identify the particular book
Johnny Gruelle, Eddie Elephant. (1921)  There is a picture of Eddie Elephant, who lives in Jungleville, looking at the field of 'flowers' (lollypops) shown him by Grandpa Monkey.  Eddie wears a red/white striped outfit, inlcuding a hat.  Other characters in the book are Christopher Crocodile, Alonzo Alligator, Cousin Katy Kangaroo, Uncle Hippopotamus, the Cocoa Boy, Mabel Monkey, and Bertram Buffalo (to whom Eddie gives his shiny new blue bicycle (tricycle) with the bell that goes "Tinkle, Tinkle.''  It was a "Volland Sunny Book Series" book.  The illustrations are wonderful.  I spent many years thinking it had been a "Babar" book.



L56:  long lost book
Solved: Tal, His Marvelous Adventures with Noom-Zor-Noom


L57: Lowly the Worm
Solved: The Adventures of Lowly Worm


L58: Leper victim
Solved: Miracle at Carville


L59: Lavinia, little witch girl?
This is a book about a little girl witch who lives with her mother and hates being a witch.  Dorrie sounds a lot like this, but I don't remember anything about red hair, and I could swear the name of the book was "Little Witch."

Well, there is a Little Witch book.  See W86 above, and more on the Solved Mysteries page.
Although Bennett's Little Witch sounds sweet, I'm really not sure it's the answer.  I don't think the little girl's name was Minx; is there any character in that book named Lavinia?
Palmer Brown, Beyond the Paw-Paw Trees or The Silver Nutmeg, 1954, 1956.  Both of these are extremely long shots and only because the reader seems insistant that the girl's name is Lavinia, and these are the only books I can think of where the protagonist is both a young girl and has the name of Lavinia (or actually "Anna Lavinia"). Beyond the Paw-Paw Trees: "On the way to visit her Aunt, little Anna Lavinia has some remarkable adventures." The Silver Nutmeg: see the Solved Stumper page.
ooooh! I remember this book being mostly concerned with the fact that mother has to go off to work- just so happens she's a witch.
Is it a Junior School age girl, who all she wants to do is go to an ordinary junior school (which I think was called Fern Tree), like the neighbour’s twins do?  Only she had to go to a junior school for young witches, where there were a lot of broomsticks with L plates on in the schoolyard.

If it is that one, there was a “cauldron cookery class” in which she made tomato soup while the others made potions.

At the end of term she got asked to leave to school, and she was pleased (though her mother wasn’t), because then it meant she could go to school with her neighbours children.I don’t know if that is the same one (and I can’t recall the title either), but I thought it might help shed some light on this if you think it might be the same one.



L60: Live Dolls
Solved: The Story of Live Dolls


L61: Little dog chewing bone
Solved:  Animal Stories


L62: ladder
when i was a young boy back in the early 50s i remember being read a book about a woman who was taking care of some children and she took them on a journey to the moon. i remember she made a ladder that went up to the moon.it seems to me that she was some kind of sorceress or something

P.L. Travers, Mary Poppins books.  Sounds like a Mary Poppins story, though, if so, I can't identify which one. I think
that "Mary Poppins and the House Next Door" does involve a visit to the Man in the Moon - I can't remember if a ladder was involved.
I checked -- Mary Poppins climbs up cloud stairs, no ladder involved.
Since no one has offered any other possibilities than Mary Poppins, I wondered if this could be The Peculiar Miss Pickett again.  I don't remember the book well enough to know if there's an incident like this, but Miss Pickett is a magic babysitter...  (see more in M187)



L63: The Little Brown Bear
The Little Brown Bear, pre 1936.  The little brown bear is at a picnic with other animals. "The monkey started to serve the fish, but he put it all in his own dish, and the little brown said That's not fair!"   "And the little brown bear got jam in his hair."  This was an oversize book with pictures on every page. The pages may have been linen

Maybe? Upham, Elizabeth, Illustrated by Marjorie Hartwell. Little Brown Bear. Platt and Munk Co, 1942
I checked my copies of  Little Brown Bear and Little Brown Bear and His Friends.  In the latter, he does go on a picnic but there is no monkey or fish involved. Should probably rule out this series.
L63 My Upham Little brown bear is c1942; in many ways it sounds like the stumper but doesn't fit exactly; others listed in the series have even later dates.
Leslie Brooke, Johnny Crow's Garden, etc.. Could be one of this series (Johnny Crow's Garden; Johnny Crow's Party;  Johnny Crow's New Garden)



L64: La Brea tar pits prehistoric drama
Solved: Monsters of Old Los Angeles


L65: LOCKET
Solved: The Magic Locket


L66: Little boy climbing to the moon
Solved: Amos and the Moon


L67: lost on Canadian tundra
Solved: Lost in the Barrens


L68: Linette and Lenare
This is a story about two flowers named Linette and Lenare (I believe this was the spelling, though I'm not sure).  It may have been in a children's magazine, or possibly it was a collection of stories, from the 1930's or 1940's.  I remember it as a large, thick paperback with illustrations.  The flowers are either pansies or violets.  I have been searching for this for years!  I hope someone can help!!

L69: Lancelot suit for exploring space
When I was in high school I read a book, possible short stories, about someone who got a special space suit called the Lancelot Suit that allowed him to explore space without a ship.  The suit was able to travel at speeds that allowed him to exploer the whole galaxy at will.

Are you positive about the 'Lancelot' suit?  The story I kept coming up with is Have Space Suit--Will Travel by Robert Heinlein.  It was published in an anthology as well as a book.  "A high school senior wins a space suit in a soap jingle contest, takes a last walk wearing 'Oscar' before cashing him in for college tuition, and suddenly finds himself on a space
odyssey."
Fred Saberhagen, Berserker stories.  Maybe one of his short stories? Here is a description of the suit. 'In a sense it was a suit of armour that provided a life support system, a means of propulsion and weaponry. When Michel first donned it, Lancelot had the appearance of gauzy veils surrounding him. As his skills at using it developed, Lancelot moulded itself closely to his body, rather like a suit of armour.'



L70: Lazy boy
Solved: Lazy Tommy Pumpkinhead


L71: Lichen and Other Stories
Rare book, I'm sure.  I doubt if it can be found but I have thought about this book for years.  Children's book of short stories published early this century or late last century. Could be considered fairy tales.  Very dark and sinister.  English author or maybe a translation from a European language.  I had a hard copy version with a red cover when I was growing up in the 1960s in colonial Africa.  It had many stories in difficult, archaic language.  The main story was about a young girl called Lichen.  I believe it was a sad story and my memory was that it was the tale of one evening she spent flying around the world through some force that made her fly faster and faster, and she was refreshed eventually through a draught of ice cold green liquid.  Another story in the book was of a witch who lived in a haystack, and a young man who passed by the haystack each day and eventually was drawn in and encountered the witch.

Olde English Fairy Tales. Your book sounds very like one we read as kids called "Olde English Fairy Tales."  I remember a story with a witch in a haystack and one about creatures called "Yob Yahs" (not sure of the spelling but that's how we pronounced it.)  Yob yahs were small bipedal creatures with lizard-like tales - their story involved kidnapping a girl, putting her in a sack. She is rescued by a kindly hunter who puts his dog into the sack instead.  There was another story about the New Moon, pictured as a young lovely girl who is tangled in a swamp and slowly taken down by clinging vines.  Very dark stories, not what I would have put in the Children's Section of the library, which is where we found it.  Read it in the 60's and it was a very old book then.



L72: Little House in the Big World
Solved:  The Big World and the Little House


L73: Lost Lake
Solved: Gone-Away Lake


L74: Love is like a Lion's Tooth
Solved: Like the Lion's Tooth

L75: Lost Julie is guided home by cats
Solved: Nine Friendly Dogs


L76: Little Postman of Blueberry Lane
Solved: The Little Mailman of Bayberry Lane


L77: Little foxes with frozen faces
Solved: The Little Foxes Story Book


L78: legendary sword found under mountain
Solved: Magician: Apprentice


L79: London family during WWII
I read this in the early 70s while working on a bookmobile in Montana.  It was shelved in the children's fiction section by author and towards the end of the alphabet.  One of the main characters is Victor or Victoria or some other V name, I belive.  It's about children in two families, one of them Jewish (maybe a character named Issac?) in London during WWII.  The hero/heroine meets the Jewish child at school, visits their family, is appalled at the violence of the father (there's a scene where one child is beaten as a punishment).  I seem to remember the protagonist as an exceptionally gifted child relocated to live with relatives because of some family tragedy and the relatives have no idea how bright the child is or how special his/her achievements.  Not a lot to go on, but maybe it will ring a bell for someone.

Could this be Michelle Magorian's Good Night, Mr. Tom??
Sorry, this is not Goodnight, Mr. Tom.
Barbara Ker Wilson, Last Years Broken Toys, c. 1964.  As the poster of this stumper says, little to go on, but I wonder if this might be Last Year's Broken Toys by Barbara Ker Wilson.  I read it as a Peacock Book, which was the teen imprint for the British Puffin paperback collection.  As I recall - the book is now in my parents' house - this was the story of a group of girls at high school together in England during WWII.  I'm sure one was Jewish, and I have a recollection that another was called Florence.  I'm pretty sure one of the girls, or her family members, were killed in an air raid. As far as I can see, the book in now out of print, but some UK second-hand booksellers are listing it.
I finally got hold of an old copy of Last Year's Broken Toys, and that is not the book.



L80: Lost Kitten
Solved: Little Lost Kitten


L81: Larkin (or Larken?)
This is a long shot! All I remember about this book is that the main character was a girl named Larkin (or Larken), and it MAY have been an adventure. It was a chapter book, probably for middle-school years. 1970s.

Doris Gates, Blue Willow.  Just a possibility; the heroine's name is Janey Larkin.
Doris Gates, Blue Willow, 1941.  The main character in Blue Willow is Janey Larkin.  She's the daughter of a cattle rancher who lost everything in the Dust Bowl and now travels the country as a migrant worker.
Gates, Doris, Blue Willow.  In "Blue Willow" the main character is a young girl named Janey Larkin(or Larken.)  The book takes place in the '30s and Janey is the daughter of migrant workers whose prized possession is a plate with the blue willow pattern.  She longs for a permanent home.
Is it possible her name was "Lark"?  There is a young-adult book by that title, by Sally Watson, about a girl in 17th-c. England who must make her way across country to her family during a period of war and upheaval.  She meets a young man (?named James?) and travels with him. Just a thought.
Patricia MacLachlan, Baby.  Could this possibly be it?  It's about a 12 year old girl named Larkin who finds a baby on their doorstep.  A Yearling book.
I posted this one. I am certain the girl's first name was Larkin! I also think it was a more contemporary setting, but I could be wrong. thanks for the suggestions!  Might be the book titled Baby. I'll see if my library has it.
Springer, Nancy, LARQUE ON THE WING, 1994.  A long shot, as this is much newer than has been suggested and a novel rather than a chapter book.  OTOH, it does feature a protagonist first-named Larque, and is a decidedly free-wheeling yarn gender issues are a large part of the subject matter.



L82:  Linda Sherrill artist helps capture saboteurs in WWII
This book was published around 1944.  It is about Linda Sherrill, a young art student who is recovering from scarlet fever.  She lives with her parents in a high-rise apartment in NYC overlooking a river.  Her father is a doctor and she has a boyfriend named Leeds.  She has a little dog named Shandy.  As she is recovering she sits out on the terrace and sketches people she sees passing by below.  One of the people is a man with a limp.  She sketches him and notices that he strolls by often looking at the ships on the river.  He becomes aware that she is sketching him.  This puts Linda in danger as he is a spy or saboteur trying to do something to the ships.  I have been trying to find this book for a long time and cannot remember the title. 

L83: Lord Love a Duck
Solved: Wounded duck


L84: Life in Dollhouse picture book
I found the book in the school library at Marquez School in Pacific Palisades, California in the late 1950's - probably 1958 or 1959.  It was an LA City School at the time and I don't know if there was such a thing as a "standard list" for elementary school libraries or whether the librarian had the discretion to choose titles.  It was a picture book size, shelved with the picture books. The book was about a dollhouse and the dolls who lived there.  The book had photographs, not illustrations - big photographs.  The predominant color in my memory is brown, so perhaps they were sepia and white?  The pages  were slick and had what I think of now as a "printed in Europe" scent to them.  Don't laugh, books with lots of  photographs printed in the UK or the continent have a rather singular tang to them <g>. The book had either been around for a while or was well-loved, so it might have been from the late 40's or early 50's.   I remember some scotch tape repairs.

Dare Wright, The Lonely Doll, 1957.  This one is still hanging on at our public library, and is the only one I've seen matching this description.
I have to disagree with the suggestion:  The Lonely Doll is very American, and does not involve a doll house.  It is, however, illustrated with black and white photographs.
Rumer Godden wrote six or seven books from the doll-house point of view, and this could be any of them: The Doll's House, The Fairy Doll, Four Dolls, Miss Happiness and Miss Flower, The Old Woman Who Lived in a Vinegar Bottle, The Story of Holly and Ivy, Little Plum, Mouse House, The Mousewife, The Rocking Horse Secret, Tottie The Story of a dolls' House.
Could this possibly be Miss Kambeitz' Doll at the Hot Dog Show, by Albert Szabo?



L85: Lawncare poems
Rhyming poetry that has to do with lawncare subjects or gardening and is funny and perhaps a little bit nasty or morbid:  "Don't leave in the grass a rake, or daddy, walking by, will get a headache!"

L86: little bed that ran away
Solved: Book Trails

L87: lonely baby whale
Solved: The Story of Bubbles the Whale


L88: lion who loses his hair/mane
Solved: Tony and His Friends


L89: Lost dolls
Solved: The Secret Museum


L90: lost kitten searching for mother, victorian type clothes
Solved: Where Did My Mother Go?


L91: little house
Solved: The Little House


L92: little witch
When I was around 6 or 7 (in the mid to late 60s), I read a book about a little witch.  Details are pretty sketchy but I do remember it being a small book, with a yellow cover.  A girl (witch?) was in a window on the top floor of a Victorian-type house with a large leafless tree right outside her window.  That's all I have.  Hopefully it will trigger someone's memory.  I can't even remember what the book itself was about!

Eleanor Estes, The Witch Family, ca 1960.  This might be it.  There's a picture in it of a little girl sitting drawing by a
window.
L92 I think this might be it. This paperback cover has the old witch-like lady walking with her cane in front of an old Victorian house with a veranda. No one is in the window, but the story refers to glimpses people got of her at the window.
York, Carol Beach. The witch lady mystery.    illus by Ethel Gold  Scholastic, 1976.   When Oliver rakes the leaves in Mrs Prichard¹s yard, will he find out if she is really a witch?
L92 This sounds like THE LITTLE LEFTOVER WITCH by Florence Laughlin, 1960. It definitely has a yellow cover and is a fun read. ~from a librarian
Laughlin, The Little Leftover Witch,The book you mention is the Little Leftover Witch who is stuck in a tree and leftover from Halloween.  She lives with people, combs her hair, sleeps in a closet at first, then a bed, is mean to the cat, and I can'\''t remember much more.  I read is over 25 years ago at least 30 times.



L93: little girl sports
Solved: The Rand McNally Book of Favorite Pasttimes


L94: L or 7
Solved: Sal Fisher, Brownie Scout


L95: Leprechaun fools boy with yellow ribbons
Solved: Pot of Gold


L96: Law Firm, The
This book was about a large city law firm, I think New York.  As I recall the name of the firm was Adams and Adams and Breedon and Tree.  This was the result of the merger of two firms.
2004


L97: Little Colonel in Arizona
Solved: The Little Colonel in Arizona


L98: Little boy eats until round as balloon and floats to the sky
I’m trying to find a book / story I read as a child.  I was in grade school – late 40s and early 50s.  I doubt it was a text book or even a book from school.  I don’t remember being able to bring books home in grade school and in the little town in Colorado where I grew up, we didn’t have “library” until Jr. High.  I must have borrowed it from the public city library.  I really don’t remember if it was a stand alone book or a story contained within a book – I lean toward stand alone.  The story is about a little boy who eats and eats and eats until he becomes fluffier and fluffier, as round as a balloon and floats up into the sky.  I don’t know if he ever comes down or floats away to ---- who knows where.  In my mind’s eye, I keep seeing the little round boy in royal blue pants (short) and a red and white beanie on his head – or maybe he wears a red and white shirt.  Do you recall a story like that and if you do – do you remember the name? I so very much want to obtain a copy of it.  Thank you very much.

Thank you - have been on your Web site several hours already today searching ALL pages for even the slightest connection to my vague recollection of this story/book.  Indeed, am out there at this very moment. Will be most eager to see if I get any hints.  What Happened to George seems to be built on much the same premise but I very much remember this being a story about a little boy not a pig.
Yes, I thought of that one too, but George is definately a pig.  There's Fat Cat by Jack Kent too, but again, that's a cat, not a boy.
Am doing a search on Web in general at the moment – a search on peppermint – for some reason this very, very cob-webby notion that the little boy ate peppermint has suddenly come to light.  Could it be I’ve set the rusty wheels of time in motion and they are slowly grinding away to help me uncover this childhood story?  I think your Web-site is truly a delight – I ran across several little story books that I had forgotten, stories read long ago but what warm memories they evoked!  Thank you for providing such a great service!!
Hugh Lofting, The Crazy Story of Dizzy Lizzie, 1953??, reprint.  This stumper reminded me strongly of Dizzy Lizzie, whose story I encountered in Volume 4 of a 1953 CHILDREN'S HOUR set (the indicia in that volume says that Lofting first published it in Child Life Magazine, but gives no date).  In some respects the match is very good -- a major episode does involve Lizzie flying about as a human balloon, and the illustrations (done by Lofting) show a person in a red and white striped shirt.  In others the match isn't close at all -- Lizzie is a girl, not a boy, and the balloon incident arises because she's previously been flattened by a steamroller, and is then accidentally mailed to Persia where the King has her inflated.  And I don't think there's any peppermint anywhere.  However, the parts that match are close enough to be intriguing, particularly Lofting's illustrations, in which Lizzie might well be mistaken for a boy.
Wonder if this could possibly be Charlie & the Chocolate Factory -the scene where the chubby boy overeats during Willie Wonka's tour of the candy factory?
The boy who overeats in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory doesn't float away in the air he falls into the chocolate river and goes up a pipe.
Tall book of make believe.  I know this book has appeared in the past on this website.  I suggest it as a possible solution to this question because of the way our mind plays tricks on us.  In this book, The Tall Book of Make Believe, there are two stories that might have coalesced in the reader's memory.  One is about a little boy who gets given a magic lollipop that gets bigger and bigger the more he sucks on it, and he, consequently, gets fatter and fatter, until he finally gives his now giant lolly to the candystore owner to use as a sign for the store.  In the same book is a story about a town that is called the village of creampuffs, or something like that, and it is only attached to the earth by some sort of tether ropes, or it would float away.



