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Original poster

Bit of a long shot, but can anyone identify this book?

9 replies

VideoEtTaceo · 04/06/2013 18:50

When I was younger, I had quite an old book. I think it was a collection of short stories, but they were all pretty similar so ran into one another in my head! It was kind of like weird fairy tales - often things happened like someone sank to the bottom of a well and ended up in a meadow of grass, or climbed up a big glass mountain - that sort of odd thing! There were also frequent mentions of ravens, addressed as 'bird of ill omen.' In my version I think it had a green cover.

Is this vague description by any chance ringing a bell for anyone?

Thanks for any and all help!

OP posts:
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KeatsiePie · 07/06/2013 01:32

I remember the big glass mountain, and the feeling that they were sort of odd stories ...

Re: Mitsuru's suggestion, OP go here and if you click on one of the page images near the bottom you can look through some of the book she suggested and see if that's it.

Parietal · 07/06/2013 00:55

Abe books has a book sleuth website that is v good at answering questions like this.

TheDoctrineOfSnatch · 07/06/2013 00:20

I have just learned that Jan Pienkowski is male. I assumed female throughout my childhood!

fijamez · 04/06/2013 22:40

Could it be "old peters Russian tales"?? I had it as a child and it was an old book - I was scared of the witch Babba Yaga

MrsCosmopilite · 04/06/2013 22:18

Video I don't remember the books you're talking about, but I do remember reading collections of fairy stories when I was a child. My local library had a series of them - "Fairy stories/Folk tales from... (Russia, Ireland, China, wherever)". Each book had a different coloured cover.

Incidentally, google books sometimes has a preview so if you can find the titles Mitsuru or Squeaky suggested there, take a look, you might be able to view a few pages and see if that helps.

joanofarchitrave · 04/06/2013 22:16

Could it be the Green Fairy Book/Andrew Lang? I had the Blue and the Orange books so I don't know what was in the green one

Original poster
VideoEtTaceo · 04/06/2013 22:13

Ooh! Thank you both!

Mitsuru Not sure if that's it, the title doesn't ring a bell but it's been so long it could well be - and I think the characters had unusual (to me) names which could well have been Polish. Have you read it?

Squeaky - it was intentional because it was such a strange old book I thought no modern children would read it! Also I'm not sure if it was exactly a children's book, just that I read it when I was young. The Kingdom Under the Sea looks very promising actually.

If only one could look inside the books on Amazon!

OP posts:
MitsuruSenpai · 04/06/2013 21:05

www.amazon.co.uk/gp/aw/d/0486413063/ref=redir_mdp_mobile

Is this it?

SqueakyCleanNameChange · 04/06/2013 18:53

Joan Aiken perhaps? The Kingdom Under The Sea? Or A Necklace of Raindrops?

You've posted in Adult Fiction - was that intentional?