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Maybe one of the Rick Brant
Electronic Boys series? They were written by John
Blaine in the late 1940s. Rick and his friend Scotty lived
on Spindrift Island with Rick's father and other scientists and
solved mysteries. No idea about UFOs, though. Maybe The
Rocket's Shadow 1947?
Raymond F. Jones, SON OF THE STARS.
1952.
Jones, Raymond F., Son of the Stars, Winston 1957. More information on
the suggested title, but it doesn't confirm anything. "In 'Son
of the Stars', Raymond Jones has written of a forthright
friendship between a young castaway from space and his earthly
counterpart. How a cold and suspicious military, recognizing
Clonar only as an alien from an astonishingly advanced
civilization, turns friendship into treachery that threatens
earth's existence, makes this an electrifying story with a
thought-provoking theme. In scenes uncomfortably vivid, you'll
meet soldiers and citizens of a typical American city
people like calculating General Gillispie and frightened Mrs.
Barron, whose reactions to an 'interplanetary' situation bring
the world to the brink of destruction.." The term 'castaway'
suggests that there may be UFO crash technology involved, but
only the alien boy Clonar and his friend young Barron are
mentioned, not 3 boys. If it helps, Clonar has 6 fingers.
I don't know the teens and UFOs novel
sought, but it's none of the Rick Brant
series. Rick Brant gets involved in some mildly sftish
situations with new inventions and such, but the only trace of
aliens in the whole series are some thousand-year-old ambigious
radio signals from space picked up in THE EGYPTIAN CAT
MYSTERY.
#U5--Unexpected
wilderness survival experience: The plot is somewhat like
Walt Morey's Canyon Winter, but not enough
to be the book described. The main differences are that
the stranding was due to a plane crash and I don't believe
there's anything about deer hide tanning or metal ore--just a
lot about tree conservation. The deer hide tanning is like My
Side of the Mountain, but that wasn't an accidental
experience--Sam did spend the
winter, and did have a friend, but went up
there on purpose. It is also definitely not Viereck's
Terror on the Mountain, as that takes place during
the summer.
Would this be one of the Gary Paulsen
books? I was reminded of either The River
or Hatchet. Neither match exactly, though.
U5 unexpected wilderness survival: Not an
exact match, but there's Lone Woodsman, by Warren
Hastings Miller, illustrated Kreigh Collins, published
Winston 1943, 230 pages. Dan Pickett loses all his supplies when
his canoe capsizes on Lac Seul, leaving him with his belt knife,
swim trunks, and dog Pepper. He makes his way to Factory St.
Joseph to meet his father, foraging for food, killing animals
with a hand-made bow and traps, tanning hides, smoking meat and
so on. He loses supplies and shelter once to a wolverine and
once to a moose. Diagrams are provided for several of the things
he makes. Couldn't find a reference to cinnabar, though. Most of
the journey takes place in snowy weather.
Jean Craighead George, My Side of the
Mountain.
A long shot. Parts of the plot don't match, but the parts
about a boy tanning deerskin and surviving a winter alone in the
mountains do.
U5: Unexpected wilderness survival
experience - just a note from the original poster of this
puzzle. I have checked in every few months and pursued the
suggestions. In fact, I have enjoyed purchasing and reading My
Side of the Mountain. Unfortunately, none of the
suggestions is the book I remember. Thanks for making this
forum available - and I hope someone will yet be able to help
me find this book.
Hobbs, Will, Far North, 1996. You might take a look at Far North by Will Hobbs. Two
teenage boys and an elderly man (who dies part way through) are
stranded for the winter in a high valley in Canada's Northwest
Terr. after a float plane accident.
Farley Mowat, Lost in the Barrens, 1956, This mystery reminded me of this book, which I really enjoyed as a kid. Some elements sound similar but it may not be the one either. Either way, thanks for reminding me of it!
Goudge, Elizabeth, Henrietta's House, London, Hodder, 1942. I wonder if it
might be this. Henrietta, her brother Hugh
John, and assorted adults go for a picnic in
the hills. The story blends fantasy and reality. There is a
sinister hulking gatekeeper who is like the Giant who had no
heart in his body, and an old gentleman who builds bowers in the
forest for imagined Sleeping Beauty and Babes in the Woods, and
a mysterious house fitted up just as Henrietta had dreamed. Hugh
John and the Bishop find an underground river and a boat, and go
down it, to find a robbers' den and the place where the young
saint of the hills may have prayed. I believe there is a ladder
out of the den.
