Looking for a Childhood Book? Here’s How.
Looking for our antiquarian children’s bookstore?
Go to https://www.oldchildrensbooks.com
Looking for our antiquarian children’s bookstore?
Go to https://www.oldchildrensbooks.com
You are looking at a new website, same address, with all the features and more, right on this site! Thousands of queries and solutions from the last five years are all here.
The search below is an exciting addition: Search the Content: try Dragon, or Sister, or Christmas. Or click on the green bars, select Author and call up our experts like Mama Squirrel… or search your own contributions. You can also hide Replies for a quick visual search, follow Users, Edit using the Settings gear… and more!.
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Many thanks to Kelvin Kathia of Journeybytes.com for figuring all this out very quickly.
Note: Children’s book queries only: all comments are moderated and thus take a few hours to appear here; ads, links to sales venues, and direct contact info will be deleted.
It will take Google a few weeks to connect with this new site since Disqus hasn’t functioned well since December. We welcome your comments now, but feel free to repost later in March. Suzanne
Looking for a children’s story collection from the 1960s or 1970s. One of the stories was about a dog named Noodle.
There is a 1937 book called Noodle by Munro Leaf illustrated by Bemelmans (Madeline) so that might have been one of the included stories.
Hello I am looking for a very precious book!! It got thrown away when my mum died but it was meant to be kept. It’s a book of fairy tales folk laws myths and legends. In it was the tinder box with a black and white illustration of the dogs. The illustration was quite frightening.
The singing bone again black and white beautiful picture (prints from tablets I think) of a young boy wearing an Indian headpiece and a skeleton with a pipe the boy is standing over the skeleton.
Also there was a merman or sea king he was a fat merman with long nails and he had jewels and riches to offer a young lady and I think he was trying to lure her to be with him. This book was very old 1800s possibly very rare a collection of stories. Please does anyone know of this book. I can’t find any of the illustrations online. I’ve been searching for 3 years. It was my childhood book. I can’t remember the name of it or the illustrator or date but I have the illustrations in my mind. It was beautifully written with the first letter morphing into a large drawing. It was art the whole book
I was unable to find this collection (Tinder-box is Andersen but Singing Bone is traditional German, not Andersen, sometimes in Grimm). Anderew Lang’s Fairy Books seemed possible but apparently not. You might want to look at the artwork of these illustrators for the style you described and see what looks familiar. I would use Tinder-box or Tinder Box as the most likely: Arthur Rackham, Dulac, Harrison Ford (for Lang), Kay Nielsen. The first few results of a Google images search or an Abebooks.com search sorted most expensive first would be best. (AI hallucinates terribly for this kind of search. My son says to include a request for “Proof” in your prompt.)
Also, all these illustrators have been reprinted many times, including recently, so find the illustrator first, then start looking at the bindings.
I am looking for a book illustrated by Marjorie Cooper (Elizabeth Webbe) that has a page in it with the words- M is for mailbox that postmen will fill with letters and cards all bringing good will. Probably 1950-1960’s.Thank you.
The Christmas ABC, by Florence Johnson, illustrated by Eloise Wilkin.
Thank you very much. I apologize for having the wrong illustrator.
No problem! Enjoy reconnecting with your book.
Does anyone remember a children’s book about a pumpkin head hopping on a stick?
Looking for a children’s book, possible title “the upside-down woman”, definitely pre-1960’s, possibly pre-1950’s. An old woman who wakes up at night and sleeps during the day, sleeps with her head at the foot of the bed and her feet (in old-fashioned button shoes) on the pillow. Naive, charming pen and ink illustrations.
I’m looking for a book I read to my children 35 years ago. It has the line “can you reach the cookies? Are you really that tall?”
Looking for a book about a girl named Calla/Callie living along the Mississippi River. Story takes place roughly around the turn of the century, I think. Steamboat is mentioned going to Natchez. She lives nearby her cousins (book specifically refers to them as double-first cousins). If I recall, it had a green bookcloth cover.
Looking for a 1960s childrens book about a rain storm and the animals and children take shelter in a large tree
Miss Twiggley’s Tree?
Found it! My donkey Benjamin!
Thanks for writing back. Other people will be looking for it. Suzanne
I am looking for a children’s book about a young girl who is taking care of two mischievous ponies throughout the book but at the end it is revealed they are her younger siblings playing pretend! I can picture it but cannot remember its title. Thoughts?
Plot was underground talking animals that began to get sick from sludge that was leaking from a factory
I’m looking for a children’s story book from the 1960s or early 1970s. It was a solid yellow hard cover children’s story book and I think it had black and white glossy photographs. I think it had a donkey at the child’s home and was set in a warm place like Morocco. It was a serious book — maybe the main character went for a walk. I don’t remember much action. Thanks
Looking for a story of two girl cousins ( Russian, Ukranian?) one city and one country. City cousin travels to see country cousin and learns about old traditions…national costumes, holidays, wax dying Easter eggs, etc
Sounds like The Good Master by Kate Seredy.
I just looked it up….that is it!!! I’ve been looking for a couple years and I couldn’t come up with it….thank you so much!!!
Great! Thanks for posting back.