L99: leprechaun ship code language
Solved: Magic to Burn


L100: Little girl plays house
Solved: We Help Mommy


L101: London Bridges Falling Down
My grandma bought me a book sometime in the mid 1950s. I think it was the song "London Bridges Falling down" in book form. but on each page that mentioned a candy "build it up with lemondrops" or "build it up with licorice sticks" there would be a sample piece of real candy on the page. I would like to know the name of the book  or the company  who sold it.

L101 Just a side note: in searching this on Google, I learned that in the year 1305, King Edward I, placed a duty on licorice sales, which went to help finance the repair of London Bridge.
There's a nice Peter Spier book version of the folk song, titled London Bridge is Falling Down,  but it wasn't published until 1967.  No lemon drops or licorice sticks.



L102: Locked in attic sketching insects
I'm seeking title and author of an old favorite of mine from the nineteen forties. The main character, a young girl, is missing out on a big picnic, because she's been locked in the attic by accident.  Although upset, she makes the best of her plight by settling down to illustrate a book about insects that she and her friend--a boy whose name begins with "D"--have been working on as a gift for, I believe, her father.  Please help!

L103: Lonely girl in poverty makes a closet dollhouse
Solved: The Secret in Miranda's Closet


L104: Lantern Fish
Solved: The Monstrous Glisson Glop


L105: lost village
Solved: Fair Boy


L106: Lost Candy Cane Christmas
Solved: The Santa Claus Book


L107: Land of Little People
Solved: The Teenie Weenies


L108:  little girl witch is lonely or sad
Solved: The Little Leftover Witch


L109: lollymops and the mouse cafe
Solved: Mouse Cafe


L110: Llamas pajamas
Solved: Humpty Dumpty's Bedtime Stories


L111: Little White Teddybear not sleepy
Solved: Story of a Little White Teddy Bear Who Didn't Want to Go to Bed


L112: Los Angeles
Solved: The Paper Dynasty


L113: little girl, whispering voice of dead girl
Short story that I read in the 80s?  One kid invites another kid home (after school?) and it's very strange.  The entire family talks non-stop, and there's never any silence in the house.  When the kid finally escapes to the bathroom, s/he hears a little girl whispering.  They all talk to cover the whispering.  It turns out that the whisperer died in the house/family after going to bed after an argument, and just wants to forgive and be forgiven.  Either a short book or a short story.  Thanks!

Don't know the name yet.  I am still looking for the title, but it is a short story. I will keep looking.
Vivien Alcock, The Whisperer. (1987)  This short story is in Ms Alcock's collection "Ghostly Companions."



L114: lost treasure
Solved: The Haunted Treasure of Espectros


L115: Leaves raked for neighborhood “witch”
Solved: The Witch Lady Mystery


L116: Laura-summer by herself
Solved: Rise and Fall of a Teenage Wacko


L117: Like to!
I'm looking for a 50's children's book about a horse whose legs get tangled up when he jumps over a fence.  But when he learns to jump up & say "Like to!"  his legs become untangled & he can overcome any obstacle.

Key, Theodore, So'm I, illustrated by Frank Owen.  NY Dutton 1954.  I wonder if it might be this one (also on the Solved pages) about a knock-kneed and bow-legged horse who becomes a champion steeplechaser. The authors were cartoonists, and the book is illustrated in cartoon-style.



L118: Lion
Solved: Miss Lollipop's Lion


L119: Lighthouse with pirates
I've been looking for a book from my  childhood about a kid that lives in  a lighthouse who is captured by pirates? It was lavishly illustrated, in a million details sort of way. I recall lots of fishing poles out  the windows of the lighthouse, and an illustration of big fish eating  medium fish eating smaller fish under the sea.   This book would have been available in the mid 1970s-early 1980s.

Solotareff, Gregoire, Theo and Balthazar Captured by Pirates, 1986.  The 1986 edition is an English-language translation of a French book, presumably written earlier.  Could you possibly have read it in an earlier translation (or even in the original French) in the early 1980's?  Here is a synopsis from the Library of Congress catalog: "While exploring a lighthouse, Theo and Balthazar fall into the clutches of evil pirates but escape with the help of friendly dolphins".  Another possibility might be The Lighthouse Kids and the Oyster Pirates by Lionel A. Hunt (1953), but I do not know the plot of that one.  Of course, there is always Jules Vernes' book The Lighthouse at the End of the World, but that one is about a grown man trying to evade pirates who have taken over the remote lighthouse he is stationed at on an island near South America, not about a boy.
Here are some more details:  I've been looking for a book from my childhood about  a kid that lives in  a lighthouse who is captured by pirates? It was  lavishly illustrated, in a million details sort of way. I recall lots of  fishing poles out  the windows of the lighthouse, and an illustration of  big fish eating  medium fish eating smaller fish under the sea. The kid lived in a lighthouse, gets captured by pirates, and makes it back home in the end.  it is illustrated in (I think it's called) the clear line style, that is solid color areas bordered by thin black outlines. the lighthouse had all kinds of windows out of which were many fishing rods going into the sea. I see the pirates in the hold of the ship with big barrels stacked sideways. We see underwater at some point, the kid may be diving (not sure) but the classic fish food chain image is illustrated there - the big fish eating a smaller fish to about six or seven levels. it's an oversize book.  It was in color color with lots of intriguing details, over the top illustration and I would have read it pre-1983
 I don't feel it is any of the titles you suggested. I can confirm that it is full of lavish illustrations, oversized, and pre-1983 (but no earlier than mid 70's), with the plot involving a boy captured by pirates. I can also add that there were many images of hanging fish, from shops and rooftops. (This "weirdness" is similar to the many fishing poles leaning out of the lighthouse windows)
E. E Libenzi, Robin and the Pirates, May 1975. I have been looking for this book as well. I have a copy that is so worn it no longer has the cover. I am almost 99% positive this is the book you are looking for.



L120: Lost
Solved: The Haunted Treasure of Espectros


L121: Little Boy mailed to his grandma
Solved: Flat Stanley


L122: Little house in a big city
Solved: The Tiny Little House


L123: Little Orphan Annie
Solved: Orphant Annie Story Book


L124: Liverpool, World War II
Solved: Time to Go Back

2005


L129: long shadow/heavy water
Solved: Rick Brant Series


L130: lived in a tree
Solved: My Side of the Mountain


L131: Lost Favorite Toy
Solved:  Dogger


L132: Lavender and Strawberry
Solved: Beyond the pawpaw trees


L133: Lame Stork
"the lame stork" (may be the title) children's short story; there is a lame stork named agar (egar?) and a wise owl says he needs to deliver baby Jesus and that he can do it.  Older story, may have appeared in a magazine.

L134: Lighthouse and Sailing Mystery
Solved: Something Out There


L135: Lois Lenski
Solved: Surprise for Davy


L136: Lonely girl meets undersea friends
Solved: Priscilla and the Prawn


L137: Little black horse and big red
a childrens' story about a little black horse (or a pony?) whose owner out grows him and starts riding a  big red horse.  the little black horse tries to keep up with them as they ride through a forest and jump over a big log.  the little horse tries to keep up and almost hurts himself, with a tear in his eye, he has to go back to the stable.  most likely came out in the 70s.

Farley, Walter, Little Black a Pony, 1961.  Beginner Books: When a small boy graduates from his little pony to a big horse, the pony is sad until the time comes when he is able to do something the big horse cannot do. Walter Farley of of Black Stallion Fame
Walter Farley, Little Black, A Pony.  I'm pretty sure this is the one.  Little Black gets his foot caught in a tree, Big Red is too heavy for the ice and falls through, so Little Black must help. . .I had the book as a child, and your stumper actually jogged MY memory.  I am now searching for a copy of Little Black, A Pony.  I hope this is the one you're thinking of!
 Interpreting
Condition 
Grades
Farley, Walter.  Little Black, A Pony.   Illustrated by James Schucker.  Random House Beginner Books, 1961.  Book Club edition.  Edges bumped and crayon name on front endpapers, otherwise VG.  $8 



L138: Lobsters flying
A children's picture verse book of which I only have one spread left, "There are lobsters flying in the sky. Lobster flying in the sky? Oh, yes. Don't you see them flying by? No, I don't. Oh, now I do. I just caught one. Here, it's for you. Oh, thank you. You're welcome. I don't care for lobster."

L139: Lost Scottish Farm Boy
I read this book about 25 years ago.  A little boy (maybe age 7 to 9 years) from a farm family gets lost on the Scottish moors.  He goes to ground like afrightened animal and eventually comes out on the far side of the moors.  He is a secret artist beacuse his father has no patience for such things.  I think the father softens on this after the boy is found.  The whole village and other villages come together to search for the boy.  The boy is very surprised that the father even cared that he was lost.  It might have been based on a true story.  It was a short book and I think the author was a male.  Thanks so much.  This has been bothering me for a long time.  I'd love to read it again.

L140: Little girl enters baking contest
Solved: Ginnie & the Cooking Contest


L141: Lorax variant
Solved: Wump World


L142: Little Italy
Little Italy, NYC, summer, early 20th century, young boy, Readers Digest Condensed Book before 1968. Can't remember the plot but only evocative
details like the iceman arriving with a block for the icebox, people shouting to each other from the stoops, the kids pouring red wine vinegar and olive oil onto bread for a snack, and the oppressive heaet of an inner city summer.

Levoy, Myron, The Witch of Fourth Street and Other Stories, 1972.  This book contains stories about children from different ethnic backgrounds in a New York neighborhood during the early 20th century  the story that stands out in my memory is the one about Vincent the Good, a little Italian boy who never gets into trouble.
Angelo Valenti, Big Little Island, 1955.  Probably not it, but just to rule it out...  Lorenzo is a war orphan who comes to live with family in New York. The uncle is a baker, and allows the boys to help make eclairs. There is another episode where Lorenzo and his cousin buy a cartwheel-sized pizza with 'the works'.



L143: Little Janet and the Lollipop
Solved: The Story of Little Janet


L144: Last Ten Dollars
This is a short story: A man is almost broke, down to his last ten dollars. Staring at the bill on his coffee table, suddenly he has two ten dollar bills! Then he has another, and another. He uses them to pay for items, and gets caught because they all have the same serial number. The IRS comes to visit, he offers them a drink, and one sets their drink on the coffee table, suddenly there are two drinks. The IRS takes the coffee table and chops it up. The man moves away, and wonders if anyone would be interested in a thirteenth copy of a rare car they only made twelve of...  I read this in about 1977, probably in a book of short stories, but don't remember the author or what library I got it from.

L145: Lucy Ladybug
Hi! I have been searching for years for a childhool story of Lucy Ladybug back in the 1960's, although it could easily have been older than that.  She was going to have a tea party and spent the day cleaning furiously for her company.  She's so exhausted that she has to lie down, and sleeps through the knocking on the door of her guests.  This story is very precious to me and I would really appreciate any efforts to find it.  The cover to the book was ripped off, so I have no idea (nor does my mother or siblings) of the title of the anthology or the author, but it was dimensionally larger than 8 1/2 x 11 (although I was probaby 4-5 and everything looks big then :)  ).

HRL:  Same as L12 in the archives, for which a answer was proposed as Animal Bedtime Stories, but still no author or publisher information.



L146: Lion transforms into a creature
Solved: Lord Rex: The Lion Who Wished


L147: Lily summerhouse daughter "drowns"
Solved: The Color of Hope


L148: Lavendar
Basically, I'm looking for a book from my childhood, and all I can remember is that I was fascinated with a room being painted the color lavender, and that I think it had billowing fabric hanging from the ceiling.  I'd love to find it again. I was born in 1958, so I'm thinking I probably read it around 1968 to 1970.

M. M. Kaye, The Ordinary Princess, 1980?  I don't have The Ordinary Princess here with me to check, but I know the princess's room was lavender and I'm pretty sure it had fabric pinned up too.  However, apparently the book wasn't published until 1980, so it may not be what you're thinking of.



L149: Lonely girl at Christmas sucked into Victorian world
Solved:  Mirror of Danger


L150: little witch/girl in mirror/potions
Solved: Little Witch


L151: Lion story
Solved: My Father's Dragon


L152: little girl finds "magical" buttons
Solved: The Witch's Button's


L153: little girl with puppy dog
I have been looking for this book for years, but can't remember the name. Probably a little golden book.  A little sandy-haired girl with chubby face is playing with her doll and has a little tan and black puppy who gets into trouble. On one page, he is ripping an Indian headdress to pieces. It was my favorite book; can anyone help?

Janette Sebring Lowrey, The Poky Little Puppy, 1942. This was a Little Golden Book. The Poky Little Puppy was very mischievous, but I can't remember if he ever ate an Indian headdress. It might be the LGB My Puppy by Patricia Scarry, too - that puppy definitely ate things.
The book you describe is definitely NOT The Poky Little Puppy!  There are no Indian headdresses in that book.  The poky puppy escapes under the fence (repeatedly) with the other puppies.  In the end, the poky puppy misses dessert and so decides not to escape under the fence ever again.



L154: Little girl awaits new sibling
Solved: The New Baby


L155: "Lucy's lump" (ambergris)
Solved:  Runaway Home


L156: Lecturer is Replicated and Teaches Multiple Classes Simultaneously
Solved: Beyond The Barrier


L157: Little Red Riding Hood
I'm looking for a specific version of "Little Red Riding Hood."  The only problem is that I have no idea who wrote it.  The difference with this version was that it was structured like a choose-your-own-adventure story. The reader was Red riding hood.  To navigate the book, the pages were numbered with colored tabs, I believe in the upper corner of each page. If memory serves me right, the colors were red, yellow, green, blue, and black. It was wonderfully illustrated.  I also believe it was published sometime before 1989.  I forgot to mention that I also believe there were other popular children's stories done in the same format. I don't know if that will help you/anyone, but I just thought the more information, the better chance of locating this book.

Scally, Kevin, The Story of Red Riding Hood ~ The Magic Road, 1984, approximately.  Hi there! I'm glad I actually found one of the books that your readers have posted. This is definately one of the "Magic Road" books written by Kevin Scally...I just finished reading "The Three Bears" version to my son. It is like a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure and the tabs are Yellow, Red, Blue, Purple, Green and Black.
Thank you so much for the help. This will make a great Christmas present as my sister recieved it from our late uncle a long time ago. Unfortunately a fire claimed this book, but thanks to your site and the help from the Internet Friends, the book has been identified properly.



L158: Large Child Playing With Real Cars
This was a story in a 1950s-1960s elementary school reader. There was an extremely large child (I think a scientific experiment had gone horribly wrong) who was kept in a warehouse.  He played with real cars, which were the same scale to him as toy cars are to us.  The narrator was a man (scientist) who tried to communicate with the child.  I remember he steered one of the cars while the child pushed it, but the child pushed down on the roof of the car so hard that it was difficult to steer.  I'm sure I didn't dream this up!

Sounds like a bit from a Warner cartoon about a normal-sized family who mistakenly recieve a giant baby. One bit has the kid going "roum-roum" with the family car and shoving it all the way to Dad's office. Another had Dad coming home to what looks like a horrific traffic accident only to warn Mom about Junior leaving his toys in the yard. Maybe the book was inspiration for the cartoon?


L159: Little girl, doll hospital
A little girl goes on a quest to get her sick doll to the doll hospital. All I really remember is that the doll itself is deathly pale.. the book's a  picture book.. and I remember a lot of blue... The doll is dying or something.. she's sick at least.. and they go on this rather surreal quest to reach the hospital.

Barbara Brenner, Amy's Doll. Maybe?  I've never seen this book but I know it has black and white photographs of a girl who has to take her beloved doll Sarah Jane to a doll hospital in New York after she gets left outside and damaged.
My father claims he remembers this book as being called "caroline's doll" or something along those lines. He also remembers a fox being in it. Apparently it teases the little girl as she tries to get her doll to the hospital. I haven't been able to find any images to confirm this as yet, or indeed anyone who's heard of the book.



L160: Little Bear & Rusty Tin Cup
Solved: The Merry adventures of Little Brown Bear


L161: Leprechauns and fairies
My mom had a favorite book as a child, so it would have been in the mid to late 50's. What she remembers about it is that it was a collection of stories about leprechauns and fairies. She doesn't remember any goblins, she said, but that doesn't mean there weren't any. One story she remembers is that a boy makes a wish at a wishing well and a leprechaun comes out and he gets three wishes. I have looked at "Lots of Stories" by Rowena Bennett and that doesn't seem to be the right book. Any ideas?


L162: little girl befriends the ghost of a girl her same age
It's a book I read about 10 or 12 years ago about a little girl who befriends the ghost of another little girl who used to live in her same house many years before. They both have similar names and ages. And the living girl goes back to the ghost girl's time to try to save her life. Another thing I remember is that the ghost girl seemed to be getting thinner or weaker or something like that.

Pam Conrad, Stonewords: A Ghost Story, 1990.  It's been a while since I read the book, but based on my memories and the School Library Journal review, I think L162 is Stonewords.  Another book where a girl befriends a ghost with a similar name is Mary Downing Hahn's Wait Till Helen Comes, but it's probably not your book because the girl doesn't try to save the ghost in fact the ghost tries to kill the girl!
Conrad, Pam, Stonewords, 1990.  I'm sure this poster is looking for Stonewords.  Zoe is the contemporary girl, and Zoe Louise is the ghost from the past.  The passage way of time is the staircase in the house both girls lived in.  The two girls are ghosts in each other's lives, and Zoe helps prevent a tragedy in Zoe Louise's life, bringing the haunting to an end.
Pam Conrad, Stonewords: A Ghost Story.  Think this is the book...my daughter who is now 20 read and re-read it perhaps 8 to 10 years ago.
Conrad, Pam, Stonewords: a ghost story, 1990.  "Zoe discovers that her house is occupied by the ghost of an eleven-year-old girl, who carries her back to the day of her death in 1870 to try to alter that tragic event."  I seem to remember the ghost decaying towards the end and trying to trade places with Zoe - but maybe I'm combining to books in my memory.
Pam Conrad, Stonewords.  This might be the one--a little girl, Zoe, becomes friends with another Zoe who died in her house, at her age, and she tries to save her. Ghost-Zoe doesn't exactly get weaker, but towards the end she slowly starts decaying.
Pam Conrad, Stone Words.  This book sounds very like your description.  Zoe comes to live with her grandparents and meets Zoe Louise, a ghost from the past.  Zoe Louise visits with her over the course of years and Zoe eventually is able to go back in time to be a "ghost" at Zoe Louise's house.  She returns to the present, finds out how Zoe Louise died and is able to prevent her death (in a fire at a birthday party).  There is a sequel-  "Zoe Rising".
L162 Sounds like it could be STONEWORDS by Pam Conrad. The girl and the ghost are both named Zoe.~from a librarian
Mary Downing Hahn, The Doll in the Garden. (1990, reprint)  This is another possibility.  Ashley follows a white cat back in time and meets Louisa, a girl who is dying and who longs for her beloved doll--a doll that Ashley and her friend Kristi have found buried in their landlord's garden. In the end Ashley, Kristi, and their landlord visit Louisa the woman is able to make amends with her childhood friend.  The time frame is right, and Louisa was dying from consumption, which matches the poster's info that the ghost kept looking sicker/weaker every time they met.



