TRIPPY HIPPY kid's books from the 60's and 70's / Discuss

oange    says:

My latest treatment for insomnia is to read the Book Stumpers page at:

loganberrybooks.com/stump.html


For the cost of $2, you can list your missing well-loved, deeply treasured and unforgettable book from childhood that you must own again. However, you can't remember the title... or the author... ah-hem, well, or even the characters names, and you only have the vaguest idea of the plotline or location. Book stumpers has anywhere from a 53% to 75% rate of success and far outshines yahoo answer or experts.about.com's as a service.


I noticed overall it is the strange, the offbeat, the slightly fantastical books that exert the most magnetic pull for nostalgia. Or books that might make you slightly uncomfortable.


Here is a great example:


"The book involves a human, dwarves and a wooden spaceship. They crash on a planet and eat plants that grow at night (I believe the plants screamed and bled when they died). Also one of the dwarves gets killed but the rest of them see him or think they do towards the end. They also might have had special weapons or abilities, but I'm blurry on that."


Why does this work for insomnia? You read enough of these synopsis and its like bedtime stories and you begin to enter this strange hazy state that precludes sleeptime. where fantastical things occur in your imagination and teddy bears walk the earth, and mechanical elephants search for lost parents in the swamp.


For those of you paying CLOSE attention to eye candy, which following book does this describe? Heh, heh, I know. Do you?

"I remember endlessly going through this book to look at the intricate drawings, possibly before I could read, which would put the time somewhere in the early or mid-80s.  No idea of the name.  The book was landscape format, not many pages (probably 20 or so), with minimal text, or I may just not remember the text since I was mostly looking at the pictures.  Probably intended for children, but not that young.  It's a fairy-tale type of story, with a bit of a "Hansel & Gretel" feel to it, but definitely *not* Hansel & Gretel.  From what I can remember about it, the heroes were a young man and a young woman, possibly brother and sister.  The witch had captured the girl in her house that was covered with thorns.  The boy had magic boots that let him travel long distances in one stride?  (I may be remembering the boots from a different story.)  The girl might have been turned into a swan by the witch?  Or maybe the boy & girl could both turn into swans.  There was a key that had a swirly design on the end, which might have been used to free the girl at the end of the story.  Or the key was used as a sword to kill the witch?  The drawings were black and white pen & ink that took up the entire two-page spread, very swirly with lots and lots of embellishment.   In particular I remember the face of the witch being hidden in the thorns.  She might have been swallowed up by the thorns in the end.  The only color that comes to mind besides the black and white drawings is hot pink.  The cover may have been hot pink, or possibly some pink on the pages.  Hope you can help, I've wanted to find this book for years!!"
Originally posted at 1:01PM, 8 September 2006 PDT (permalink)
oange edited this topic 70 months ago.