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Three Boys Who Become Friends
"The book I've been trying to find is a children's picture book about three boys. One boy has red hair, and one boy is handicapped (he is missing an arm). The book is about how they meet and become friends. I read the book about four or five years ago. I think one of the characters was named Willy and another was named Carrot Top, and I think the name of the boys was in the title of the book."
Solution: Harry and Willy and Carrothead, by Judith Casely. Greenwillow, 1991. ISBN: 0688094929. Aunt Book did not know this book, but one of her Dear Nieces was able to identify it, for which Aunt Book hereby thanks her.
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Four Children, Radio Actress, Pooled Allowances
"This book was set before WWII- it was about 4 children,a father, no mother, I think they were rather well off. It takes place in Manhattan.The oldest girl who must be about 16 is dying to become an actress, so her father arranges an audition on a popular radio program, which she wins. The rest of the kids decide to pool their allowance and one of them will get to do what ever they desire with the collected funds. This could be a series because I remember at one point they go to their farm for a few weeks."
Solution: The Melendy family books, written and illustrated by Elizabeth Enright. The Saturdays (Holt, Rinehart & Winston in one incarnation; now Henry Holt; probably had various other names!, c1941); The Four-Story Mistake (c1942); Then There Were Five (c1944); Spiderweb for Two (c1951).
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Travel to Another World Via Carousel Horse
"I'm trying to remember the title of a fantasy book I read as a young teen, back in the early '70's. The plot concerned a girl who was thrown into our world via a carved wooden carousel horse (?). There was a mechanism of some kind in the horse's ear, I think. Her world was the reverses of ours - one of her country's greatest men was Maharba Nlocnil (Abraham Lincoln), for example. She befriends a boy, and stays with him, and they have adventures trying to get her back to her world, which finally happens via another hurricane or storm of some sort. I had thought the title was Ride a Winged Horse," but nothing at all is coming up..."
Solution: Ride a Wild Horse, by Ruth Christoffer Carlsen; illustrated by Beth and Joe Krush. Houghton Mifflin, c1970.
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Live Dolls in a House in the Woods
"A girl (probably an only child) about 10 years old or so is out wandering in the woods by her house (maybe somewhere she has just moved) and comes upon a clearing with a house that is unoccupied by humans, but has teddy bears and dolls in it- and I think the teddy bears and dolls may come to life. It was a chapter book, and had illustrations that somewhat resembled Garth Williams' style. I believe the author had a last name in the F to K section of the library."
Solution: The Secret Museum, by Sheila Greenwald. Lippincott, c1974. Jennifer is living in the country with her parents, two artists. She follows the sound of crying in the woods, and comes across a small, deserted house that is a replica of a nearby mansion, filled with dirty and lonely dolls: a King, a Queen, a Jester, and many others. The crying had come from the queen doll. Jennifer cleans up the dolls. She makes friends with Lizzie, a girl who at first messes up the doll house, and the two of them decide to run the house as a museum to make money so that Jennifer's parents do not have to abandon their artistic dreams and go back to their teaching jobs in the city.
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Empty House Used as a Clubhouse
"A brother (I think his name was Henry) and sister and some of their neighborhood friends find that a house in the neighborhood is empty, so they start using the place as a clubhouse. Each kid gets a room to use as he likes, so the sister makes the butler's pantry into a dollhouse, and the boys move their collection of things into thehouse. Maybe someone (a man) is actually living upstairs in the attic, though? It's not the Beverly Cleary book Henry and the Clubhouse. It has illustrations (more a Michael Rosen style illustration) and is probably from the 1970's. There may have been other books about these same kids, and the author was probably in the F-K section of the alphabet."
Solution: The Curious Clubhouse, by Christine Govan, illustrated by Leonard Shortall. World Publishing Company, c1967.