L163: Lollipop, shaggy dog with lollipops stuck to him
Solved: Two Stories About Lollipop


L164: Lamb as pet in the house
I remember a book that I read at my grandmother's house. I think it was probably one of my father's books. He was born in 1920. I remember the illustrations as being charming. The children had a pet lamb which they let into the house. It got covered with a blanket and they thought it was a ghost. Isn't it funny how a memory like that stays? How wonderful it is to have a website which allows people to collectively remember.

Lammie.  There are several Lammie books. In one Lammie does get mistaken as a ghost, he also eats some horseradish from the garden and does a hilarious dance of a pumpkin.



L165: lemonade stand, root beer and lemade from faucet
Solved: Mr. Pudgins


L166: Latevia
Solved: Watery Grave

2006


L167: Little girl wants to grow taller
Solved: The Very Little Girl


L168: London rain
This book is about a little boy, his sister, and their mother who go on a walk in the rain with the boy's new rubber boots.  The city is possibly London.  The boots were red or yellow. The book was published before 1986.

Hughes, Shirley, Alfie's Feet, 1983.  I think this is the book. The boots are yellow.
Alfie's Feet from the collection All About Alfie by Shirley Hughes?
Unada (or Unada, Gliewe), Ricky's Boots, 1970.  It could be Alfie's Feet, although I don't think it ever actually rains in that story--Alfie and Annie Rose just go stomping through puddles and so on (and he ends up wearing his new boots on the wrong feet).  But if the book could be a bit older, you might try Ricky's Boots   it's set in the U.S., not England, but it is a big-city wet-day boots story as well.  "..one drippy day Ricky isn't allowed out to play. His old boots are too small..". I don't remember if there was a sister in it.  Or if the child could possibly have been a girl, there's Umbrella, by Taro Yashima.



L169: Little Boy Mowing Grass
Solved: Come Play House


L170: Little girl london early 1959's Twiggy
Solved: Twig


L171: little houses winter story
I think this is a tough one, but hope you can help.  When I was in junior high (19 years ago), my mom gave me a book.  I think it had between 100 and 200 pages.  It kind of had the feel of "The Five Little Peppers" era, but do not remember the title or the author.  I do remember that the book was several small stories all about the same group of houses and there was an illustration of a row of different colored homes.  Each short story was about each of the people living in the homes.  The stories took place either during Christmas or the winter.  I remember that one was of a boy who lived with his mother and she had made either a pie or a dish for the boy to give to a neighbor.  That gave the segue for the neighbor's story.  That's all I can conjure out my brain for now.  I'd be thrilled to have it again!

Margery Bianco, A Street of Little Shops.  This sounds a lot like a book my mother had as a child--A Street of Little Shops. Each story was about one shop. In one, the snooty baker's daughter is invited to a birthday party, and she brings the splendid cake from the bakery window, not knowing that it's a fake for display only. There was a story about a woman who made horses for hats, and one about a man permanently stuck in a hardware store because he couldn't remember what he wanted, and I think one about a cigar store indian.
L171 Before I checked on A street of Little Shops, I got out Bianco's  Other people's houses because "houses" sounded closer to the  scenario, but it was not close at all. Then I got out Little Shops  and I feel it doesn't match, either, but GUESS WHAT -  the ice cream  shop is run by MR MURDLE!


L172: London orphan & a chimney sweep named Angel
Solved: The Street Sparrows

L173: Literary Guild Book Club
When I was pregnant in 1985, I belonged to the Literary Guild Book Club, as well as another that I do not remember the name. I got a book from one of these clubs, in the fall. It is the story of an English family, around the turn of the 20th century. The father was a vicar, who had several children. Somehow, one of the daughters got pregnant, and decided to not marry. She named her son Jamie, which was the reason for the name I gave my son. I am not sure of any other details.  Thanks for any help.

L174: Lost money searched for by boy and girl
Solved: The Treasure Trap


L175: Little girl gets tangled up in gumballs/candy
Solved: The Sweet Touch

L176: Littlest Angel
Not Taldewell (1940's)  An angel lands in a farm yard and wants to play with the baby animals.The mother animal says "hush,hush my baby is fast asleep etc" After going to several animals he goes to the window of the farmhouse and finds the baby in the playpen and the Mother invites the little angel in the home.

L177: Little witch and glass mountain
Solved: The Witch Family

L178: Lion, black boy, and butter
Solved: Little Black Sambo


L179: Letters from Susie
A young children's picture book reader.  Story line: Children would write letters to Susie asking all sorts of questions.  She would type out an explanation and mail them back.  Hook: Susie was a spotted dog.

Richardson, Cynthia, Susie Cucumber, she writes letters. (1944)  Susie Cucumber is a fox terrier that learns to write letters. Illustrated by Roberta Paflin. Attached to the back endpaper is a bag which once contained writing paper and an addressed, stamped envelope for the child to start a correspondence with Susie Cucumber.
Cynthia Richardson, Susie Cucumber she writes letters. (1944)  You don' say how old the book is, but if it's old this is a possibility.  (Roberta Paflin, illus.  /  Juvenile audience [60] p. illus. / New York, S. Gabriel sons & company / subject:dogs)


L180: Locked in museum
(1970) kids on field trip at a museum end up locked in for the night

Konigsberg, E.L.,  From the Mixed up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler.  See solved mysteries
Locked in museum  - Could be From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler by E. L. Konigsburg.
Just a note, the children in From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler evaded security guards to live in an art museum for a length of time (a week, I believe) and encounter a mystery relating to a statue that is possibly a Michelangelo.  If the kids your stumper is about were accidentally locked in, this wouldn't be the book.
Baum, Thomas, It Looks Alive to Me! (1976, approx)  Could it be "It Looks Alive to Me!"  In this one, a teenage boy is accidentally locked in the Museum of Natural History overnight. There's a weird moon rock that brings the exhibits to life, and they have to survive until they can get out in the morning.  There's a girl too, but I can't remember if she's a classmate or if she's one of the exhibits come to life and he doesn't realize it.  Anyway, it might be worth checking out.


L181: Lost girl finds skeleton hands
Hello, I'm looking for a series of books that were used as reading  skills in middle school back in the 1970s to early 1980s.  The books may have been Reader's Digest Young Readers and were pink paperbacks.  A story in one of the books is about a girl getting lost in the woods near a cabin.  She is scared when she finds a set of skeleton hands on a stump next to an ax.  I cannot remember the title or the author, but it was a suspense/ mystery story.  I hope this helps.
L182: Lamb follows herd

Book read in the 1970s was about a lamb who follows his herd all over the place, into various minor problems, and then one day the herd leads him into a hurricane/tornado/cyclone. After that, he decides to think for himself and not follow the herd around. It had b&w line drawings, more picture than text but several sentences per page.

Leaf, Munro, Gordon the Goat. (1944)  This is the book. Gordon went everywhere with the herd, even following them into a twister!



L183: Love
Solved: Love One Another


L184: Little girl on Central American/Hawaiian island
This was a children's paperback picture book I had in the late 80s or early 90s. It was about a little, dark skinned girl who lived in a jungle on an island.  There were few words, but lots of pictures.  The pictures were intensely colored and crowded with exotic fruits, flowers, and animals.  My mother thinks the book was called "The Island" but I haven't had any luck with that. I don't remember the story at all, except I think there were descriptions of eating all the fruit and I think she may have gone into a city at one point.  I know it's not a lot to go on, but I hope someone can help! Thanks for your time.

Arthur Dorros, Isla.(1995)  This seems to fit your description, but the copywrite is later.  Rosalba and Abuela fly through sunny skies until they smell "aire tropical" and see the island that Abuela calls "mi esmeralda" sparkling in the ocean below. Rosalba visits with her relatives, travels to the rain forest and samples the local plantains, papayas and pineapples before it'\''s time to head back to New York City.



L185: Lucinda Ladybug
looking for children's book featuring insects:  Lucinda Ladybug, Bumblebuzz (bee) and Beetle Black

Rosalie Fry, Bumblebuzz. (1938)  Cover is yellow, shows a bumblebee with a red "hobo-pack" (bandana tied on the end of a stick) over his shoulder, walking through grass with a ladybug.  Looks like they might be holding hands?  Rosalie Fry also wrote a book called "Ladybug! Ladybug!" in 1940.  The cover of this book shows (at top) two ladybugs running toward one another, and the main picture is of a white house with a red cone-shaped tile roof.  Unfortunately, these books are long out-of-print, hard to find, and very expensive.



L186: lords of cosmic jest
Solved: Dream Dancer series


L187: Lion Family
Solved: Johnny Lion Series
Johnny Lion Series


L188: little people
a whole society of little people who live under the tree roots - i read this in the 70s.  thanks! i've found TWO books i 've been searching for FOREVER through your bookstumper service!  IT LOOKS ALIVE TO ME and THE GRUESOME GREEN WITCH.  bookstumpers ROCKS!  Ps. if anyone is looking for a book about a magic barn where the ponies talk and teach you how to ride it's called SILVER SNAFFLES.  i stole it from the library when i was a kid because i loved it so much. i wish i had stolen ALL My favourite books since the library has long since got rid of most of them!!!

Zilpha Keatley Snyder, Below the Root, 1975, approximately.  Could this be the beginning of the Green Sky Trilogy?  Below the Root is about a race of people who live under the giant trees of a forest.  There's another race who live in the branches of the trees.  The trilogy is about how the two peoples come together.  (And, er, you do know that stealing from libraries is wrong?  If you took it, it couldn't become someone else's favorite book.)



L189: lapis lazuli
Lapis Lazuli used by fairies or elves to keep cave moist enough to survive. Two children become involved with getting lapis back to its rightful location. they eat spongy fairy cakes made of ferns or something like that, i read this story in the mid to late 1970s. one of the elves or goblis or nomes or whatever has done something with the lapis and hidden it.  i remember the walls of the caves were all wet and the fairys ir elves r whatever could become invisible, or maybe they became invisible because they dehydrated, or maybe lost their ablity to become invisible without the lapis.  Anyway, I REALLY want to find this story as it i driving me MAD and i want to shar it with my daughter..thanks!

Mary Whitcomb, Tee-Bo the Incredible Talking Dog in The Great Hort Hunt Tee-Bo the talking dog and the children who own him find a piece of lapis lazuli that, among other things, allows them to travel behind a waterfall to the homeland of the magical, elflike Horts, and assist them in saving their way of life.



L190: Little elf song
Not a book, as such, but a song I learned in Year 4, which would have been around 1967. Our school music teacher taught us this, and I assume she got it out of a book.
The song went -
There was a little elf
Who lived all by himself
He laughed and sang with all his might
And never went to bed at night
But when the moon was shining bright
Out came this little elf.
I'd like to know where this odd little ditty came from. The other songs I recall from the same teacher include Marianina, Brahms Lullaby and Upidee and On Ilkley Moor Ba t'at. A weird lot, no?


L191: lost pearls
circa 1958.  I read this book when I was approximately 15 years old.  It was a story about a young girl sent to and Uncle's farm for the summer. she found a roll top desk in an off limits room.  as she was opening all the different drawers, one of them held a sting of pearls. When she was caught in the room, she closed up the drawer and the desk.  when she came back the pearls were gone.  it was a trick drawer and had a hidden compartment.

L192: London orphan
Your website for helping people search for books from their childhood is just awesome!  I hope I have the same luck.  I am trying to find a book that I read as a child in the late 1970s.  The book would have been published either in the 1970s or late 1960s.  It takes place in London.  It's about an orphan girl who ends up being in an orphanage.  I don't remember if the story was that she was sent to the orphanage and she's waiting for her father to come and take her out of there.  The book mentions the weather a lot, and it is always raining and dreary.  At the end of the story, the girl's father (a captain, I think) comes to take her home.  I've racked my brain, but unfortunately, I can't recall the title of the book.

Frances Hodgson Burnett, Sara Crewe
Burnett, Frances Hodgson, A Little Princess Could this possibly be the book you're looking for?  I have a copy from 1967 - the cover is yellow and has a painting of Sara standing sideways wearing a pink dress with a huge bow in her hair.  It is illustrated by Stewart Sherwood.  I see the edition that is illustrated by Tasha Tudor in bookstores all the time, and I never see my edition, which is perhaps why the original requestor didn't remember the book.
This story sounds like The Little Princess, or A Little Princess. The little girl gets sent to a boarding school while her dad, a British army captain, is away in India. She is forced to become a servant. In the end her dad comes back, or some friend of her dad's adopts her and takes her away from the bad school.
In case this is indeed A Little Princess, I want to make a correction to the above poster's comment: Sara Crewe's father dies in India, no matter what some movie versions would have you think.  The man who adopts her at the end is her father's best friend.



L193: Lost children/garden with crystal
Solved: Tommy and Julie


L194: Lost boy cave one match
I read this book in 4th - 6th grade (1970-1973).  A boy goes into a cave, perhaps with some friends in KY or WV.  He enjoys looking at the rock formations and wanders in deeper.  They get separated.  He has to use his matches to try to get back (perhaps he has a flashlight and the battery dies), and he winds up on his stomach in a tunnel.  At some point, he gets down to one match and has to try to decide the best time to use it.  He realizes he must find his way out in the dark.  Maybe there's some rushing water and/or a big dropoff somewhere on the path back.  He makes it out okay in the end.  I believe that this book was nominated for some national or GA state award.

L194 Having sold this book, I can't check on the story, but my   subject headings are: Mammoth Cave; caves ; Kentucky - juvenile  fiction - for River in the dark by Jean Speiser, part of  Your Fair  Land series
Mary Cunningham, The Witch's Spoon.  There is a scene really similar to this in The Witch's Spoon, which was published in the 1970s.  Lauren and Tom are staying at their grandmother's house with their Italian cousin.  At one point during the story, they decide to do something they've always wanted to do but have never been allowed to.  Lauren's activity is catching a baby owl and Tom's is exploring the caves by the ocean/sea.  He nearly runs out of matches while he's lost in the cave and at one point has to slither back on his stomach.
I'm looking for the same book, I'm sure. I read it at about the same age, probably 4th grade, in about 1975. A couple things I remember: darkness, the main character was alone in the dark for a very long time. There was a huge cliff in the cave that he came close to falling off at one point. It seems that the kids--they were probably about 13-16 yrs old--knew something about caving.. they didn't just accidentally end up in there. They even knew the cave, I think. It seems that they knew the names of the formations. This book was *really* scary. Keep thinking the title was something like "To strike a match" or "A light in the dark".. I'm sure I would recognize the title and it's not either of the ones suggested here so far.
Bryce Walton, Cave of Danger. This sounds like the book "Cave of Danger" by Bryce Walton, about a boy named Matt (an amateur spelunker) who searches for and discovers a cave and decides to explore it by himself, only to get lost.  His friend, Spotty, and his enemy, Kurt, both end up in the cave searching for him-- one ends up falling into the underground river.



L195: little girl becomes witch
I'm looking for a book I loved as a little girl in the mid 1970s.  The plot line was something like this... A little girl wants to be a witch.  She spends much of her time dressing up like a witch, ugly nose and all, and scaring her classmates.  One day she finds that the nose is stuck for real.  I don't remember exactly what happens next, but I think she leaves her family to go live with some witches (?), does not like it/misses her family, and decides that being a little girl is not so bad after all.  I can remember the illustrations, but nothing I've seen on adlibiris.com, eBay, or Amazon look familiar, although I could be wrong.  Thank you for whatever help you can give me.  I have a six year old daughter and I am dying to introduce her to this book!

Eugenie, Wickedishrag1968, Cute story about naughty princess Gwendel, who likes to pretend to be a witch and frighten people, until one day she is mistaken for a real witch. She must learn to be good before she can become a princess again.  See solved mysteries for more info.
Eugenie, Wickedishrag.  Look on the solved pages for more info but I'm pretty sure this is the title you're looking for.
 Interpreting
Condition 
Grades
Eugenie. Wickedishrag.  illus by Eugenie.  C R Gibson Stardust Books,  1968.   dust jacket has large  taped tear on rear, and a little edgewear; cloth and pages very good.  [SQ29267]  <SOLD>



L196: "L" or "M"
I read this book in 1966 and it was about an oriental boy.I can't remember if he was in China or Japan. It was a chapter book and I think his name started with the letter "L" or "M". I remember something about him fishing or being in a boat. It was really good but that is all I can think of. Hope you can find something.

