looking for books
Oh for heaven's sake. I have been wondering about the name of a book I remember about a boy who wanders nameless, subsisting as a migrant worker, until a sheep rancher takes him in. It's Ester Wier's The Loner and it was a Newbery Honor book in 1964, hardly obscure. After submitting it to Loganberry I did a better google search than previously: the first result of "book boy migrant homeless shepherd named David -Goliath -Saul- Copperfield" was a William Penn University bibliography of children's books about homelessness and running away.
Loganberry book detectives solved three other books for me:
A boy is stricken blind (in an auto accident?) and receives a guide dog, whom he learns to work with. He doesn't like the dog's name but shouldn't change it because that would interfere with the dog’s training. He shops with a sighted friend, who learns that his bills are folded in different ways by denominations, and he gets a Braille watch. It feels like a '50s or early '60s setting. I might be confusing two stories here, because I'm pretty sure his dog is a German shepherd but I kind of remember someone telling him (and he can remember the color from before his accident) about how red his Irish Setter’s coat is.
I think you might be mixing two books here. I'm not sure about the Irish Setter book, but the German Shepherd guide book may be Follow My Leader by James Garfield. The boy was blinded as a youngster playing with fireworks.
I read this only once in the 1970s because I found it depressing or unsettling somehow. A late elementary or early teen book about a girl named Melinda or Belinda or or Mindy who had a dollhouse into which she would shrink. Possibly she could go through the dollhouse into the rest of a dollhouse sort of world.
Curry, Jane Louise. The mysterious shrinking house [original title: Mindy's mysterious miniature] illus by Charles Robinson. Scholastic, 1970. dolls; dollhouses, doll houses, miniature of the main house - juvenile mystery.
Jane Louise Curry wrote one of my favorite younger children's books, The Bassumtyte Treasure. Reading her more recent, mediocre A Stolen Life didn't affect my love for Bassumtyte, but unless I can purge my misgivings about Mindy's Mysterious Miniature (as it was probably titled when I read it), my beloved Thomas Bassumtyte might need a visit to reassure me.
Probably a Scholastic book. Students raise funds for their school by holding an auction of their services. The protagonist, a boy probably about 10, volunteers leaf-raking. An odd old woman wins this bid, and he is leery of the job, partly because everyone thinks she's a witch and partly because her lawn is enormous. He discovers, over the course of his afternoons, that she is not a witch. He hesitates to eat the chocolate cake she provides for him but he does and it doesn’t turn him into a toad. Everyone thought she had treasure, too, but she "disappeared" from her living room once when someone asked for a donation not because she was a witch but because she could not afford it, was embarrassed to be rid of the solicitor, and hid behind a secret panel in her old house until the visitor went away. She might have a cackling laugh and be lonely and maybe eccentric, but she's not dangerous, he learns. At the end he leaves her a note telling her he'll shovel her walk when it snows. Late '70s, fifth-grade level.
York, Carol Beach. The witch lady mystery. illus by Ethel Gold. Scholastic, 1976. When Oliver rakes the leaves in Mrs Prichard's yard, will he find out if she is really a witch?
30 August: more solutions.
This might have been a Scholastic book. A boy with a ham radio set-up finds a gadget. It might have had a brushy top. He experiments with it and finally figures out how to connect it to his radio and communicate with aliens. When the gadget is part of a working system, the bristles glow, changing color from unknown metal to pink to rose. His siblings and friends are brought into the secret and the boy runs out of headphones to allow everyone to listen, so that one person wears a pair with one earpiece turned out for another to lean in. The aliens just want their gizmo back before terrestials discover them. His parents find out and want to scuttle the meet-up but grudgingly and disbelievingly drive all to the site (the younger sister in her pajamas). They meet the aliens and get the piece back (and encourage the boy in his scientific pursuits?); the end. It has funny bits but it's not as comedic as Alvin or as outlandish as Danny Dunn. The world is otherwise normal.
Keo Felker Lazarus, The Gismo/The Gismo From Outer Space, 1970. It might be this one: "The Gismo that Jerry and Ron have found is no ordinary gadget. It's part of an alien spaceship's radio and what's more, they must return it. But how?"
Lazarus, Keo Felker, The Gismo (from Outer Space). Chicago: Follett 1970. Pretty sure this is it - "The gismo that Jerry and Ron have found is no ordinary gadget. It's part of an alien spaceship's radio...and what's more, they must return it. But how? How do you keep a date with a man from outer space?" Original title is The Gismo, retitled The Gismo from Outer Space by Scholastic, and also printed in the Weekly Reader series. The spelling - gismo instead of gizmo - is what catches most people.
1970s picture book: A spoiled boy rides an elephant through a town telling the elephant he wants things--a balloon, an ice-cream cone. The elephant gets these things for him, though the boy (a fat baby) never says please or thank you to the elephant. On successive pages they are chased by the balloon man, the ice-cream vendor, the baker, etc., until finally the elephant stops abruptly, causing everyone to crash into his hind legs (or slide down his trunk because they are all riding him too?) and bellows that the boy must say thank you.
Elfrida Vipont, The Elephant and the Bad Baby, 1969. "One day, an elephant offers a bad baby a ride through the town, and so begins an adventure and a chase. But when the elephant realizes that the bad baby has forgotten his manners, the chase ends with a bump and tea for everyone." I had forgotten all about this book till you described it and am going to look for a copy for myself now!
"...and they went rumpeta, rumpeta, rumpeta all down the road."
Title: Pssst! 1960s. A nearly wordless picture book. A cat and a dog pursue each other or play tag in city, or urban, streets. The only word is "Psssst!" which the cat might say to the dog with a paw to its lips. I would have "read" it in the early '70s.
Ezra Jack Keats, Pssst! Doggie, 1973. I know the date's a little later than you were looking for, but this seems to be a likely book. It is described as "almost a wordless book." The library catalog description is "A dog and cat dance their way through several countries."
Keats, Ezra Jack , Pssst! Doggie-- 1973. If the dog and cat dress up and dance their way through various countries, this is your book.
Now damn it, these people seem to be able to search the LOC summary in the front matter. I've used the catalog but to no avail thus far.
I wonder how many other dregs of memory might resolve into actual books.