Mollie Clarke, The
Useful
Cart, 1966. No
description, but the title's right, it was published in the UK,
and there was a
reprint in 1969.
U14 Do you want me to look in Petersham's
The Box with Red Wheels to see?
I don't think The Box With Red Wheels
fits the description; it's a very short story about some animals
wondering what could be inside that box with red wheels (it
turns out to be a baby).
Donald
Hall, Ox-Cart Man, 1979. Could this be Ox-Cart Man
by Donald Hall?
Man who has a wife and two kids on a farm loads up the Ox-Cart
each year and sells everything in it for presents/goods for the
family including the cart itself at the end. Then the story
starts over again.
U20 Sounds like it could be REVENGE OF THE DOLLS by Carol Beach York, 1979. Definitely creepy. The old aunt makes ugly evil dolls. They do not have patches for eyes, tThey have glass button eyes, and they do watch. Although, as revenge for Paulie destroying one of her dolls, she creates a sinister pirate doll which has an eye patch. So it might be worth looking at. ~from a librarian
There are several Wonder and Elf books that fit this upside-down
theme: Good Morning and Good Night by Frank
Luther, The Goody-Naughty Book and The
Sunny-Sulky Book by Sarah Cory Rippey,
and The Goody Naughty Book by Mabel
Watts. If these were longer juvenile stories, there's
a whole series of Dandelion Books, but the stories aren't
necessarily related. Check the Solved Mysteries pages to see
if any of these work.
Upside down books. I had one of these books in the 50's
when I was a child. It wass called Just Like
Mummy/Just Like Daddy.
Charlotte Zolotow, When I Grow Up???, 1950's. CZ has a book like this
where one side is a little girl, "when I grow up, I can wear
party dresses to school, etc." The other side is a little
boy. Maybe this?
Margriet Heymans Annemie, The Dolls'
Party
Annemie and
Margriet Heymans, The Doll's Party.
I want to say that this is an Enid
Blyton story. There's a vauge recollection of having
read this, and I had a lot of the Blyton short story collections
as a child. However, there are a lot of short story
collections of hers to check! The smuggler's cave
and other stories has a story called "The
surprising broom."
I think this sounds a lot like Stumper
D186. Both have unbrellas, which seems unusual.
Brown, Palmer, Beyond the Pawpaw
Trees. When I
read this stumper, my first thought was of this book.
Didn't she always carry her umbrella? And the description
of her jumping off a cliff and floating down with her umbrella
sounds familiar.
Palmer Brown, Beyond the pawpaw
trees: the story of Anna Lavinia, 1954. I also think this could be
the book you're looking for. Maybe some of this description will
sound familiar? Pages 60-63 of the 1973 Camelot Book
reprint describe how Anna Lavinia has thrown stones, a tea cosy
and a jar of pawpaw jelly over the cliff and noticed a peculiar
phenomenon. She has then watched her cat Strawberry fall over
the edge of the cliff with no ill effects. She decides she
has no choice but to follow him, pushing a carpet bag and
gardenia bush over the edge ahead of her. "Finally, just to be
on the safe side, she opened her umbrella and reached into her
pocket to squeeze the silver key for good luck. Then she
took a deep breath and stepped off into the air."
Just to confirm, U30 is indeed Beyond the Pawpaw Trees: The
Story of Anna Lavinia by Palmer Brown. I just read it a
few weeks ago and remember the scene quite clearly.
This description is nearly identical to
B282, which is still unsolved.
Also, just so you know, I was indeed the one who posted
B282--perhaps two years ago. I too hope the mystery is
solved soon.
Ruth Cavin, Timothy
the Terror, 1972. Very rare and hard to
find, expensive too (saw a copy for sale which cost $104.99).
Great story though.
U32 Do they remember if it was 8 1/2 x
11? If so, it might be this: The Scholastic
Funfact book of UFOs. Scholastic, 1977.