That's not a lot of clues...  but Mei Li by Thomas Handforth won the Caldecott in 1939, so it's pretty famous.  Start with the famous, and work your way down..
Mei Li is about a girl, and it isn't a chapter book...
Elleanor Lattimore, Little Pear, 1955, reprint.  Could this be Little Pear: The Story of a Little Chinese Boy?  The 2005 reprint lists this as the summary: The adventures of Little Pear, a mischievous five-year-old boy living in China in the early 1900s. Little Pear is a young boy who lives in a small village in China. Although his story takes place long ago, he is much like any little boy today--always on the lookout for excitement and adventure! Little Pear is just looking for fun, but he has a knack for finding trouble without even trying! Join him as he stows away to the fair in a wheelbarrow full of vegetables, nearly flies away on a kite, has a mishap with a firecracker, and is rescued from the river by a houseboat family.
Meindert DeYoung, House of Sixty Fathers, 1957, approximately.  A long shot, but might it be Meindert DeJong's Newbery honor title, House of Sixty Fathers?  The story begins with Tien Pao in his family's sampan with his ducklings and pig  this occurs during the Japanese invasion of China in WWII.  An accident sets the boat afloat and sends Tien Pao back into Japanese territory, from which he must start a journey looking for his family and safety.
Not too likely, but one more river story.  Creekmore,  Raymond    Little Fu    illus by Raymond Creekmore    Macmillan  c1947.  Little Fu’s description of his voyage down  the river with his father to sell their tea gives us a picture that  part of Chinese life; large lithographs add to the picture



L197: Lost Steiff Bear
Solved: Lost Bear


2007

L198: Little girl chooses between a doll, an airplane, and a book
Solved: I Decided


L199: Little boy who wakes up on the wrong side of the bed and has a bad day
When the little boy wakes up on the wrong side of the bed, everything goes wrong, but when he wakes up on the right side of the bed, he has a good day.  He is on his way to school one day and stops to buy chocolates for a Valentine gift.

syd hoff, I should have stayed in bed
I checked the book posted, but it's not the one.  I am 48 now and I read the book in the late 60's or early 70's when I was in grade school.  There definitely was a passage in the book about the little boy shopping for a gift on his way to school.  I remember he had to settle for a little box of chocolates because he only had so much money.  If anyone else has more suggestions, please reply.



L200: Lonely Owl story
Solved: Owl at Home


L201: Little Gypsy Dandelion
Solved: Little Gipsy Dandelion


L202: little girl, a dolphin, an underwater cave
Anyway, all I can remember is that this is a book I read in about 1972 and there was a little girl, a dolphin, an underwater cave and for some reason I think there was a giant angler fish.  Any help at all would be greatly appreciated.  Thanks so much!

O'Dell, Scott, Island of the Blue Dolphins,1961.I hope this is what you're looking for. It's a wonderful book. Scott O'Dell won the Newbery Medal for this in 1961, and in 1976 the Children's Literature Association named this story one of the 10 best American children's books of the past 200 years.
Peter Benchley, The Girl of the Sea of Cortez. Worth a look, if just to rule it out. There is a giant manta ray...



L203: large creature from outer space
Solved: The Star Beast


L204a: little cakes or cookies
I can only remember reading this book. I believe it was 8.5 x 11 size and I recall that it was paperback--perhaps with a firm cover. The most striking thing I can remember about the book was that it was printed in greens, pinks and browns.It was a collection of stories and poems, I think, and they were not the usual Mother Goose or Fairy Tales. It may have included "There was a crooked man" and "Big Rock Candy Mountain" but I'm not sure. One of the stories was about little cakes or cookies. I know this sounds hopeless, but does anyone remember such a book. I would have had it between the years of 1958 and 1965.

Rosemary E. Livsey (editor), A, B, C: Go!,1962. A long shot, but might this be the one you're looking for?  It is the first volume of "Collier's Junior Classics - The Young Folks Shelf of Books" and contains many nursery rhymes, poems, and stories, including "There Was a Crooked Man," but not "Big Rock Candy Mountain."  I'm pretty sure these books have been re-printed a time or two, and there may have been a soft-cover edition.  (Mine is hardcover, and each book in the 10-book set is a different color.) The books contain works by many different authors and illustrators. A lot of the illustrations are black-and-white, but there are also some full-color, and quite a few black-and-white accented with some other color, including a brownish shade, also yellow, pink, blue, and/or green.  The reason this book springs to mind is the story about the little cakes or cookies.  This might be "The Funny Thing" by Wanda Gag, about a kindly old man named Bobo who provided good things to eat to all the little birds and animals.  One day a "Funny Thing" (drawn to look sort of dragon-ish) arrived at his cave, looking for something to eat.  The Funny Thing wasn't interested in any of the foods Bobo offered, and said that he preferred to eat children's dolls, which of course would make the children cry.  So Bobo whipped up a batch of little balls which he called "jum-jills" and convinced the Thing to eat them, to make his tail grow longer and his blue points more beautiful. The Thing liked the jum-jills so much that he never ate any more dolls, and as his tail grew longer, he settled atop a mountain where Bobo had the jum-jills delivered daily by birds.  Another story about little cakes in the same book is "The Poppy Seed Cakes" by Margery Clark, about a little boy who is supposed to keep an eye on some poppy-seed cakes that his aunt had baked, but instead bounces up and down on the feather bed. A goose comes to take back the feathers from the bed, claiming that they are his, and eats all the poppy seed cakes.  In the end, he explodes from eating so many cakes, and Andrewshek's auntie tells him that he will soon have some nice feather pillows to go with his bed.  Other stories in this book include The Velveteen Rabbit, Angus and the Cat, Kiki Dances, Evie and the Wonderful Kangaroo, Rosa-Too-Little, Susanna's Auction, The Five Chinese Brothers, and The Little Old Woman who Used her Head.



L204b: land of the fairies
I have a very vague memory of a book I enjoyed as a child.  A young girl finds her way to the land of the fairies.  The fairies are mostly named after flowers. For example, one fairy is named Lords and Ladies.  It isn't one of the flower fairy books by C M Barker.  I think it might have been called something like Behind The Screen.

Terry Prachett, Lords and Ladies, 1995, copyright.  Did you rule out this book? It involves elves, not fairies, who are called the "lords and ladies".


L205: little witch
Solved: Little Witch


L206: lotto winner
Solved: Pot of Gold (Michael)


L207: lady of shallot
Solved: Castle Steep


L208: lonely caterpiller
I have attached a picture of the main character.  this book was from the early to mid 60's i believe.  It was a story about a lonely caterpiller, and in the end, he (of course) turns into a beautiful butterfly.  i don't remember much about the book (i started school in '67 and this was my favorite book all through elementary school).  i hope you can help me find this book.

Could this be hope for the flowers: by Trina Paulus? In it a unhappy caterpillar becomes a happy butterfly. I think it was from the late sixties. My hippie parents liked it more than I did.
Dom DeLuise, Charlie the Caterpillar, 1993. illus. Christopher Santoro.We had this book and recognize the picture of the caterpillar.
nope, but thank you. neither of these books are "the one".  thanks



L209: labrador retrievers raised by family
Solved: The Dog In My Life: Thumper of Walden


L210: Lost Mission Bell in Desert Southwest
Solved: Treasure of the Padres


L211: Little girl, car trip, national monuments
Solved: Runaway Home


L212: Lost teddy bear
Solved: The Teddy Bear Habit


L213: Lost "white" dog
Solved: Harry the Dirty Dog


L214: little girl trapped on sandbar in France
I'm looking for a picture book about a little girl who runs away from home and gets trapped on a sandbar at high tide.  I think the book takes place in France and has water color illustrations, but I could be wrong on both of those things.  Thanks!

I think this may be Tim and Ginger, one of Edward Ardizzzone's books as both author and illustrator.  I just located these books for myself within the last two months since discovering the Book Stumpers database. It is set in England (although there is a definite French "feel" to the pictures) with distinctive watercolor and black and white illustrations.  Ginger is a boy, but you might remember his name as a girl's name. (As I did.)  He is careless and gets trapped in the ocean bay on a sandbar at high tide.  There is a great illustration of him standing with just his head out of the waves, as Tim approaches in a small boat to rescue him.  Once you see the illustrations you will know immediately if it is the book you want, they are very much the author's own style, very memorable.  This is a picture book, and there are several written about Tim and his adventures in a seaside town.  I hope this helps!  I'd been thinking about this same book since kindergarten!
Napoli, Adventure at Mont-Saint-Michel, 1966. This is about a French girl who gets trapped in the sand near Mont-Saint-Michel when the tide comes in-- and I remember that the illustrations look very water-colory.



L215: little witch girl
This is a picture book/series from the 1970s or older. It was about a little witch girl, who was very thin and had long stringy black hair, wore rags and I think thigh high stockings that were striped?  She had a pointy hat (of course) and a black cat.  She was cute/pretty, not "witchy" looking.  She was either an orphan or an isolated character.  She lived in an old house.  The drawings were stark, like pen and ink.  That's all I can remember!  THe story centered around her activities in this house, in which I think she lived in the attic or somewhere off by herself.  I do not recall her leaving the house or travelling around, though I do think she had a broom. Thanks very much!

Patricia Coombs, Dorrie series, 1974. This description sounds like the series of books about Dorrie, a young witch, first published in the early 70's.  Coombs wrote Dorrie and the Blue Witch, Dorrie and the Goblin, Dorrie and the Amazing Magic Elixir, and so on.  There must be roughly 15 Dorrie books.  They were my daughter's favorites.
Marian Place, The Resident Witch, 1970. This reminds me a bit of The Resident Witch (see solved mysteries under "R" for more details).  Witcheena does wear long striped stockings, polka-dotted underwear, a ragged brown skirt and blouse, a pointed hat, and long pointed witch shoes with big buckles.  She can be pretty, when she combs her hair and cleans herself up, as she does when trying to pass as a normal human to have fun at the carnival.  The illustrations are black-and-white sketches (pen and ink) by Marilyn Miller. This doesn't quite match up with the isolation you describe.  Witcheena lives with her aunt, but she is a bit lonely until she makes a human friend (Nancy) at the carnival.
Patricia Coombs, various titles about Dorrie. Could you mean Dorrie? Patricia Coombs wrote several titles about her for beginning readers. Her stockings never matched and were often slipping down. She does not live alone but with a mother and aunt-type witch, but she has most of her adventures on her own or with her black cat, whose name escapes me.
Coombs, Patricia, Dorrie. This sounds like the series of books about Dorrie the little witch. She lives with her mother the Big Witch and wears a black hat and dress and stripped stockings. More about his series (including some of the illustrations) may be found  here:
etc.
Eleanor Estes, The Witch Family.  Nearly forgot about this, but could it be the Witch Family? The little girl does dress in witchy fashion, all in black, but generally acts like a normal little girl, albeit one with a few special skills. She lives with the mother figure of Old Witch, and gets a baby sister; she later befriends two little human girls. For some reason the human girls have power over the Old Witch, "banquishing" her to keep her out of trouble, the Little Witch is for her company.



L216: lonely house
I am looking for a book from the early to mid 1970's.  It was a "little golden book" or "little elf" type of book.  I believe it was entitled The Sad little house or the Lonely house or something along those lines.  On the front cover in a house; the windows are eyes with shades half drawn, the door is the mouth.  The house looks sad.  The storyline goes along the lines of the house is sad and empty and then a family moves in and makes it happy.  It was a favorite of mine and I would LOVE to find it.  Thanks for your help!

Virginia Lee Burton , The Little House, 1943. I suspect this stumper may be The Little House by Virginia Burton, originally published in 1943. I grew up in the 1960s and 1970s and read this as a child. The little house loses its family and the city grows up around it. In the end, it is moved into the country and gets a new family to love it and make it look happy once again.
Virginia Lee Burton, The Little House (Her Story), 1942. A country house is unhappy when the city, with all its buildings and traffic, grows up around her."  Caldecott winner in 1943, reprinted 1969, 1978, 1988, and back in print again.
Virginia Lee Burton, The Little House, 1943. I suspect this stumper may be The Little House by Virginia Burton, originally published in 1943. I grew up in the 1960s and 1970s and read this as a child. The little house loses its family and the city grows up around it. In the end, it is moved into the country and gets a new family to love it and make it look happy once again.
Virginia Lee Burton, The Little House, 1978, reprint. Could this be a possibility?  It was written decades ago but remains in print.  The cover is different, but I believe there's a picture within the book matching your description.  I read it at the local bookstore sometime within the last year as I searched for books for my nephew who was due to be born.  I also recall an old cartoon based on a similar story.
This book, as described, is probably NOT "The Little House" by Virginia Lee Burton. The Burton book is a regular hard cover Caldecott Award book (not a Golden-type book) about a little house in the country, who lives through the seasons, wonders about living in the city, is eventually overtaken by the city, then abandoned as skyscrapers grow up around her.  Eventually, she is discovered by relatives of the original owner, finally move her back to the country, where she is happy and lived in again.  The cover has a picture of the happy little house (curving steps somewhat resemble a smile), with a tree on each side and a smiling sun above. The copyright date for The Little House is 1942.



L217: lumberjack camp, girl
I'm trying to locate a book title for my daughter. She remembers her first chapter book as a red hardback about a girl who goes to a lumberjack camp. She - my reader- was 8 or 9 she thinks so it would have been in the middle 70s. I don't know if it was a new book, one of mine or my mother's (a Harriett who just died at 87) We'd love to find the book. Thanks.

Jacqueline Jackson, The Taste of Spruce Gum, 1966. Could this be the book?  In 1903, Libby Fletcher, about 10, moves from Illinois to Vermont a year after her father dies.  Her mother is going to marry Libby's father's brother, Uncle Charles, who runs the family lumber camp.  Libby struggles with adjusting to her new father and new surroundings.  My first-edition copy has a yellow cover and not a red one.
Annie Roe Carr, Nan Sherwood at Pine Camp. Could it possibly be Nan Sherwood at Pine Camp (also named The Old Lumberman's Secret)? I had a different Nan Sherwood book, handed down from my mother and grandmother, and it did have a red cover. This book is available through Project Gutenberg, if you want to check the text.
Walter and Marion Havighurst, Song of the Pines, 1949. Is she sure that the main character was a girl?  Because if it was a boy named Nils, it could be Song of the Pines. It was a Newbury Honor Book in 1950, so it's probably gone through multiple printings.



L218: Little Prince book (not the popular one)
Solved: Deegie and the Fairy Princess


L219: Lost pony (illustrated)
Solved: Stolen Pony


L220: Little witch living in a cottage
Solved: The Little Witch


L221: Lucky to have a mother like me
Solved: Push Kitty


L222: little witch book from the 1970's
A book from when I wasin Grade School in the 70's about a little witch. I remember a star being on her hand and her wearing striped tights. I know it is not Dorrie.

Ida DeLage, Weeny Witch, 1968, copyright.  Sounds like this one, if she turns out to have been a fairy child who had been kidnapped by witches and raised as one of them. The birthmark on her hand establishes her identity as a fairy.  See solved mysteries for more details.
Weeny Witch? See Solved Mysteries.



L223: Lila lives with disapproving aunt
I am looking for a book I read in the 60's about a girl named Lila who goes to live with her cousin and aunt. The aunt doesn't approve of her and thinks she's trouble. Lila meets a boy named Steve that she dates. I don't remember either the title or the author.


L224: little angel
little angel breaks stained glass window

Barbara Robinson, The Best Christmas Pageant Ever, 1972, copyright.  This is the first thing that came to mind. From the net: "The Herdmans are absolutely and without question the worst kids in the entire history of the world. They are guilty of evey unmentionable childhood crime and have thought of more than a few original ones. When they take over the church Christmas pageant (although none of them has ever attended church, much less heard the Christmas story before), the first Christmas becomes new and real in some pretty surprising ways."
Here's a bit more information about L224: The Christmas book would have come out in the 60s and it involved a little girl angel who was very sad because she accidentally broke a stained glass window in a church with a piece of ice/snow.  Maybe this will help.
Vardon, Beth, Wonderful Window, reprint.  I had this book as a child and it can now be purchased as a reprint. It is illustrated by Charlot Byi. If you wish to check and see if this is the one you remember, look here: http://www.grandmas-attic.com/children_books.html.



L225: love, religion, late 70's
I'm looking for a book that I read out of the church library when I was very little (I was probably 3 or 4 the first time I read it).  That makes it around the late 70's/early 80's.  I thought it was called "What Is Love?"  It's *VERY* similar to the Golden Book "What Is Love?" by Sarah Eberle (in fact, I remember reading the Golden book version later in my childhood and thinking it was almost the same book!), but the illustrations are wrong.  The pictures I remember were much softer - more pastel colors, softer lines.  The book was also bigger - more along the lines of a full 8 1/2 x 11" sheet for each page.  I would love to find this book again as it was one of my favorites as a child.  Thanks!

Sarah Eberle, Jan Brown illus, What Is Love? 1975, copyright.  You may have the right book, but just the wrong version. Eberle's book has been reprinted several times, with more than one illustrator. (Jan Brown, Angela Jarecki, and Tammie Speer are the three I can find.)  I would suggest looking at the Jan Brown version from 1975 - I think this is a Happy Day Book, published by the Standard Publishing Company. The front cover of this one shows a little girl in a red and white heart-printed dress, kneeling on a rug, holding her baby brother's hands and helping him to walk. There are a ball and teddy bear on the rug beside her, and behind them is a window with two pots of red geraniums on the sill, and a puffy curtain.  The style of the artwork reminds me a bit of Holly Hobby.
Well, I *think* the 1975 version of the book "What Is Love?" could very well be the right one.  The "Holly Hobbie" reference to the illustrations sounds correct.  However, I'm having an INCREDIBLY difficult time finding a picture anywhere.  Everytime I try to come up with that version, I end up with pictures of the 1980 golden book-type version instead.  So I'm not gonna say this is definitely solved yet until I can find a picture of it *somewhere*.  But it's definitely looking promising.  Thanks!



L226: Letters of the alphabet disappear
I have the very sketchiest of details.  It's a children's chapter book from my childhood, and I was born in 1967. Somehow, the letters of the alphabet disappear or become lost. I think I remember a  scene where a child takes a book off the library shelf (in a nursery?) and opens it and the pages are blank. Then the child, maybe with another child?, goes on a hunt looking for the alphabet letters??? Maybe there is a snowglobe in the book, perhaps with the letters swirling around?????? Maybe the child goes into the snowglobe???!?? Or, these details could be totally way off. LOL!!!Ring any bells? Thanks so much.  I adored this book from my elementary school although you can hardly believe it seeing how sketchy my memory is.  I do appreciate everyone’s help.

Sesyle Joslin, The Night They Stole the Alphabet, 1968, copyright.  Illustrated by Enrico Arno.  Harcourt, Brace & World, 1968.  While Victoria is sleeping, someone steals the alphabet from her wallpaper.  She goes off on an almost Alice-in-Wonderland type search to find the missing letters.



2008


L227: large family, waking up, going to school
Illustrated childrens book I read in early 80's about a large family that was "ALF-like" in appearance.  (Or bear-like?)  The book was mainly about waking up and getting ready for school.  The children's blankets were attached to ropes and pulleys which would lift up when the alarm clock went off.  They all rode in a big bus-like vehicle...  seem to remember that the youngest sibling was a little girl who whined and cried a lot...

