Category Archives: 1930s or earlier

345J: Young Girl Decries Dangers of Reading When Chased by a Bull

Read this book when I was around 8, which puts it at 1960.  I am sure it was not new at that time.

Written by someone like Thurber or Ogden Nash, it was a collection of children’s short stories.  The only one that I can remember clearly was about a little girl who couldn’t read. At the end, when she is being chased by a bull, she comes to the conclusion that reading (words?) are dangerous.  The sign she couldn’t read said something  like, ‘beware of  bull.’

Hoping you can help me.

344K: Love Stories Around the World

Daughter of the Sun (I thought) was the title.

The book was given by my great grandmother to my mother. My mother is now 60 for reference.
The book was bound in a green fabric with gold accents.
The book was three separate love stories in one book .
Story 1
The first story was Daughter of a Sun. Main characters name is Charlie (Charlotte).  Charlie’s father disappears in the mountains and she ends up backpacking with a former student of her fathers through the mountains to solve the mysterious disappearance of her father. They end up finding her father who lives with a lost civilization. Takes place in South America.
 
Story 2  
 
Woman is an antiques appraiser and falls in love with an engaged client and helps the family find the missing will – that I believe was hidden in a door stop. Takes place in Europe.
 
Story 3
 
Gill has arranged marriage with one brother (I think his name starts with an F) and falls in love with the other brother. She fell asleep in the wrong limo and ended up at a castle-like estate. The man she loves did a business merger with her grandfather. Lover calls her mouse. There is a problem with a landslide. Additionally, he is a race car driver. Takes place in Italy
 
This is the most important book I ever read because it came from my great grandmother. I have no idea who wrote it or if it is even possible to find. I would be humbled by any help.

343Z: Minda the Little Indian Girl

I’m searching for an old child’s book about a little Indian girl named Minda. My father bought it used in the 1950s. It was a child’s reader and I remember very colorful. We lived in Ohio and my father had a store where he sold things, like thrift stores today. He was so excited to find it for me. My fathers mother passed away when he was 9 in 1928 her name was Minda. I was named after her. I was always told she was Indian. I think Cherokee. My mother passed away when I was 17 in 1969. I never knew what happened to my book. I’ve searched many years now. Of course both parents are gone. I don’t know the name of the book. I never knew anyone else named Minda but I know there are. I’m hoping you can help me. Thank you.

339N: Who is the author? Begins with Stephen…not King or Crane (Solved!)

I am recalling an early short story writer, from the 1930s and 1940s, he wasn’t known as a science fiction author but wrote a piece of science fiction about a take over of the world by machines. They weren’t AI or anything that sophisticated. No microprocessors. The takeover included automobiles and even irons and vacuum cleaners. The machines just revolted. I think that the story was told by a person in an enclosed room waiting to die, telling his tale. The writer’s first name was Stephen. My parents had a copy of “The Complete Works of Stephen….” or “The Collected Works of Stephen….” but I can’t remember his last name. Does anyone who it might be? I believe he also wrote some poetry included in the set.  I think there were two volumes.

337Q: Hearts and Flowers

I am looking for a 1920’s-30s romance, where the heroine earns her living being a professional letter writer, and she begins a correspondence with a young man (invalid/injured?) using the persona of an elderly motherly woman.  The only other detail that I can recall is she sent the young man some women’s hats and requested that he choose the one he liked for her.

337N: Earth History As Scenes In A Play (Solved!)

Children's illustrated science book about earth history, in which each age (formation of the solar system, age of dinosaurs, building Egypt's pyramids, etc.) is presented as a scene on stage in a play, with curtains to the sides. Last scene is at a typical house in the present day. Might have been printed in the 1930s or 1940s, was available in a grade-school library in the late 1970s.

337J: Cowboys and Indians in England

The book I’m looking for was a children’s book probably published in the 1950s, although possibly going to back to the ’20s or so (no later than the early 1960s and I’m pretty sure it belonged to one of my parents when they were children, both born in 1949). I believe it took place somewhere in England or in Europe. Our copy did not have the dust jacket so I don’t know what was on the cover other than it was a green hardback. The most distinctive feature was a neighborhood map on the inside cover, probably in orange.

The plot concerned the kids in this neighborhood. I believe there was a new family moving in from America, and the kids played cowboys and Indians and built a teepee in a front yard (I remember learning that the British word was “garden” for yard from this book). And if I remember correctly, there was something beyond the neighborhood on the map, like a meadow, forest, or some kind of land over a fence or boundary line that the kids would go over to play.
I’m a librarian and I have searched WorldCat a lot for this book, and have also contacted the Library of Congress, the NYPL and the British Library with no luck. I have a feeling that a word related to the neighborhood was in the title, something like “Street,” “Lane,” “Road,” etc. so I have searched those kinds of words a lot but nothing pops up that looks familiar. Several times I have thought that it was something like the Mulberry Street or Primrose Lane books but those don’t have the right plots. Or maybe the title had something to do with whatever the kids called their little group– maybe something American Indian related.
Thanks for your help! I don’t know why I am so fixated on this…

337D: A boy, a little good luck person, fighting roaches (Solved!)

I read this book as a young child in my grandmother’s house so it must have been published prior to 1950 ( late 30s?- 49?)  My sister thinks it was called Piccolo, but that title brings up no hits.  It is the story of a young boy who get a little “person” good luck charm who helps him. ( I think bullying was a theme back then too!)   In one illustration the little charm person is seen in his shirt pocket when a photo is taken of the boy doing something heroic, I think.   Along the way, the little charmer meets up with a cockroach who is going to attack, but the little guy puts a sewing pin in him ( I know weird)  but they become friends with the little boy, who paints the cockroach bright colors and he becomes the leader of his group winning against his adversary because of the paint job and pin!
The good luck little person ends up leaving because the boy doesn’t need him anymore.
It was an oblong book with plain blue/grey sort of cloth cover and had “flat” illustrations.  Another illustration showed the cockroach all painted different colors.

 

336Q: Brigands

I wish I had something more for hints, but this query comes for a book I believe was published in the 1930’s.  Had it been in the 1940’s I would have been able to read it myself, and I don’t think I ever could.
It was hard backed but not more that a half-inch thick, all black and white.  Illustrations included stick figures or possibly pear-shaped bodies (inverted?) with stick arms and legs.  These figures or characters were called “Brigands” and were bad.  I have no idea what the title may be.
There seem to have been two stories in the book.  It’s possible one was “Ferdinand the Bull,” but that may be a merged memory.
That’s all I’ve got and I really don’t expect anything.  You’d have to be older than I am with a marvelous memory.