U32 Please keep trying :-) The short
stories I'm trying to find were purely fiction. Thanks.
Perhaps it was one of the books by Elizabeth
Koda-Callan. She wrote a bunch of books that came with
charm necklaces around that time and some are still in print, I
think. Good Luck!
Thank you for the response. I checked into this author,
though, and she doesn't appear to have written any books about
unicorns. Also, my friend who had the book was a boy, and
these are all books for little girls.
Scholastic frequently
packaged necklaces or such that related to a books
subject. Escape of the Unicorn by Suzanne Lord or Sarah's
Unicorn by Bruce Coville were both publish by Scholastic in that
era.
Could this be George MacDonald's The
Princess
and
the Goblin? You can read it online
here.
Thanks, but it's definitely not The
Princess and the Goblin. It's not a fairy or folk
tale, I'm sure, but a modern fable of some kind, with the
emphasis on the artwork and strange underground monsters.
I remember reading this book but i haven't a
clue waht it's called, although i recall the pictures looking
vaguely like those in where the wild things are by maurice
sendak, maybe it was by him?
Zilpha Keatley Snyder, Below the
Root, 1975. I
think you're looking for the Green-sky trilogy - the books are
"Below the Root", "And All Between", and "Until the
Celebration". The novels are about a planet with two
different groups of people - the Kindar, who live in villages in
the treetops and wear long, wing-like outfits that allow them to
glide from tree to tree, and the Erdlings, who have been
imprisoned underground and developed an industrialized
society. A Kindar teenager named Raamo is invited to join
the ruling council, and finds out about the existence of the
Erdlings. The clues you provide sound a lot like
descriptions of the Erdling tunnels.
The book or series described in the query
wouldn't be Green-sky. No child abuse (almost no
violence at all) or gender segregation in those books. Could you
be remembering two different series with similar ideas?
Ayn Rand, Anthem, 1937. Not everything matches, but you might be
looking for ANTHEM.
Jean Duprau, City
of Ember. The plot sounds like Duprau's book about Ember,
where people had gone to escape some coming global
catastrophe. By the time of the book, two children had
discovered a route "up there". The time doesn't sound right
for it though.
Not a direct solution, but I found
reference to your Uncle P. character being in a book titled Alternative
Alices (Twenty stories by different authors giving
an alternative picture of the heroine of Lewis Carroll's 1865
novel, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. Often less
flattering than the original, they were written between 1869 and
1930) -- so here's the contents of that book.
Hopefully, you'll recognize the story you're looking for in
there. Contents: Mopsa the fairy : Reeds and rushes;
Queen's wand; Failure / Jean Ingelow -- Amelia and the
dwarfs / Juliana Horatia Ewing -- From Speaking likenesses /
Christina Rossetti -- Behind the white brick / Frances Hodgson
Burnett -- Wanted-a king, or, how Merle set the nursery rhymes
to right / Maggie Browne -- New Alice in the old wonderland :
Peggy the pig; Dutchess and her house; Tweedles
Pageant / Anna M. Richards --
Justnowland / E. Nesbit -- Ernest / Edward Knatchbull-Hugessen
-- From nowhere to the north pole: a Noah's ark-ćological
narrative : How Frank fared in Teumendtlandt; What
happened to Frank in Quadrupedremia / Tom Hood -- Down the snow
stairs, or, from good-night to good-morning : naughty children
land / Alice Corkran -- Davy the goblin, or what followed
reading "Alice's adventures in wonderland" : the moving forest /
Charles E. Carryl -- Wallypug of why : Way to why;
Breakfast for tea; Girlie sees the wallypug;
What is a goo? / G.E. Farrow -- New
adventures of "Alice" : Found in the attic; To Bunberry
Cross, or along came a snipe; Peevish printer
Fire!! / John Rae -- Uncle Wiggily in
wonderland : Uncle Wiggily and wonderland Alice; Uncle
Wiggily and the march hare; Uncle Wiggily and the cheshire
cat / Howard R. Garis -- From David Blaize and the blue door /
E.F. Benson -- Westminster Alice : Alice in Downing
street; Alice in Pall Mall; Alice and the liberal
party / Saki -- Clara in Blunderland : in a hole again /
Caroline Lewis -- Alice in Blunderland, an iridescent dream :
off to Blunderland; ownership of children / John Kendrick
Bangs -- Alice and the stork: a fairy tale for workingmen's
children : Alice visits the American eagle / Henry T.