Fernando Krahn, The Family Minus, 1977.  This could be it. The family is large, there are crazy inventions, they look alf-like. But it's been at least twenty years since I read it, so I can't be completely sure.
Fernando Krahn, The Family Minus, 1977, copyright.  This is definitely the story you are thinking of. The family are mice, I think. The mother invents a train-like car for them and also the device to get them all out of bed in the morning. Their names are Firsterix, Secondus, Thirdly, Fourthem, Fifthmore, etc., all the way to the youngest, a girl named Eightah.  Parents' Magazine Press, New York, 1977. I think there are one or two sequels.


L228: Livingstone, Stanley
Mid 1980s publication a fictionalized account of Stanley's journey to find Livingstone

Lennart Hagerfors, The Whales in Lake Tanganyika (A Novel), 1989, copyright.  "In March 1871, on assignment for the New York Herald, Henry Morton Stanley set forth into the heart of Africa to find David Livingstone. This book is a retelling of the expedition in the form of the journal of John Shaw, one of two white man who accompanied Stanley."
Additional detail: the Livingstone book in question was definitely adult.


L229: Letter containing secret message
I have a foggy memory of a mystery book I read as a youth in the late seventies. All I can remember is a part about a girl who was possibly kidnapped or held against her will somehow, and allowed to send or give to someone a letter she had written, with every other word spelling out her captive situation. This cry for help is the only memory I have. Thank you.

Cynthia Voigt, The Vandemark Mummy.  Probably this book. The kidnapper's name is Ken Simard, and the heroine writes a message where the first letter of each word spells out his name.


L230: Lots of alike dresses
Story about a small black child living with grandmother. Child has several dresses exactly the same but her school friends think she has only a single dress to her name. There are references to a chinaberry tree I think.

This sounds similar to unsolved stumper G413: Girl lives with sewing spinster aunt who makes all her dresses from the same bolt of cloth. See Stump the Bookseller: GH for more details.


L231: Lady Morgana in England
The book was a historical romance maybe 1700-1800's in England.  I believe it was a forced or arranged marriage. What I remember is the name "Morgana"; I dont think this is the title it might be the characters name. The story unfolds thru many many years. She leaves him after some time and even has other lovers one of them a French man. Their relationship is an on and off again thing. The hubby and her do have children of their own. I know she had red hair and I believe the cover had her and him on a cliff maybe she had a green dress. I remember that on one of the scenes someone died I’m unsure if it was a child or someone closer to her and her hubby shows up again this is around the time that she is with the Frenchman. I believe one of her lovers not sure which one turns out to be cruel he hits her one time and she compares him to her husband. I hope this is helpful. I had the book about ten years ago at that time the book was already old I think it might have been published in the 1970’s.

Rebecca Brandewyne, No Gentle Love.  This is an old book with a heroine named Morgana. Her grandfather arranged her marriage to her cousin Rian and both were unhappy about it. That's all I remember and it may not be your book.
Brandewyne, Rebecca, No Gentle Love, 2002.  Here is the cover on Amazon: http://tinyurl.com/3kztnb.  She has red hair, but they are on a ship. Kind of a cliffy-looking ship, though.


L232: Little people in colored capes
This one is very vague because I remember more about the decription of the characters than I do about the story.  They were little people a lot like hobbits except they lived in hollowed out trees with round doors.  Each character's door color was the same as the cape he or she wore.  I was reading this book in the mid sixties but I have no idea if it was new or old - it was in the library of my public middle school.

Possibly The Gammage Cup by Carol Kendall?
Carol Kendall, The Gammage Cup.  I wonder if you might be recalling The Gammage Cup.  It's about a group called the Minipins.  They live in houses, not trees, but do have prescribed colors for doors and cloaks. The heroine is exiled from the village, along with a group of other nonconformists, because she paints her door red, if I recall correctly. The group of misfits then overcomes an invading army of mushroom people and return as heroes.
Kendall, Carol, The Gammage Cup.  And everybody had family trees planted in their front yards.  The people were called Minnipins.
I ordered The Gammage Cup and it arrived today but it wasn't what I am looking for.  Upon further reflection I am wondering if the little people lived in mushroom houses.   But I am absolutely sure that their capes matched their door colors and I am fairly sure the doors were round.  Any more ideas?
If the people lived in mushroom houses, it's possible you might be thinking of one of the Mushroom Planet books by Eleanor Cameron. The older cover illustrations show the inhabitants wearing capes...  "The Wonderful Flight to the Mushroom Planet", "Stowaway to the Mushroom Planet", "Time and Mr. Bass", and "A Mystery for Mr. Bass".
I posted the stumper.  Please keep trying because there is no solution yet.


L233: Little Lottie
1910-1925'ish, childrens.  I am told by a number of intellegent folks that there once was a comic strip featuring as a main character, a female adolescent, "Little Lottie" or possibly "Cousin Lottie".  Presumably, the title of the strip presumably bore her name. I'm really more interested in an older man, presumably her grandpa, the main comedic figure in the series who regularly appeared in the strip as a buffoon. He was elderly, moved, talked and processed slowly and carried a very large, out-of-scale hearing trumpet which he used, usually unsucessfully, to attempt hearing folks who were tying to communicate with him.  His answer was always, "talk louder", "come closer" or something similar and he never seemed to be able to understand anyone.  I'm Peer Mentor for the hearing impaired and am looking for something I can use in my lectures to document some of the roots of the stigma against hearing aids and why many who need them seem to stay in denial so long, often as long as 15 years.  If you have any other suggestions from the popular literature which might help prove my point, I'd love having those remarks as well.  Hope you can help.  Either way, thanks much.

Little Lotta.  Possibly this one?  http://home.att.net/~thft/lotta.htm.
I found another clue: one of Lottie's trademark expressions when she was amused was to utter, "tsk, tsk."  Thanks so much for your help.  I don't know why our darlin' "Cousin Lottie" is playing it so coy!
Little Dot
Possibly a different Harvey Comics character, Little Dot?
This does sound irresistably like Little Lotta, a Harvey Comics character who was around beginning in 1955. Today such a character -- an overweight girl who liked huge meals -- would be considered appalling, but it was all presented in a whimsical, slapstick fashion. (And she did say "tsk tsk" sometimes.) It's certainly possible she was based on a 1920s character although I have not found much about this. But the grandfather! -- Him, I remember. He did have a huge ear trumpet. Other than being a bit deaf and slightly forgetful, he was healthy, active, and one of the only comic book characters I remember who took vitamins (he called them "vitymines"). In that, he was ahead of his time.


L234: Lost/Kidnapped Brother Comes Home
Solved: The Lost Boy


L235: Little Women with White Cover available in the 1980s
My wife really wants to find a particular edition of Little Women that she read as a child. She was in grade school in the 80's and she said it was a worn book then. She descibes the particular edition as having a white cover. The main reason she wants this edition is that she really enjoyed the illustrations in this edition as a child. The main illustration she remembers is one of the female characters sitting in front of a mirror. If you can help identify the edition, publisher, and year of publication, I would be greatful. Thanks.

Louisa May Alcott, Little Women, 1970, reprint.  I have a white covered "Whitman Classic" issue of Little Women. It says "Modern Aridged Edition".  Its Whitman number is 1605.  It was published by the Western Publishing Company and has a very colorful picture of the four girls on the front  (The top 1/3 of the cover is white).  There is a picture on page 251 where it looks like Jo is sitting near a mirror.  Nothing is reflected back so I'm not sure if this is the picture your wife was thinking of or not.


L236: Lincoln Historical Fiction Juvenile Vintage Book
Hi, I'm looking for an historical fiction novel that was either about Mary Todd or Abraham Lincoln. The only scene I remember specifically that might set it apart from others was a scene where either he (or she?) threw Abraham Lincoln's shirts out of the window in a mad rage b/c they weren't pressed correctly (or something like that). I remember loving it--but even when I read the book it looked old to me, so for all I know it had been around my public school library for ages. (I was in 7th or 8th grade and it was the early 80s.) It was definitely historical fiction, though, because even though it was based on truth, the characters were brought alive in a very soap-opera-like way (if I remember correctly!) Thanks. (I also might remember a scene of her staring at her or his house either when perhaps they were moving away after having been there awhile???? Not sure on that scene, though.)

Irving Stone, Love Is Eternal.
  I haven't read the book in years and years, so I can't remember whether the scenes you describe are in it, but this definitely fits the description of a rather dramatic historical fiction book about the Lincolns.


L237: Little girl walks through forest with goblin
I have very vague memories of this book from childhood.  At the age of about 9 or 10 I won a prize at school and was asked what book I'd like.  I'd read this book but couldn't remember its name.  They tried to find it for me then but couldn't and I was given "The Princess and the Goblins" which was wonderful, but I've never stopped wanting the one with the child walking through the dark forest with the friendly goblin.  I think there might have been a witch at the end of the story too.  I don't have much to go on, and I don't really ever expect to find it, but it's worth a try.

Lynn Reid Banks, The Farthest Away Mountain.   A long shot, but maybe it's this one?
I highly doubt it -- I loved The Farthest Away Mountain in elementary school, and this doesn't sound like it at all.  The main character is a teenager, and she goes into the forest with a gnome/elf statue that comes to life, not a goblin.
Thanks for the suggestion of The Farthest Away Mountain.  I've considered this, and without seeing the actual book it sounded quite promising. But I read on a website that Lynn Reid Banks published her first children's book in 1973.  The one I'm looking for must have been written before about 1966, as that was when I left primary school.
Could this be one of the other books by George MacDonald?  In the sequel, The Princess and Curdie, Curdie (the Princess' friend) has some dealings with both goblins and witches.
Thanks for your suggestion, but I've read the George MacDonald books and I'm afraid the one I'm after is something else.
It is possible that this book is Shadow Castle by Marian Cockrell.  See solved mysteries.
Thanks for the suggestion of Shadow Castle.  It sounds lovely, but having read a bit more about it online, it's not the book I'm looking for.

L238: Live nativity scene found in snow
All I can remember from this delightful children's picture book is that a live nativity scene is found (I think in a barn, but perhaps a church) in the snow.  Thank  you for your help.

Collington, Peter, A Small Miracle,
1997.  Possibly this book. A very poor woman sells her accordian, then has the money stolen by a thief who also robs a church's alms box and disrupts the manger scene. The woman sets the scene to rights, then collapses in the snow. The nativity figures come to life to help the old woman. The book is wordless.
Collington, Peter, Small Miracle, 1997, approximate.  If it was a recent wordless picture book, it might be Small Miracle.  After a poor woman is robbed and left unconscious, the nativity figures from a church bring her back to her caravan (through the snow).


L239: Lemonade Affair
in the end of 1970s i read a series of 3 or 4 books at school library. one with title like 'the bubble lemonade affair' or something like that, going on about a lemonade production getting out of hand ?? or something. second book was about some machine, looking like a dragon, ripping off the 'bad' posters on the walls of the town, making paint from it and splashing it all over town.  very specific: on the inside-sleeves, the two main-characters 'arrive' in the book by one method, and leave the book in another way. once with hot-air-balloon, once with 3 'flying steps', in the next book through underground-tunnel chasing a butterfly. their house in one story was some artistic structure, with glass canopies.
as i have been browsing other stumpers on your page, i noticed that my description does miss, that it was a picture-book with a little storyline (and no reading-book).


L240: Little girl her name is Anne
I am looking for a children's poetry book my Mum had as a girl. She remembers her father reading a poem about  "This little girl, her name is Anne..." and also a poem about two raindrops. She is 60 so this would have been in the early 1950s. Thanks.

A.A. Milne, Now We Are Six.
  "a poem about two raindrops" -- This is probably the poem "Waiting at the Window"  "Little girl her name is Anne" -- If the requester's mom isn't remembering the lines quite correctly, this could be the poem "The Morning Walk," which begins "When Anne and I go out a walk...."
Milne, Now We Are Six.  To help jog her memory, here are the first lines from Waiting At The Window -- "These are my two drops of rain, Waiting on the window-pane.  I am waiting here to see, Which the winning one will be.  Both of them have different names. One is John and one is James....."  Some of the other poems in Now We Are Six include:  A Thought ("If I were John and John were me, Then he'd be six and I'd be three.")  Cradle Song ("O Timothy Tim has ten pink toes, and ten pink toes has Timothy Tim.  They go with him wherever he goes, and wherever he goes they go with him.") and Binker ("Binker--what I call him--is a secret of my own, And Binker is the reason why I never feel alone.  Playing in the nursery, sitting on the stair, Whatever I am busy at, Binker will be there.")


L241: Long lost twin
In 1982-1985, I read a book that was a standard trade hardcover size with a blue (mottled blue) binding.  The book was about a girl who finds out she has a long lost twin.  It's not a happy book, more like a mystery. . . my memories tell me it's one of those that makes your chest ache.

Janet Lunn, Twin Spell / Double Spell
(The book was published with two titles).  This is a long shot-- "It was when (Jane and Elizabeth) brought (the doll) Amelia to Aunt Alice's house that the weird occurrences started. First, Elizabeth fell down the stairs from Aunt Alice's attic -- a strange, dark room with a cold, malevolent feeling in it. And both twins started having odd visions of a time long past, when Amelia wasn't ancient and battered, but new, her face freshly painted."  "Who were Anne and Melissa, another set of twins, who had had dolls just like Amelia? What had happened to them? And who was Hester and why did she hate them so? All through the long, hot summer, with past and present beginning to melt together, the twins find themselves trying desperately to answer these and other questions, before someone else gets hurt."
Duncan, Lois, Stranger With My Face, 1981, copyright.  "A seventeen-year-old senses she is being spied on and probably impersonated, but when she discovers what actually is occurring, it is more unbelievable than she ever imagined." The person spying on her and impersonating her turns out to be a twin sister she didn't know she had.


L242: Little man from another planet with perambulator
Book I read in the mid-70's, children's book, maybe sci-fi, a little man visits earth from another planet and befriends a boy.  They have adventures together.  The little man has a small craft they fly around in together called a perambulator - it's possibly an ice-cream cart at other times?

Louis Slobodkin, The Spaceship Under the Apple Tree,
1966, approximate.


L243: Little boy, cave, spiders, witch, elbow grease
Solved: Grandpa's Ghost Stories


L244: Large children's hardcover story book
Looking for large children's hardcover book from around 1950s to 60s.  Probably 4-6 different stories and illustrations.  One was about a little boy named Bimba (I think) who got some magic beans and another was about  wild white horse from fairyland who was caught with human hair.   Please help.

2009


L245: Little girl, iceberg
childhood book read to me in the 70's. little girl somehow ends up on an iceberg & floats off somewhere. can't remember what happens next.

Radko Doone, Nuvat The Brave: An Eskimo Robinson Crusoe, 1934, copyright.  Any chance it was a boy instead of a girl? Because he has a crippled leg, Nuvat is forced to do women's work in his village, while the men do the hunting. But when an ice floe breaks off underneath him, he is swept out to sea. He lands on a deserted island, where he must survive alone for two years before finally being rescued and returned home.
scott o'dell, black star bright dawn, 1985, approximate.  about iditarod and girl floating away on iceberg.
Mary Ellen Chase, A Walk on an Iceberg, 1966, copyright.  A bit different but memory plays tricks.  The story of her grandmother who married a ship's captain about 1860 and sailed with him. She spotted an iceberg in the Baltic sea and, accompanied by some sailors, went for a walk on it.  They rescued a ragged German seal hunter who had been stranded on the ice for days when it broke away from the mainland and thus became an iceberg.
Sanchez and Pacheco, The Girl With No Name, 1978, copyright.  Part of The Rights of Children series, Methuen, New York.


L246: Little wooden doll lost in a jar of jam
I checked this book out of my elementary school library when I was in second grade--an illustrated book about a doll so small that it kept getting lost.  It was vacuumed up, and then later fell into a jar of jam--taken out with a spoon by a sick little girl.

Johanna Johnston, Sugarplum.
  A tiny doll named Sugarplum was always getting lost and being accused by the larger dolls of being no more than a trinket. But when she falls into a jar of newly made jelly and is lost for months, Sugarplum gets her chance to prove she is a little girl's real doll. There is also a misadventure involving a vacuum cleaner. A rare and expensive book, unfortunately out of print. Another book, Sugarplum and Snowball, recounts the doll's adventures when she is carried away by her friend Snowball, a white kitten.
Johanna Johnston, Sugarplum, 1955, copyright.
Johanna Johnston, Sugarplum.
Sugarplum.  Check out solved stumpers.
Sugarplum, Johanna Johnston.  This book is remembered fondly by many, many people.  The classic scene of Sugarplum falling into the jelly jar is what most people remember.  There is a sequel "Sugarplum and Snowball".


L247: Lily Durpess?
I have been searching for a children's book that my now deceased father used to read as a child around 6 years old while in school. He was Born in 1918 in Danvers Illinois which is near Peoria. He went to school in that area.  The book, I think, is called something like Lily Durpess or Durp. It was a school reader or a story in a school reader, possibly from the 1st grade. The reader could have been older as he attended a little poor school with about 20 kids. He was in first grade around 1924.  I have been searching for this for over 20 years since he died.


L248: Lilybet or Lilybeth
The title of the book I am looking for is either Lilybet or Lilybeth.  It is about a girl who lives with the circus with her parents - she wants to be an equestrian - hardback book - cover has a black and white picture on it - photos in the book and not drawings.

Astrid Lindgren, Lilibet Circus Child
, 1961, copyright.


L249: Lute playing hero rescues princess/lady
Solved: Trumpets in Grumpetland

L250: Little Golden Book, pink pigs, ice cream
A Little Golden Book, I think, from the 1960s.  Story of family of very pink pigs.  On one page they ate ice cream.  Thank you for any help you can provide.

Mary Rayner, Garth Pig and the Ice Cream Lady
, 1977, approximate.  This is a long shot, but could it be Garth Pig and the Ice Cream Lady?  The story features a very large family of pink pigs...Garth is the main character in several books.  Although it came out in 1977 in the US, it's originally British, and may be older than that.


L251: Leprechaun grants boy infinite wishes
Solved: The Three and Many Wishes of Jason Reid


L252: lumpy tummy and peaky beaky
Hello, I would like to find a book with the characters being lumpy tummy and peaky beaky, please!  Thanks!

Bertrand de Vogue, Peaky Beaky
, 1967, approximate.  In the solved pages -- Peaky Beaky.  (There are also two images from the book at http://squirrelisknitting.blogspot.com/2006/04/reminiscing.html.)

L253: Little Girl is Late to a Birthday Party - Learns to be on time, etc.
Collection of stories from 30's-50's? about a little girl who learns to be respectful of others. In one story she is half hour late to a b-day party so her mother makes her leave a half hour before the party is over. Also, in the very early a.m. she is sent to the yard to garden & sees a little bird.

