PLEASE HELP!!! me find this book. Someone must know what it is.

Oh no sorry about that :(

Secret Brownies has arrived and unfortunately it’s not the book I’m looking for so my quest goes on!!

Can anyone help with this children’s picture book?

The story is about a boy (or possibly a man) in a village who paints houses. The paint he uses is brown but after a while it turns colourful.
The king of the village sees these colourful houses and wants the boy to paint his castle this way, so he does, but the king thinks he’s painted the castle brown and orders him to be hanged (or decapitated maybe).
Just in time the castle changes to pretty colours and the boy is saved. The paint was magic.

This book was in my school library in the 70’s and I loved it, and would love to find it to see how much I remembered correctly! I hope someone knows it!

Appassionata came out in 1996 so could fit your dates.

Hello thanks for the suggestions - I think appasionata came out many years after it was mentioned - I'll check the dates though. My teacher mentioned it in the early 90s (unless he was friends with Jilly cooper????)

Desertsky - is the book you want Charlotte Sometimes by Penelope Farmer? It's a time slip novel, set in a boarding school. The central character keeps sliding back to the First World War.

Possibly Ellie! I don’t remember much more than I put in my post above, but that sort of storyline does sound plausible. I’ve ordered The Secret Brownies that a pp suggested and will let you know!

Chessie I think I remember the books about the brownies in Tewkesbury as well - the favoured part of the hall rings a bell. Unfortunately I don't remember much about them either. Did it include a plot where one of the brownies is upset because her mum is having another baby, and she is given a doll to look after so she knows about how much work a baby can be?

Picture book mystery, if anyone can help. It was a largish hardback book, about a large house. Lots of different people (iirc) living in it, and lift the flaps, and sliders to show different rooms and different people. Illustrated rather than photos. I'm 44, and remember reading it when I was 8~10 with my young sister, so a late 70s early 80s book.... Not much to go on... X

Lana - could it be Jemima J, by Jane Green?

Thanks Timbuktu. I don't think any of the ones mentioned on there is the right one but I'll go through it properly.

thank you Polly!

Thank you pansies I think I’ve found the book I was thinking of upthread. Water Babies is sitting on my shelf so it’s not that, unless the line migrated in my memory, which is possible!

Polly, not Pack of Lies, Time Traveller’s, or a children’s book

orlandointhewilderness your ghost stories sound to me like one of the Armada Ghost Story collections , published 1980s and early 1990s. There were around 15, I think. Unfortunately they are not very easily available secondhand but if you google them you may recognise a cover.

Vanilla it was great and I thought to myself at the time that I should take a note. Needless to say....

If anyone could PLEASE help me remember the name of this book, I would be so grateful!

It’s a children’s book- I’m 20, so I think I must have read it maybe 10-15 years ago? I really want to read it to my DS, as I remember loving it. However, I’ve googled for hours and can not find it

I can’t remember loads, but what I do remember is that It’s the story of a family of rabbits who live in a little cottage. One day, One of the rabbits climbs a peach tree as he wants to make a peach crumble/peach pie, falls out and hurts his foot. My description makes it sound like a very unhappy book for children to read, but I promise it’s not

It was beautifully illustrated too.

Any suggestions would be appreciated!

That's cheery @wildirishrose1 !!!

The Water Babies does have a line about ‘gathering gossamer in autumn’

Polly, not the Seventh Raven but thank you :) I read that as a child and loved it, would like to read it again.

BTW I found the series of books that mine came from - Pan Horizons. If you're of a similar age to me, google it to be transported back to the excitements of the teen shelf at the library :)

If anyone can help me find the title of my lost book I’ll be eternally grateful. I haven’t been able to find it for decades. It belonged to my mother originally and I’ll guess it’s a few decades old.
It’s funny, about a young boy growing up in a working class family. The memorable scene was about the boy needing a costume for the school Christmas play. His mother made him a full on Brussel Sprout costume as she’d misheard the posh teacher....who actually said Sprite, not Sprout.
I think the author was someone along the same lines of Alan Bennett and I believe it may have been a true story about his upbringing.
Anyone have any idea???

keithlemonde I don’t suppose it could be The Seventh Raven by Peter Dickinson, published 1981? About a group of London teens involved in a musical production. Wildirish- a complete guess here- you wouldn’t be thinking of Pack of Lies by Geraldine McCaughrean? Your book actually sounds a bit like The Time Traveller’s Wife, but I’m assuming you’re thinking of a kids’book?

Thanks Katherina and Halsall - neither of those are mine. It was a "modern day" setting (so probably 80s) rather than a classic school story. Wish I could remember what the play was - it may not have been R&J.

I do remember it was published in a series of teenage books which had a particular "look" to their cover design. I would get excited if a new one appeared on the shelf in the library as they were always good juicy reads. I might see if I can remember any of the other titles and track down the name of the series.

Ok, I have one. It’s about a boy / young man who keeps being reincarnated as new characters over many centuries. He meets a girl and they keep meeting in their new lives. I thought it was by a female author - Jane Gardam??- and some was set in the Muddle East. I think they die in the end.

Ohh I've just solved my own first mystery! It's 'Mel' by Liz Berry - it has quite a synopsis, I can see why teenage me loved it! 😂

"This winsome tale of self-transformation is a hodgepodge of home renovation tips, grass-roots political activism and modern day fairy tale--complete with a sensitive, rock 'n' roll Prince Charming. Hopelessness and her mother's madness have driven Mel to the brink of suicide. When her mother finally is institutionalized, Mel sees the possibility of creating a new life for herself. Moving in with neighbors, she sets to work cleaning and redecorating her mother's squalid house. On a visit to the local junk shop, she meets Mitch, a rock star hiding from his own fame. By the novel's end, Mel has redone her house, passed her all-important exams, mobilized her racially mixed neighborhood, transformed the junk shop into a thriving antique business, won a tidy sum at the racetrack and, of course, negotiated a romantic relationship with Mitch."