Schnittkind -- Alice in the delighted states : Through the
drinking glass; Jealous island; Humble pie
Censor incensed / Edward Hope
Benson, E. F., David Blaize
and the Blue Door,1918. Acting on the above
information, I found that the story in the book Alternative
Alices with Uncle Popacatapetl is "David
Blaize and the Blue Door," by E. F. Benson.
I'm not certain it's the right book, because there is only an
excerpt available in that book, but it seems like a good lead!
James Flora, Pishtosh, Bullwash, and
Wimple.One of my
favorites as a child. A boy has three friends (Pishtosh,
Bullwash, and Wimple) that take him on wonderful
adventures. One place is upside down land, another is
growly forest (where trees growl), another is chocolate lake (my
favorite!) where they go fishing for marshmallow fish with
vanilla wafer fins and he catches a big chocolate fish with a
peanut eye. Once he catches a peppermint turtle. At
the end of the book they have to find the north pole (taken by a
polar bear to share with his homesick relatives in a zoo) before
all the gravity spills out of the earth. They replace it
in the nick of time, just as everything is floating off of the
earth.
Not a solution, but this sounds similar to a
book I've been trying to unearth from my memory for a long time.
The one I read would have been in the 70s.
Mattel, Upsy-Downsy Land,1969.You
may
be thinking of Upsy-Downsy Land - one of our
all-time favorite books! It lists no auther - just
"Mattel." Brilliantly colored cartoon pictures where
everyone walks on their hands...
Gordon Boshell, Captain Cobwebb. That could be this long series - the uncle was Septimus Cobwebb (and was invisible) but Toby was one of the boys (his older brother was David). If Fanty the elephorse, the Leopillar, the Golden Cactus, the shershl (an invisible bus) and/or being kidnapped by a sort of ground-effect horseshoe crab with tentacles ring any bells then the requester's looking for this.
Miriam Clark Potter, Mrs. Goose
series. The story
"Hatbox Cake" is anthologized in Let's Hear
a Story - 30 Stories and Poems for Today's Boys and Girls,
ed. by Sidonie Matsner Grunberg, c. 1961. The
story is from one of Miriam Clark Potter's "Mrs.
Goose" books, but I'm not sure which one.
Titles in the series include "Mrs. Goose of Animal Town"
(1939), "Hello Mrs. Goose" (1947), "Here
Comes Mrs. Goose" (1953), "Our Friend Mrs.
Goose" (1956), "Mrs. Goose's Green Trailer"
(1956), "Just Mrs. Goose" (1957), "Queer,
Dear Mrs. Goose" (1959), "Goodness, Mrs.
Goose!" (1960), "No, No, Mrs. Goose!"
(1962), "Goofy Mrs. Goose" (1963), "Mrs.
Goose and Three-Ducks" (1964), and "Mrs. Goose
and her Funny Friends" (1964). "Hello Mrs.
Goose" was reprinted in 2000, and "Just Mrs.
Goose" was reprinted in 2004.
Miriam Clark Potter, Mrs. Goose, 1957, copyright. This sounds like it
could be a Mrs. Goose book. There are at least
three of them: Just Mrs. Goose, Mrs. Goose
and her Funny Friends and Goofy Mrs. Goose.
It's the only reference I could find to a
'hatbox cake' so maybe------Let's hear a story: 30 stories
and poems for today's boys and girls / Sidonie
Matsner Gruenberg / 1961 [1st ed.]. English Book :
Juvenile audience 160 p. illus. 29 cm. Garden City, N.Y.,
Doubleday.
Miriam Clark Potter, Our
Friend Mrs. Goose, 1951, copyright. This
is in response to a question about where to find "The Hatbox
Cake" story by Miriam Clark Potter. The story, according
to the acknowledgments in an anthology containing the story, was
originally in Miriam Clark
Potter's "Our Friend Mrs. Goose," published in 1951. The
anthology referred to above is: Let's Hear a Story, by Sidonie Matsner Gruenberg
(1961).