Arlera Richardson, In Grandmas Attic, More Stories from Grandmas Attic, and Still More Stories from Grandmas Attic, 1974, copyright. These collections of short stories give the feel of being written in the past, I dont remember all of the tales, but the party one you described sounds familiar to me.  Id guess the story you are looking for is in one of these books. 

Thank you for your suggestion.  I'm afraid it is not the book I'm looking for, but it looks like a great book series! :)


L254: Little girl loses sock at laundromat
Solved: The Big Enough Helper

L255: A Light from Heaven
A small boy and his mother strive to love Jesus in spite of the father's un Christian like behavior. The boy is afraid of the dark and the mother puts a picture of Jesus above his bed. the mother and child are not allowed to go to church due to their ragged clothing but the father.  I believe the name of the book was "A Light from Heaven" set in 1930/40 in America.  About a young boy and his mother and the love they share for each other and Jesus. The cover was light blue with the boy standing.

Christmas Carol Kauffman, Light From Heaven 1965? Reprinted by Moody Press and Christian Light Publications Inc Date Published: 2000 ISBN-13: 9780878139637  ISBN: 087813963X.

L256: Lighthouse where a woman gets shipwrecked with a gruff lightkeeper. 
Christian Fiction.  I was 12, so it was published before 1995.  Most likely 70s or 80s.  I think the woman's name was Katherine, but I'm not sure.  I think she was pregnant.  It's not Eugenia Price's Lighthouse, Nicola Beaumont's The Lighthouse, or Susan Wiggs' The Lightkeeper (similar to this one).

L257: Little witchs broom has mind of own
 Im remembering a book from the early to mid 80s - a little witch and her broom.  I remember stripped stockings and her and the broom fighting.  At one point I think she ends up hanging from the weather vane because of the broom.  But then they make up and decide to go around and clean up the town.

Coombs, Patricia, Dorrie books. This sounds like one of the Dorrie books by Patricia Coombs, but I cant pin down the title. 
Coombs, Dorrie Series. Im not sure, but your request (especially the striped stockings) made me think of this long-running series. look here for a description of all the books as well as some sample illustrations.
Place, Marian T, The Witch Who Saved Halloween, 1940. This book is a possibility, although its about a boy (warlock), not a girl (witch).  The main character is named Witchard.  Witchard'\''s parents have flown away to find a new planet for witches to live on, because Earth is getting too polluted.  Witchard is left in the care of his aunt and grandmother, and they live together in a thicket by a stream.  Witchards broom is enchanted so that he cant fly too far from home unsupervised, and he "fights" with the broom at one point.  He eventually goes out and explores the human world, makes friends, and gets people to cooperate with witches on cleaning up pollution so witches can stay on Earth.  If this is the book, you might mistakenly remember the character as female because Witchard had to wear a brown dress until he passed a certain level in his warlock training and graduated to a green warlock suit. I think there may have been illustrations of him in a dress and striped stockings.

Ive looked at the Dorrie series and the drawings do not look familiar - were they ever drawn by a different illustrator?  If not them Im afraid thats not my book. 

Jane Yolen, The Witch Who Wasnt, 1974, approximate.This might be the book youre thinking of  dont be fooled by the similarly titled Meredith, the Witch Who Wasnt.
Otfried Preussler, The Little Witch. In one of the episodes in this book, the big witches have taken the little Witch'\''s broom away so she has to buy another one and break it in. While it is trying to run away with her she tears her apron on the weather vane.


L258: "little man" doll and bell in title
Hi!  I am 42 and I used to read an old book in my public library as a girl that had bell in the title and it was about a little girl who had a doll called "little man".  I don't remember much more except her doll sat next to her in church and eventually in the book she grows up.  Help!


L259: Little boy searches for perfect present for his mother
Little boy looks everywhere for a present he can give his mother.  I can't remember if it is her birthday or what. He ends up with fresh flowers from a field. Illustrated in loose watercolor.

Charlotte Zolotow, Mr. Rabbit and the Lovely Present, 1962. This sounds a bit like Mr. Rabbit and the Lovely Present: The little girl in the story needs to find a birthday present for her mother and is in need of assistance. Mr. Rabbit, who has a big heart, offers to help out the young girl even though his ideas arent that good. Eventually, between the two of them, they come up with the perfect gift for her mother - the gift of color. They offer the gift through objects that are different colors: yellow - banana, purple - grapes, green - pears, etc. The illustrations use soft mute colors which are appealing to children. The art, by Maurice Sendak, is lovely loose watercolors


L260: London romance set in 1940's, girl called Kitten, eats trifle, fals in love with a British officer, World War II era
Solved: Stairway to the Street

L261: Loki at Modern Invasion

SOLVED: David Brin, The River of Time, 1986.


L262: Lonely creature looking for companion.
He was the only one of his kind. He looked for a companion, and at the end of the book, he looked into a mirror, saw his reflection, and it leaped out at him and came to life. On the back of the book it shows the creature, his "reflection", and several babies.

Wanted to add a few more details I remembered: the creature had a unicorn-like horn and (I think) a lion-like mane. The books main colors were orange and red. I always thought the title was The Loneliest Creature, but Ive never found any book by that title. I read it as a child in the 80s.

Jenny Wagner, The Bunyip of Berkeleys Creek, 1974, approximate. This is a very long shot, because youd have to be misremembering several important details, including the picture on the back cover.  But its got enough themes in common that I thought it was worth mentioning, just in case.  (Besides, its a lovely book and deserves a mention!) The Bunyip of Berkeleys Creek_ is about the eponymous creature, who starts out covered in mud, wondering what he is and what he looks like.  He asks various animals, but is treated rather rudely by all of them.  Eventually he goes off sadly to be by himself - whereupon he finds another bunyip, covered in mud at the billabongs edge and wondering what she is.  The story ends with the original bunyip lending the new one his mirror.

Doesnt look like "The Bunyip of Berkeleys Creek" is what Im looking for, sorry! My apologies - I should mention that the book is a picture book/board book - it had words, but the book was overall very simple.

Dean Walley, Lamont, the Lonely Monster. This is flap and lift book. The monster goes around trying to find friends and I think there might be a mirro at the end. I hope this helps.


L263: Lagging behind Follow-the-Leader
A girl in a group of kids, playing outside, does everything slower than the rest and is always lagging behind the group.  They play follow-the-leader and all walk across a balance beam and the girl is last.  I read this in the 80's so it was maybe published in the late 70s to mid to late 80s.
L264: Lola the bunny
Childrens book about three baby rabbits, one was definitely named Lola. the others were named similarly perhaps: Nola?

Surprise for Mrs. Bunny.There were more than three bunnies in this story, but the names are similar--Molly, Polly, Lolly, Nolly and so on.


L265: Leprechaun Timetravel
1970s story is about a boy who is hit by a car trying to save his dog (the dog dies). The boy is in the hospital blaming himself and not getting better when a leprechaun-type of being transports him to ancient Scotland where he has some adventures and bonds with a puppy named, Lad. While he is in the hopsital his parents get a new puppy for him, which he doesn't want, but when he walks into the house he is greeted joyfully by the puppy from the time travels and all is well. (I loved this book when I was in 3rd grade and read it over and over again!)
L266: Little girl (Katy?) breaks church window, sews a new one
 The church window broken by katy's kite?  She sews a window, prays.  A miracle occurs: the last page is a pop up of the new stained glass window

Beth  Vardon, The Wonderful Window. This has been solved here before. Illustrations by Charlot Byj. It has, fortunately, been reprinted, so it is available.
Vardon, Beth, Wonderful Window.This classic pop-up book has been reprinted. Illustrated by Charlot Byj.


L267: Little Bear Getting Ready for Bed
Has a little bear in the extra large spine loop bedtime book little bear who is getting ready for bed. "Mama bear dries his furry paws, tummy and head. She picks up the bedtime book, pulls up a chair and reads sleepy stories to her little bear.......Its nighttime and bedtime for one little bear and"


L268: Little witch turns into fairy
I think it was written between the 1950's -1970's. A little witch  lives with other witches. They are mean to her. She wants to be nice & feels like she doesn't belong. In the end she is taken somewhere and given wings and realizes she is a fairy princess. It is a short book.

Anne Elizabeth Bennett, Little Witch, 1953, copyright. A perennial favorite. Little Minx lives with Madame Snickasnee, a mean witch who turns neighborhood children into flowerpots on her windowsill if they bother her. Minx just wants to be clean and go to school like other children. She often thinks she sees, out of the corner of her eye, a beautiful woman with wings in the mirror. She is, of course, finally rescued and her true identity revealed.
Anna Elizabeth Bennet, Little Witch. A few details are off (only 1 witch, but she WAS mean) and the girl's mother was the fairy, but I would definitely consider this one a possibility.
DeLage, Ida, Weeny Witch, 1968, copyright. After the witches capture the night fairies, Weeny Witch helps them escape and discovers that she too is a night fairy, stolen years before by the witches.
Anna Elizabeth Bennet, Little Witch. Your description sounds something like the Little Witch, a book that turns up here a lot. Minx, the girl, is supposedly a witch's daughter and has to do all the chores around the house  she does not enjoy her life and tries to escape by going to school. There are confrontations between Minx's friends from school and the old witch, but all ends well. Ultimately Minx's true mother is revealed to be a fairy princess, held captive in the witch's magic mirror, Minx sets her free. Hope this helps.
Weeny Witch by Ida DeLage. See Solved Mysteries.
Could be either Little Witch by Bennett, or No Flying in the House by Brock!
Ida Delage, Weeny Witch, 1968, copyright. After the witches capture the night fairies, Weeny Witch helps them escape and discovers that she too is a night fairy, stolen years before by the witches.


L269: Labyrinth Ends with Time Travel
Solved: Mazemaker

L270: Lion and a Cat Eating PBJ
My son was born in 1990 and I read him the book between 1990-1995.  It was about a Lion and a Kitty Cat.  I can remember that I think it was the lion sitting in a high chair eating peanut butter and jelly.  And the last page of the Book said, I'll crown you said the kitty cat and the Lion roared no more". Sorry, I know that's not much but for some reason have been thinking of this book lately and have had no luck finding it.  It was not a very long book and I do remember the illustrations were really good and when I would read the last page he would just giggle.  Would love to give it to him again now that he is older. Please, any help you could give would be greatly appreciated.  If there is a cost for your search, please let me know. Thank you sooooooo much.

Maurice Sendak, Nutshell Library. Any chance this could be from one of the books in Maurice Sendak'\''s Nutshell Library. For some reason, his illustrations popped to mind when I read this.


L271: Lonely girl in East Coast seafaring town1970's. 
Maybe Dell paperback for 9-12 year olds.  Lonely girl moves to a port on the East Coast (MA?).  She meets the ghost of someone who died during a huge storm.  With the ghost's help, she saves a boat during another big story. "I think I read this one in the late 1970s.  It may have been a Dell Yearling paperback, since I had a million of those.  It was about a girl who moves to a northeastern port town (maybe in Massachusetts?) to live with a relative (maybe an uncle?)  I think she lives in the lighthouse or her relative is the lighthouse keeper.  She is lonely and meets the ghost of a young boy.  His death was somehow connected to a terrible storm which resulted in a shipwreck.  I can't remember if he was on the ship or died trying to save the ship.  When another big storm comes, the ghost helps the lonely girl save a ship that is headed toward the shore.  I'm pretty sure she also saves her relative in the process (maybe he's on the boat?)  Not sure what the connection is, but Enid Blyton (the English author) plays a role in the story.  (It could have been E. Nesbit, but I'm pretty sure it's Blyton.)  I hope this rings some bells for someone, as it has been bothering me for years!" I just discovered your site this week, and I've stayed up WAY too late revisiting some of my old favorites.  Two stumpers I considered submitting were already solved.  I am thrilled at the prospect of rereading them and introducing them to my children in a few years.  I'll be spending some of my free time seeing if I can help on some unsolved ones.  Thanks for such a fabulous service. 

L272: Little Pig Take a Bath
Childrens' book, published in the 1940s or early 1950s, in black and white illusrations. About a little pig who was dirty who had to wash with geranium soap.  He had animal friends who were animals.


Charlotte Pomerantz and James Marshall, Piggy in the Puddle,1989, copyright.Quite a longshot because of the date, but the piggy is muddy and has to wash with soap!


L273: Learning to Draw, Geometrical Shapes

Solved: Ed Emberleys Drawing Book of Faces


L274:Last of the Trojans

I read this book when I was a teenager in the 1970s. It is about a girl who falls for a hotrodding guy from the wrong side of the tracks who eventually moves away. What I remember most, besides the fact that it is a love story, is that the girl's brother tells her at one point, "To quote the Rolling Stones, you can't always get what you want." I've been hunting for this books for years now  I'm so glad I found this website. I'd like to read the book again, if only to satisfy my waning memory!

Phyllis Anderson Wood. I'm pretty sure this is a book by Phyllis Anderson Wood, but I can't remember the title.  Her books were published in the 70s in paperback, but they fell apart very easily.  Still, it may be a starting place.
Donia Whiteley Mills, A Long Way Home from Troy, 1971. I haven't seen my solution posted, so I'm going to try again.  I'm almost positive that L274, Last of the Trojans (which has been moved to the archives with a suggestion as to its solution that I believe is a good but incorrect guess), is actually A Long Way Home from Troy, 1971, by Donia Whiteley Mills, ISBN 0670439029 and 067043903.  This was one of my most favorite books when I was a teenager (still is), and I had to keep it a secret -- boys didn't read books like this one!  It's an unforgettable, bittersweet love story about preppy, uptight Jeannie Travis, who falls hard for hotrodder and hoodlum Lamar Puckett "Truck" Hardy.  To her own surprise, she discovers that she would much rather spend her time riding around in Truck's '57 Chevy (named Tortoise) than wishing her straightlaced, jealous boyfriend Earl Corbett were more affectionate.  They have all sorts of adventures together, and they finally realize that they're from completely different worlds:  she's going on to college in the fall, and he's going to further his drag-racing career.  Please see to it that the original poster sees this solution.  Unfortunately, Donia Mills was essentially a one-trick pony:  this beautiful gem is almost her only book.  I still have my copy from the early 1970's, and I will always treasure it.  Shop carefully -- I see a few copies out there, but the prices vary wildly.  Good luck; I hope you find it!


L275: Lanie and Me

Young girl spends summer with her aunt, finds a stone that belongs to a witch named Lanie, who lost it and needs it to fly, witches find out she has stone and come after her, she later finds out her aunt Meg (margaret) is also a witch. circa late 60's early 70's.


L276: Little Men in Woods Mesmerized by Fire; Girl Spies Them
I am looking for a book of fairy tales from late 50s or early 60s with a light green cover.  The story I'm searching for is about a young girl who sees/.follows a group of little men (trolls?) in the woods.  These little men seem to be mesmerized by a camp fire in illustration.

Traditional, The Twelve Month Brothers. I have to say I have no idea what collection you might be remembering, but your description of the illustration reminds me of this traditional story common across Northern Europe and Russia. A mean stepmother sends her good kind stepdaughter out in the middle of a snowstorm to bring back strawberries. Wandering in the woods, she comes across a campfire surrounded by 12 brothers. She realizes they are the 12 months. she is very polite to them, and they offer to help her out, so June presents her with the berries and they send her home safe. When the stepmother sees her good fortune, she sends her own daughter out into the blizzard, but she is rude and mean to the months, and they send her out to freeze to death in the snow. The stepmother also freezes when she goes looking for her daughter, and a happy ending for all! The story has been published on its own, and also turns up in many collections. If the story rings a bell, maybe you can find the collection...


L277: A Last Race

I read this book in 1961-2 while I was attending third grade in California. For some reason, the story really struck me – I must have read it 30+ times, and the librarian finally told me I couldn’t check it out anymore. Buying a copy was beyond my family’s means.Unfortunately, I don’t remember the title or author. In form, I think it would qualify as a juvenile ‘novel’ – it included some line illustrations but was mostly text. It was published in hardback and had (I think) an illustrated cover with the horse’s profile figuring prominently. I don’t remember the book being heavily used (by anyone but me, that is) so I expect it was written sometime after 1955. The story traced the life of a racehorse and focused on the relationship between him and his trainer or a stable boy. After a long and successful career, the horse was about to stop racing but then was called back to run one more time for a prize to fund a retirement home for race horses. He won, of course.  That’s as much as I can remember. Thanks to you and the other Book Stumper contributors!


Mildred Mastin Pace, Old Bones, the Wonder Horse,1956.Perhaps this one? My copy is a blue hardcover w/ small illustration of Exterminator's head.

Pace, Mildred Mastin, Old Bones the Wonder Horse,1956, copyright.This might be the book you are thinking of.  The only detail that didn't match was racing for the retired racehorse home. (At least I don't remember that, its been along time since I've read it.) There is a nice picture of the cover at http://www.librarything.com/work/146403 and some more details on the solved mystery pages.

Pace, Mildred Mastin, Old Bones the Wonder Horse, 1956, copyright. This might be the book you are thinking of.  The only detail that didn't match was racing for the retired racehorse home. (At least I don't remember that, its been along time since I've read it.) There is a nice picture of the cover at http://www.librarything.com/work/146403 and some more details on the solved mystery pages.

Marguerite Henry, King of the WindI too loved this book as a child. I remember it just as the poster said, the young mute Arabic stableboy raising the horse which became father to a new breed - the "Arabian" horse. With a beautiful horse profile on the cover.


L278: LITTLE BOY VAMPIRE (new in town?) and POLIO victim, comic
Comic from magazine, maybe FANGORIA 1984~94. Vamp kid wears "school uniform" with knee shorts. He's confused why school is empty & quiet. He's alone. Most of story is in his thoughts, & he's pompous. Finds victim, boy his age. Bites him. Becomes sick & notices crutches & vaccine poster as he dies.

Solved: UNBELIEVABLE!  After *years* of searching, I found it  not 3 minutes after sending my Stumper.

I wondered if the person who submitted this and then found it might let us know what it was-I'm curious!!


