Picture book, possibly 1950s (certainly pre-70s). A realistically drawn chipmunk overwinters in proximity to a human household. It lives (I think) in a woodpile, where it makes itself cozy with gathered provisions. There may be an abandoned Halloween pumpkin involved, rotting away bit by bit.
In this children’s book, a pet alligator lives in a penthouse apartment. He wants a garden to be on his balcony. One day, he falls off of the balcony to either get at a plant or a balloon animal. (Somehow, balloon animals are involved. ) He gets stuck in a tree, and his owners frantically search for him. At the end, they buy plants to put on his balcony. Each page was full of intricate details when you examined them closely.
I am looking for a short story, written before 1970, about two elderly strangers, each reminiscing silently to them self about a great love from their youth. As they leave the bench and go their separate ways, we learn that they were the couple, and they did not recognize each other.
Young adult book I read in the late 1970s/early 80s about kids who find out a large tree is a time machine traveling in 50-year increments. Their parents went into it (I think?) and in the end they decide to go into it as well knowing when they come back everybody will be older.
This was an illustrated children’s book about a family of pigs whose parents left them with a terrible/villainous babysitter. They had to save each other. Does this ring any bells?
My 4th grade teacher in 1958-59 read us a chapter-a-day in a children’s book about a group of kids trying to solve a mystery. While trailing a bunch of crooks, the smell of the kids’ mosquito spray (quinine) gave them away. Calpurnia was the housekeeper.