L279: Lost and Alone
Story about little girl who gets lost and stays out overnight...This book I am far more vague on details, but it was an absolute favourite so here goes.  It was a story about a child, I think a little girl, who heads off one morning to her grandmother's house (I think that's where she is headed, in any case) and finds herself lost.  She realises she is lost and decides she is going to have to survive by herself outside, and she does things like steals apples from a farmer when he isn't looking, builds a little shelter for herself in a hedge or bushes...I think she befriends a cat, also?  I believe she has a amall amoutn of money and has to decide what to but with her limited funds to get by.  She actually does stay out overnight, I think, and the next day her father and grandmother find her and tell her that they were worried sick.  Or perhaps they find her before she actually has to stay out overnight?  but I think she does actually stay out all night.  Really vague, I know, but I figured it will drive me nuts if I don't at least try to solve this one!!!!
L280: Little Red Riding Hood on the Cover & other Nursery Rhymes
I posted this a couple of years ago and am hoping someone else may see it and is able to help.  My grandfather gave me a book he found about 1958-1960 timeframe (published date is unknown).  It was a red book with linen cover - it had a picture box in the center with Little Red Riding Hood. My grandfather gave me a book he found about 1958 (I do not know what year the book was published).  It was a red book (kind of a cloth cover) with a picture of Little Red Riding Hood on the front, a somewhat smaller picture of her in the center on the front of the book. The book was a volume of nursery rhymes and stories and it appeared to be part of a set.  He always told the story of finding it at the local dump and picking it up and giving to me.  Well, years passed and I let my son use the book, but ultimately I lost it in a divorce.  I would give anything to find a copy of this volume.  It contained one rhyme in particular “I Had a Little Doggie” who used to sit and beg, but doggie fell down the stairs and broke his little leg……etc.  The pages were kind of glossy with bright illustrations.  Can your readers provide any assistance?  I greatly appreciate it.  It is not the Horace Mann Second Reader.There were many rhymes in this book as well as stories....I am hoping someone will recognize it!

L281: Little Red Riding Hood gone American
I'm  looking for a children's hardback book with sound buttons Little Red Riding Hood, an American version where the wolf comes across a group of "rangers" who ask him  questions, the mailman and other people. The sound buttons said things like "Yoo hoo, Mr Mailman" and "what's wrong with your voice?

Nolan, Billy, Little Red Riding Hood Rides Again, 1993."Nine humorous sound effects and audio conversations that can be triggered by pushing buttons highlight an interactive version of the story of Little Red Riding Hood's perilous encounter with a wicked and hungry wolf."
Nolan, Billy, Little Red Riding Hood Rides Again, 1993."Nine humorous sound effects and audio conversations that can be triggered by pushing buttons highlight an interactive version of the story of Little Red Riding Hood's perilous encounter with a wicked and hungry wolf."


L282: Little Golden Book about doctor who fixes a broken heart
I'm looking for a Little Golden book published at least 15 years ago about a doctor who can fix everything except a broken heart but by the end of the book figures out a way. I don't remember any of the title, just that it had the binding of an LGB.

Ronne Peltzman, Mr. Bell's Fixit Shop. Recently someone was asking about a book that featured a fix-it shop that advertised it could fix anything but broken hearts. A little girl brings in her doll to be mended and b/c he's able to fix the doll (or the doll's heart?) the slogan is changed. I found a Little Golden Book called Mr. Bell's Fixit Shop that fit the description. Could the doctor in your memory actually be Mr. Bell? Anyway, check out the cover (click on camera) and see if it rings a bell.
Ronnie Peltzman, Mr. Bell's Fix-it Shop, 1981. A little girl who is a friend of Mr. Bell's asks if he can mend her much-loved but severely dmaged doll.  What she really wants fixed is her own broken heart over the sad state of her doll.  This is definitely the book you're seeking.

 L283: Lucy, her dad brings her dolls from around the world
I'm looking for this book for my mother. She read it when she was about 6 and is 67 now. She said it's about a girl named Lucy. Lucy's dad travels and when he comes home he brings her dolls from different countrires. At the end a doll maker makes a new doll incorporating all of dolls into one. 

The Surprise Doll.
Morrell Gipson, The Surprise Doll, 2005, reprint. For more than half a century children have been captivated with the story of Mary and her dolls. Mary’s father was a sea captain who took long trips across the ocean, bringing back a doll from each journey. Soon Mary had six dolls and wished for a seventh one to become her "Sunday" doll. But Mary’s father said six dolls were enough for any girl, so she set off to visit the Dollmaker and, oh, was she in for a surprise!
Gipson, Morrell, The Surprise Doll. This seems to be the same as D326.  The little girl's name was Mary, but everything else fits
Morrell Gipson, The Surprise Doll. Not only is this in solved stumpers, it's actually solved ON THIS PAGE. See D326: Doll for Sea Captain's Daughter
Morrell Gipson, The Surprise Doll, 1949. See Stumper #D326, above... it's the same book. Fortunately, it was reprinted not too long ago, so it should be relatively easy to find.
Morrell Gipson, The Surprise Doll. The girl's name is Mary, but otherwise it matches the description. See also stumper D326 and the Solved Mysteries page.

 L284: Little girl in city gets a tiny dog
This is a book that I read when I was in kindergarten or first grade in 1963-1964 (or thereabout). I remember taking it out of the library over and over again. It is about a little girl who lives in a small apartment in a city (NYC?) and she gets a very tiny dog (no bigger than her hand). Thank you!

Betty Brock, No Flying in the House. Well, if no one is going to guess on this one, I wonder if it might be the well-known "No Flying in the House" with the tiny dog Gloria and the girl Annabel, who discovers she's a fairy. You can check the Solved Mysteries to see if this rings a bell.
Norman Bridwell, Clifford the Small Red Puppy, 1972. This immediately made me think of Clifford the Big Red Dog. Or, more specifically, his origin story, which was published in Clifford the Small Red Puppy. The only problem, of course, is the date. The original book was published in 1963, but the one that would match your description wasn't published until almost ten years later.

 L285: Little people living in garden
Some little people live in a garden near a mansion or big house. They can't be out when the sun goes down or they get lost in the shadows. They can only be out when the sun is out. I think there's a statue or something with a fountain that they live in or around. I think humans can't see them.
Betty Brock, The Shades, 1971. Some of the details don't exactly match, but I think this might be your book. When a boy visiting a big old house washes his eyes in the magical dolphin fountain, he discovers that he can see the living shadows of the people who visited the garden in the past. The shadow people are menaced by the evil influence of the statue of a beautiful woman.
Betty Brock, The Shades. I agree this is The Shades. Just to add a couple more details, the Shade family is created from people who've come out to the garden in the sunshine. If one of the family is already there who fits as a person's shadow, then that Shade member is the shadow. New family members are created when no Shade matches their shadow. The boy who is the main character has created a new shadow, but he can't see his shadow as a person, as he can all the others. The magic is created by a fountain of a dolphin in the middle of the garden  which is being overgrown, and is in danger of losing the magic. (Probably too much info, but I loved this book as a kid!)

L286: "Lori's Big Day," leaves, pancakes
Looking for picture book - Lori's Big Day? Not sure on the title; Lori has pancakes for breakfast and jumps in a big pile of leaves. It could be her birthday? Not sure when it was published - read it between 1980-1986...but it was with a lot of Eloise Wilkin books, so may have been older.

Ruth Odor, Lori's Day.


2011

L287: Lunar park? boy and girl go to moon, maybe amusement park, they eat moon treats
an illustrated children's book (possibly australian) about a boy and girl and possibly parents (i dont think any of them had any hair) who have an automated house. They are woken up by their beds, washed by a bathroom machine, food prepared by robots etc. They then go to the moon and go on various rides, antigravity room, ride on the rings. they would eat moon treats like big coloured candyfloss. Then they came home and their bbq robot had made them a big feast. Book may have been early 80s and may be called something along the lines of "lunar park".


L288: Living chalk drawings
1980s latest. Czech/E. Euro author? YA, a few drawings. Drawings come to life on a school wall. Young man befriends them. Drawings can move between walls, or on playground sand (which hurts). They're in trouble of some kind, towards end man leaves '+'s on walls to show where he's searched for them

L289: Little girl cuts sweater sleeves, runs away from home
Author/Title/Publisher unknown. Children’s book. Probably published between 1950-1970. The story is about a little girl, probably age 6-9, who is angry because her mother insists that she wear a sweater that she hates.  After the mother has left the room, the girl takes a pair of scissors and cuts off the arm of the sweater. When she sees what she has done, she is shocked and very sorry, but still angry. She decides to “move away,” so goes to make a new home in a tree house or attic room or (or something like that) belonging to a neighbor. The neighbor is a kindly woman who does not insist the girl come down, but instead brings her food and orange soda (like Scout bringing supplies to her brother in To Kill a Mockingbird ). When it begins to get dark, and she misses the familiar comforts of her home and family, the girl eventually decides to go home.If you can find this book, I would be very grateful.

Astrid Lindgren, Lotta Leaves Home.

L290: Logic puzzles, illustrated stories
Book, logic puzzles, characters solved problems using logic/math.  Wolf/goat/cabbage problem was in there. Also, a boy/man who works for a mean rich man and tells his boss that he wants to be paid double every day, starting with a cent, who foolishly agrees. I think this was the cover illustration?

Mathemagic (Childcraft series),
1978. In addition to the goat/wolf/cabbages and doubling pennies puzzles, "Mathemagic" includes "Multiplying Vampires," "Tuesday I Was 10," and an excerpt from "The Phantom Tollbooth," among many other tidbits. The cover I had has a photo of a mime in some sort of unitard (hey, it was the '70s!) holding a magician's hat with numbers coming out of it. Loved this book!

L291: Little book golden or disney?
Phrase on last page of book is:  Take it up and drink it down and ye shall have a golden crown.

Mother Goose Rhymes
. This just occurred to me--Disney's Mother Goose Rhymes includes Crosspatch, Draw the Latch.  "Take a cup and drink it up and call your neighbours in."  A possibility?

L292: Little girl, at home, lunch, bath, by myself
I had a book in the early 70's - Little Golden? Whitman? Rand McNally? - about a little girl who spends the day at home.  It's all about how she can do things herself - take her own bath, make her own lunch.  Beautiful illustrations.  "I can do it myself" keeps popping into my head!  HELP! Updated: Forgot to say, this is NOT "We Help Mommy".  The little girl in the book I'm looking for is around 6-8 years old.  The one in We Help Mommy is more like 4 years old. Just a bit more detail about the book I'm searching for.  It was the same shape, size and general format as a Little Golden Book or a Tip Top Elf book (though I'm pretty sure it wasn't one of those).  I was born in 1965 and had this book when I was around 5 or 6, but it could've been printed much earlier than that.  The illustrations are what I remember most.  The little girl (dark haired) in the bathtub, in the kitchen making her own lunch, the mother in the next room vacuuming(?) or doing housework, etc.  I wish I could remember more about the actual story, sorry!

June Goldsborough, I Can Do It By Myself, 1981. I saw this Golden Sturdy Book on Paperback Swap and remembered this stumper.  I can't find an image to confirm, but the description is:  "A child demonstrates the things she can do by herself all day long."
Thank you for the suggestion!  Unfortunately, it's not the right book.  Mine would've been printed in the 60's at least.  And I found a description on the web that says your title is a "wordless picture book" for toddlers.  Mine had text.  A very good try, though - thank you, again!

L293: Local develops toxins in basement, Midwestern sheriff, Middle Eastern immigrants
SOLVED: Neal Stephenson and Frederick George, Cobweb, 1997.

L294: Lost wolf pup, indian girl hunted by trapper
Late 1970's early 1980's. A lost wolf pup is found by an indian tribe and raised for awhile then he is lost again and find this indian girl who is forced to marry this trapper,  she runs away and the wolf and her becomes friends and they are trying to escape from the trapper who is hunting them.

Jean Craighead George, Julie of the Wolves, 1972. Miyax, like many adolescents, is torn. But unlike most, her choices may determine whether she lives or dies. At 13, an orphan, and unhappily married, Miyax runs away from her husband's parents' home, hoping to reach San Francisco and her pen pal. But she becomes lost in the vast Alaskan tundra, with no food, no shelter, and no idea which is the way to safety. Now, more than ever, she must look hard at who she really is. Is she Miyax, Eskimo girl of the old ways? Or is she Julie (her white-people name), the modernized teenager who must mock the traditional customs? And when a pack of wolves begins to accept her into their community, Miyax must learn to think like a wolf as well. If she trusts her Eskimo instincts, will she stand a chance of surviving? Sequels are Julie and Julie's Wolf Pack.

L295: Lost kitten found in pocket
Three children looking for their kitten give up looking, get ready to go outside and a child finds the kitten in her coat pocket.


L296: Lost diamond ring
SOLVED: Kinsey, Sea View Secret, 1952.

L297:  Large graphic novel, 1980s, sci fi, color. may start with O, or main characters name starts with O
Boy flies space ship shaped like bird, lands on planet. Shiny ship, metallic.  Landing gear are feet? Gets pulled into vortex, travels thru space/time. Ponders depths of universe, perhaps swallowed by a star.  Sparse text, esoteric, space feels alone to him.

L298: Letters from a penpal
A book that is all letters that a young girl receives from a penpal. Each page of the book is another letter that she received.  I'm thinking the title is Dear Amy, or Dear Joann or something simple like that.  I read it early 1990's. It's a young girl's novel.   A children's fiction book ages 6-8?

Ann Martin, P. S. Longer Letter Later,
1998, approximate. Could this be Ann Martin & Paula Danziger's book (a series of letters between Tara*Starr and Elizabeth)?

L299: Little girl, planet, space, window
The book is about a little girl who sits and looks out her window at the night sky, and imagines space and other planet and another city where another child is sitting in a place similar yet very different to her own city. It was a bedtime story for me as a 5 year old. Gorgeous illustrations.

L300: Live Doll, Fairy, or Miniature Person who needs care
A tiny live doll, fairy, or miniature person who needed love and care. A little girl had to provide for all of her needs and set up a table and chair for her to eat in the middle of the family table, give her tiny portions of food, make a place for her to sleep and so on. Updated: Little girl is given or finds a little person who needs her care. The little person, I _think_ fits in her pocket, and she has to use things around the house to provide for her care. She has to make a little bed for her doll-person, and sets up a tiny little table and chairs in the middle of her family's dining room table. It seems to me like she had to decide what to feed her and give her one whole pea for her vegetables. I don't remember any pictures, it seems to me that this was a selection in an anthology, and I read it about 1972.

Perez-Guerra, Anna, Poppy or the Adventures of a fairy.
A mischevious fairy is found in the garden and taken in to live with them.  The family gives her doll house furniture, and small pieces of food.  To keep her out of trouble they put a colander on top of her and she almost suffocates when she clogs up the holes with clay.  She is rescued just in time and it ends with her finding a friend to play with.  She further description in Solved mysteries.

L301: Little Jungle Girl
Book is from the 40's-60's. It is about a little girl who lived in a jungle village who is taken in by a white guy and is taught English, etc.. I think that she eventually goes back to the jungle in the end. It might be named after the girl. Cover shows the girl in the jungle, green, orange, & black

W. H. Hudson, Green Mansions, 1904/1952. Could it be Rima the Bird Girl from Green Mansions?  She was  17 but small (4' 6").  Abel finds her in the jungle and she returns there.  In the book, she is burned to death, but the comic book from the 1950’s, she continues to live in the jungle/forest.   
Edgar Rice Burroughs, The Son of Tarzan, 1917. I don't know if this could be it or not.  The date doesn't match, but it was republished a few times, I think.  The book does feature a girl named Meriem, who lives in a village near the jungle.  She is rescued from her evil guardian by Tarzan's son (hence the name of the book) and lives in the jungle with him for a while before being recaptured.  She eventually ends up living with a white family in their jungle bungalow, who teach her English.  I can't remember if she goes back to the jungle at the end though.  Anyway, worth a try.

L302: London apprentice
I am looking for a book about a London apprentice set in the 1800s I think - think it was published by Puffin. i would have read it about 1977 or thereabouts - the cover then had a picture of the docks in London on it and was very descriptive about how harsh life was for children in London in those days. I DO so hope you will be able to helpme with my quest for this book.

Joan Aiken, Midnight Is a Place,
I don't know about the apprenticeship, but this book is definitely about the harsh life of children in London during that time period. In one part,one of the kids (a girl and a boy, not related) have to scavenge for junk in the sewers. In another, the girl gets a job as a picker at a carpet factory and nearly gets killed by the machinery. Very good book, very dark.
Leon Garfield, Smith, 1970.
Jill Paton Walsh, A Chance Child.
Cynthia Harnett, Ring Out Bow Bells. This book is definitely about young apprentices in London  but it is set in the 15th, not 19th century. Dick Whittington makes an appearance.
Leon Garfield , The Apprentices.
Rachel Varble, Three Against London, 1962. This book takes place in the late 1600s. One of the main characters, a young girl named Susan, is a maid in the household of the diarist Samuel Pepys, who held an important government position at the Royal Docks. She meets an apprentice, Adam, and his younger brother Kit.  I've forgotten a lot of the story, but not the C. Walter Hodges illustrations or the strength and realism of the characters.  Adam and Susan are about 17 and 14  Kit is maybe 10 or 12.  I think Adam has to watch out for the pressgang, and there is a mystery involving the docks -- someone corrupting the ship supplies, maybe.  I remember the book showing a lot of brutality for the time it was published.

L303: Large lime green book on different sciences
I remember a large almost phone book size book that had a lime green cover. It came out mid 80's and had different chapters on different sciences. It was for I think mid teens. 2 pages I tore out had a perpetual calendar in it.

2012

L304: Little girl wants to be a spy (not Harriet)
Children's book in the 1970s about a little girl (who possibly wants to be a spy, but not Harriet the Spy) who flies alone (to Texas?) to see her father.  Her mother packs a cheese sandwich for her to eat on plane (possible spoiled?).  Her dad has horses and was either involved in horses or small planes. It seems like the cheese sandwich was spoiled on the plane.  She may have had red hair too.

L305: Lucy Lupin Red Bird
A 1970s book about a little girl Lucy Lupin (?) with shoulder length black hair that stuck out.  There is a white paper house that blows away with the girl through a beautiful dark blue twilight sky.  There was a bright red bird.  The illustrations might be airbrushed.

L306: London children
Looking for a childrens book, probably published mid '60's.  It was about six kids who lived in London and made the park opposite their home their own by squeezing through the railing when it was closed. They named parts of the park after london landmarks etc. the park keeper was their enemy.

Eric Allen, The Latchkey Children. I don't remember all the details, but it is certainly a 60s book about a group of London children and their local playground.
John Rowe Townsend, Goodbye to the Jungle, 1970. ...or maybe Gumble's Yard. Two kids are abandoned by their uncle, and end up making an empty lot into their home. Some of the other kids that live around the lot help them by bringing them stuff.  From what I remember, it was a really rough London neighborhood  but if they named things after landmarks, I don't remember that part.

L307: Little Dog Lost? Grass too tall and puppy can't find mother
Children's book.  I had a hard-cover copy in the 1970's.  A little dog gets separated from his mother and meets other animals (no humans I think) along the journey to find his mother again.  Cover had an illustration of the puppy in long grass. Would really love to have a similar copy again.

Janette Lowrey, The Poky Little Puppy,
1942. One of the Little Golden Books.

L308: Little Girl Runs Away From Home But Just Goes Around The Block
Young single mother living in a New York high rise with a young daughter & toddler. Mother is trying to do the taxes and gets mad in frustration. Daughter decides to run away with her baby brother. But they can't cross the street, so they just end up going around the block, where mother is waiting.

Lore Segal, Tell me a Mitzi. This is stretching it, since most of the details don't exactly match, but just in case:  the first story in the book, "Mitzi Takes a Taxi," is about how Mitzi wakes up early, gets herself and her baby brother dressed (including changing a diaper), gets him into the stroller, out to the apartment elevator, down to the street, and into a taxi.  She says they want to go to their grandparents' house, but since she doesn't know the address, the taxi driver puts them back out on the street, and in they go again, up the elevator, and back into bed, seconds before their parents' alarm clock rings.  At which point Mitzi asks her mother for the grandparents' address.  "Why?"  "Just because."'

L309: Little Girl's Russian Trans-Siberian Adventure
SOLVED: Blanch, Lesley, A journey into the Mind's Eye.

L310: Little girl living with multigenerational family
I read this in the late 60's. It was a charming story about a little girl who had a close relationship with her immediate family and older family members,They lived a very "ethnic"life and celebrated holidays and seasons which were richly described in the book.they were of polish or from the Ukraine. This book was a book at about the 5th or 6th grade level- about a little girl and her grandmother and family- they were always cooking, cleaning, celebrating holidays- everything was an event..not a chore.  It was such a great tale. I would love to share it with my nieces.I remember the grandmother had some ties to Poland, Russia or the Ukraine and they observed many of the holiday traditions of that culture. I have tried unsuccessfully to locate it through other internet searches for a very long time.

Something by Kate Seredy, maybe?  The ones I remember were based in Hungary, but she has others that sound like possibilities.

L311: Lots of animals live in the zoo
We sang a song in primary school in England in the 1960s: 'Lots of animals live in the zoo/ Lions and bears and the big kangaroo... Lots of animals, lots of animals, lots of animals live in the zoo!' I am curious as to where it comes from

Matterson, Elizabeth,
This Little Puffin (reprint source). One website identifies the song as "There Are Monkeys" by Elizabeth Matterson  another source indicates it's been reprinted in This Little Puffin, which may have more information about the origin.  The song begins, "There are monkeys and bears and a big kangaroo / Lions and tigers and elephants too  /  . . . And lots more animals live in the zoo."

L312: Little boy cuts down trees, builds house
A little boy decides he's going to build a house. So he goes into woods and cuts down trees (?) and builds a log(?) house, then goes and has a meal because he's hungry. Builds it for his family (?). Sorry for lack of details. Book is maybe from 60s.

Andrew Henry's Meadow? See Solved Mysteries.

L313:  Little boy leaves island in Scotland
SOLVED: Sharyn McCrumb, The Songcatcher.

L314: Lance/Lancelot YA romance
YA/teen romance that I read mid to late 80s. Likely ordered from Weekly Reader or Scholastic as bookstores weren’t plentiful here at that time. What I’m sure of regarding characters and plot: Heroine in high school; Lives with one female; The female she lives with is how she meets the hero (friend? tutor? friend of boyfriend?); Hero named Lance; They rub each other the wrong way; She snarkily refers to him as Lancelot; His name really *is* Lancelot. What I *think* but am not quite sure of: Lance is in college (or at least out of high school); The female the heroine lives with is an older sister; The heroine has a crush on a different guy who may or may not have turned out to be bad news.

L315: Little girl can't stop looking at reflection of herself
This was a picture book in the 1970's, in the style of Madeline.  It was about a little girl who couldn't stop looking at reflections of herself, despite the trouble that it got her in to.  In one scene, she falls into a manhole because she's staring at her reflection in a shop window.

William Pene Du Bois., Pretty Pretty Peggy Moffitt,
1968. "Her first present was a mirror, her first words were "pretty pretty girl," because that was all she heard. As she grew, Peggy (always enchanted by her image) kept bumping into things because she was looking at her reflection." (Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books)

L316: Little people live in the woods, board book
I'm Looking for a cardboard childrens book my grandmother used to read me in the 90s. It was about little people who lived in the woods. On one page they harvested grain with a scythe, on another there was a big carrot and a grey/black mole. I don't remember anything about the title or author.


L317: The Little Mermaid
I am looking for a 1960's storybook with a lentograph on the cover and pictures of either felted or fabric dolls.  As I recall the pages are thick cardboard.  Hopefully you can find this childhood treasure for me.  Thanks! 

Hans Christian Anderson/Tadasu Izawa & Shigemi Hijikata, The Little Memaid, 1966. You're probably looking for a Golden Press publication of The Little Mermaid, with a 3D hologram picture on the cover. The inside illustrations are photos of dolls/puppets by Tadasu Izawa and Shigemi Hijikata for Shiba Productions. Izawa and Hijikata did a lot of these books in the 1960's and early 70's, most of which were fairy tales. Golden Press published quite a few of these, though other publishers (such as Crown Publications) also got in on the action. An online search for "Golden Press Little Mermaid 3D Puppet Book" should find pictures of the cover and illustrations to compare to your memories.

L318: Little bear lost in new suit of clothes
A book from the 1960's I think. About a little bear who gets lost in a new suit of clothes. they get dirty and he tries to wash them and they shrink he finally comes home mother gives him cocoa and buttered toast in bed... Was a small blue hard cover. Updated: When I wrote the description I think I may have confused two books... The book I am looking for was I believe a small blue hard cover children's story about a little bear. He either gets lost or is afraid to come home because he soiled his new suit of clothes.When he finally gets home his mother puts him to bed with cocoa and buttered toast. I was born in 1961 so the copy wright is probably the 50's or 6o's.

Else Holmelund Minarik, Little Bear,
1957. It's a sweet little book (that *is* a small blue hardcover, by the way) containing four stories...one of which is called "What Will Little Bear Wear?" and another story that ends with Mother Bear making him a hot lunch after an adventure.  It's also the first book in a series, so it might also be another one of those books you might be thinking of, too.

L319: Little ... Warrior
SOLVED: Disney, Little Hiawatha.


L320: Labyrinth solution: climb the walls
In Jr. High (during the 1980's -- but the book could be older) I read the story of a boy who enters a labyrinth.  He finds other people inside, but can't solve the maze so instead he climbs over the walls to escape into a distant land.  Once there he gets captured and is caged next to a lion (or tiger?), which I think he helped escape.  The rest of the story is fuzzy, but I would love to read it again.

Dorothy Gilman, The Maze in the Heart of the Castle. This sounds like The Maze in the Heart of the Castle. Dorothy Gilman wrote a mystery called The Tightrope Walker that featured a made-up book with this story and title. She later went to actually write the story. Colin loses his parents, and goes to an old wizard to help get rid of his pain. The wizard sends him into the maze in the heart of the castle. Colin climbs the wall to escape the maze, though none of the other people in the maze are willing to take the risk of following him. He has many adventures beyond the maze. If I remember correctly, at one point he is being held in a cage at zoo. There are also bandits, and a cave of joyless people who cannot stand the light.
Dorothy Gilman, The Maze in the Heart of the Castle, 1983. This book was one of my favorites too! The maze and the capture in the lion's cage are definitely memorable. This book can be read as a  gripping adventure story... or as an allegory of the human condition.

L321: Littlest Christmas Angel
Three little angels are telling stories about how bright their stars are: one rescues children from the forest, one guides a ship in rough seas and the littlest angel shines down on baby Jesus. May have been published or sold at a Catholic elementary school.

Beth Vardon, The Shiniest Star. (A hard-to-find book!) Excerpt: "Next, the little Crewcut angel stopped/ his work, and said with pride,/ "Listen! My star saved two children,/ lost and wandering side by side. It was midnight in the forest/ they were scared as scared could be!/ But my star shone through the darkness-/ I was helping them to see!"
If you are interested in purchasing a copy, we have a 2002 reprint of The Shiniest Star for sale at Loganberry Books. Please let us know.

L322: Little boy cuts down trees, builds house
SOLVED: Alan Arkin, Tony's Hard Work Day, 1972.

L323: Little Girl, Mirror, When I grow up
My mom read this book as a child and I really want to find it for her. It is about a little girl who is looking in a mirror and imagining and seeing in the mirror all of the things that she can be when she grows up. My mom was born in 1964, so that gives you a time frame to work with.

Jean Bethell, Ruth Wood (illus), When I Grow Up (Easy Reader), 1964. Cover is yellow and shows a red-haired little girl from the back, wearing a red and green plaid jumper, white blouse, black tights, and red shoes. The girl is facing a large oval mirror in which she sees reflections of her older self as a ballerina, a nurse, a stewardess, and a cowgirl.

L324: Little princess frightened of thunderstorm and runs away
Anthology story of little princess in enclosed glass garden flees during thunderstorm looses memory and grows up with another family eventually prince comes. Color pictures in text. Remember picture little girl in blue dress tangled in thornbush. Also, picture of her grown in peasant dress working.

L325: Little Engine
Story about a little engine that can magically lay down track in front of itself.  Probably 1950s.

L326: Little matchbox girl, 1970's, dark, storybook
It may have been an adaptation of Hans C Andersen's "The Little Match Girl"-- full color, hardback, storybook, in the late 1970's/early 1980's -set in either WW1 or WW2 because references to bombed out buildings, in France or Germany, gas masks work by soldiers -very bleak, dark, vivid artwork.


L327: Little Lizzie's Big Adventure
Illustrated children's book from the 1970's about a little African girl who gets lost in the jungle and ends up riding a raft down a fast flowing river and escaping a crocodile. The illustrations were very vibrant and detailed. The little girl may have gone out by herself despite warnings.

Mayer, Mercer, Liza Lou and the Yeller Belly Swamp, 1976. Might be this one.
L328: Little red-headed girl
Little red-headed girl with bunches goes to school for first time. Practises swimming in bath; Paints robot at school; Does PE - Dancing I think; Female teacher;
Has a sleep (so it must be an American book). Read this in the 1980's (early)  It had a rainbow coloured striped border on front cover)

L329: Lost in the Badlands
Thank you so much for offering this service!  I hope you can help me as I would love to find a copy of this book to give to my nephew. The book was entitled something like "Lost in the Badlands".  I believe it may have started with "Mighty Mites: Lost in the Badlands" as the book featured a group of children who were called the Mighty Mites (or something along those lines, I'm not sure exactly what it was).  I read the book in the 80's, but it may have been published in the late 70's as it was a hand-me-down from my cousins.  It was illustrated in colour, sort of comic book style with several pictures framed within the page and "speech" bubbles.  The children in the book were I believe in Alberta's Badlands so I suspect it was a Canadian book, but I may just have assumed that as a child because they were the only Badlands I knew of at the time (since I'm Canadian!).  The kids somehow travelled back in time and found themselves in the Badlands during the time of dinosaurs.  I'm not sure if it was an educational book but I remember learning a lot from the book, such as what noseeums and hoodoos are.  I particularly remember one frame in which a kid says, "Hoodoos?" and another kids says, "You do!" Thank you very much for your help!


Mark Thurman and Emily Hearn: Mighty Mites in Dinosaur Land. 1981. It does indeed take place in Alberta's Badlands, and is in an illustrated comic format.
From WorldCat: Title: The mighty mites in dinosaur land /Author(s): Hearn, Emily. Thurman, Mark. Publication: Toronto : Greey de Pencier Books,
Year: 1981 Description: 43 p. : ill. (some col.), maps ; 26 cm. Language: English Series: An OWL learning through adventure book; Variation: OWL
learning through adventure book. Descriptor: Dinosaurs -- Juvenile literature.


L330: Little girl witch
I'm interested in a book that is about a little girl witch.  She gets caught in the rain and a family finds her and brings her into the house.  There is a real girl there and the little witch girl gradually turns into a real girl too.  I read this book 1000 times when I was young.  Please find it!

This may be "Little Leftover Witch" by Florence Laughlin.
The Little Leftover Witch,
1960, by Florence Laughlin. See Solved Mysteries. Chris Colfer, from the show "Glee," was planning in 2011 to have Disney make it into a TV series this year, but there's no real sign of it. A few thoughts: It's clear to me that the story is not so much a witch story as it is an adoption/adjustment story. Does anyone think, for example, that Felina's illiteracy at age seven REALLY has anything to do with being a witch? My point is that Felina is not a witch so much as she is simply a neglected, unhappy child who has to adjust to the idea of loving parents who actually deserve love and respect in return. Besides, interestingly, she never refers to any witch from her past life as a relative - and she never quite seems homesick, just sulky and rude.
Some have complained that this book is about promoting conformity. While it's true it wouldn't be written the same way today - after all, there's really nothing to distinguish Felina from Lucinda by the end (she even takes Lucinda's name as her middle name!), there's still no reason for any child, in my opinion, to think that the conformity in question is about anything more serious than good manners vs. bad manners and ingratitude. Or, if you will, the Golden Rule. Besides, you could always follow this one with "Jennifer, Hecate, MacBeth, William McKinley, and Me, Elizabeth," which points out (through Cynthia) that conformity is often a disguise for meanness.
  

The Little Leftover Witch
by Florence Laughlin.  A young witch named Felina breaks her broomstick one Halloween night and is stranded in a town of ordinary people. She is taken in by the Doon family and befriended by the Doons' daughter, Lucinda.  Although Felina's witchy antics sometimes drive the Doons crazy, they come to love her.  As a new Halloween approaches and Felina has a chance to rejoin the witches, she comes to realize that she loves the Doons, too, and would rather stay with them and become Lucinda's sister.
This has to be The Little Leftover Witch by Florence Laughlin.  It's a great book!

L331: Little military guys, illustrated book
 The book is a children's picture book I took out of my school's library when I was in first grade.  I was born in 1968 and I think I was in first grade around 1974 . . so the book was published before then.  It was an oversized book (not regular 5 x 8 or 8.5 x 11) because I recall it sticking out of the shelf more than the other books.  The cover was purple and all of the images were illustrations/drawings.  It was of two little military guys with rather large mustaches who keep meeting up to compare weapons.  The first guy starts out with a small knife, so the second guy shows up with a larger knife.  The first guy then gets a sword and then the second guy gets a gun.  They go on and on until they are both sitting on elephants with huge weapons pointing at each other.  The last image is of them back to the first images where they are just standing there with no weapons looking at each other.  Other than that, I have no other details.


L332: Literal interpretations of idioms
Solved: The Phantom Tollbooth


L333: Little Red Riding Hood Adorns Grey Fairytale Book Cover
This is an approximately 8"x10" hardcover book of 12+ fairytales featuring Little Red Riding Hood, Cinderella, The Princess & The Pea, etc. I received the book as a present pre-1988, but it could have been published in the 1960s-1970s. Tons of colored illustrations, somewhat in the style of the 19th-century illustrator, Dulac, but it is NOT him. I recall the cover was dark greyish-brown. It wasn't a particularly happy scene, more mysterious and a little foreboding. Little Red Riding Hood looking away from you, peering into the forest (her face partially or totally hidden). I seem to remember characters from other famous fairytales also in the woods on the periphery. I remember the pages had a straightforward, matte paper feel. No glossy, waxy pages. Thank you for your help. I really appreciate it!

L334: Lion, haircut
A book about a lion who either got a haircut or didn't want a haircut. Either way he wasn't happy. I read it as a kindergartner in the early 1970s. No clue on the title or author. I do remember the cover seemed to have a picture of the sad lion on it.

Freeman, Don, Dandelion, 1964. Could this be Dandelion? Dandelion's new haircut causes him many problems.

L335: Little girl in land of candy
When I was little I had a favorite book. I believe it had a white cover and most of the drawings were black and white line drawing with some elements colored in. It was a little girl in a land of candy. I remember the drawings being beautiful but I can't remember much about what the story was about. I also can't remember if there were other characters in the story or if it was just about the little girl. I think the story was about a dream of hers? It was published in the 1980s or earlier. I would be very grateful if you can tell me what this picture book is. Thank you!

"The Sweet Touch"
by Lorna Balian, 1976. A girl puts a penny in a gumball machine but gets a plastic gold ring instead. The ring contains a neophyte genie who grants the girl the Sweet Touch (like the Midas touch, but with candy instead of gold). Which is great... for a while. An online reviewer notes that the newer edition has different illustrations, and says the ISBN for the original book is 978-0687407736.
I'm guessing this might be The Sweet Touch, by Lorna Balian.  The cover is a little girl surrounded by giant pieces of candy.  I don't remember the story at all, but the cover has always stuck in my memory!

L336: Like Lonely Doll Book by Dare Wright
I am trying to find the name of a book that was published between 1966 - 1971 that uses color photographs of a plastic doll. I remember that there is a kitchen scene where she is doing chores. It has a cover using red checkers like the Lonely Doll Book but it is not that book. It is similar to the book by Antonio Colacino titled More Adventures of Susan and Spotty. Any suggestions? I've been looking for 10 years! Thanks.

You mention that it is not More Adventures of Susan and Spotty, but is there any chance you are looking for Susan and Spotty by Antonio Colacino? That one does have a red cover (illustration is of Susan (the doll) and Spotty (the dog) in bed with their young owner, Kate). In this book, Susan and Spotty make a see-saw with a can of dog food and a scrub brush, Susan tries roller skating with toy cars tied to her feet, then Susan fills the kitchen sink with soap and water and the two of them go for a swim. When they are done, Susan hangs her pants on a kitchen spoon propped on a teacup to dry. The soap-filled kitchen sink, scrub brush, and drying laundry could give the impression that Susan was doing chores.

L337: Little Match Girl, sepia-toned
Looking for version of Little Match Girl I had when I was young - Probably published mid 1970s to early 1980s. Don't know the illustrator but illustrations were very brown and sepia toned. Book was hard cover and cover might have been brown too.

L338: London boy finds canal boat
This book is set in inner London about a boy. He has a brother who is a bully. He is reading Ancient Mariner at school and he discovers an old boat to go down the canal on. Unfortunately this is the only information I have. I really hope that you can help me! Thanks.





 
 
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3/14/13