To ask if you remember this VERY strange book from my childhood ...

[eatsleepread]

I'm mid-forties, and I've sometimes wondered about a book I read while at primary school. It really was weird. It's about a dark-haired young girl who lives in a tent with her family. Looking back, I think they were made out to be gypsies.
The girl discovered a tasty herb growing locally, or possibly some sort of salad leaf. She used to pick it and hide it under her duvet. When her father found out, he beat her.
I read it at lower primary, and it was a story/picture book, as opposed to a chapter book.
Reading my post, it makes me wonder how a book like this could ever have existed. But I'm not making it up!

oh and also Miss Happiness and Miss Flower

A lovely book I've never found is one published around or before the early seventies. It's a picture book about a little boy who loves an old farm horse, and tells everyone the horse is magic and can fly. At the end, the horse dies, and the boy looks up and sees it winging it's way up into the sky. I've tried lots of book sites, including one about horse stories, but never found it. It was for quite young children, not a novel.

Clawdy, the book is Ludo and the Star Horse, by Mary Stewart. He travels around the star signs, before his horse becomes a star horse. I loved that book. A Walk in Wolf Wood was also good.

I love this thread... re-discovering forgotten childhood books. Magical!

@dayswithaY

Does anyone remember a book that was about a girl and tube stations with made up names and she used to go on adventures there and it turns out it was all a figment of her imagination caused by stress or an illness or something? I'm not explaining it well but it was discussed on here a while ago, I wanted to track it down but forgot the name of it.

The Secret Line, William Cornett. It was mentioned on another find this book thread only a couple of weeks ago .

William Corlett, rather.

@Matildatoldsuchdreadfullies

William Corlett, rather.

The same one who wrote The Magician's House. I loved that series.

@Matildatoldsuchdreadfullies thank you so much going to look online now.

@AramintaLee
Great news - glad to help! I love picking up old picture books from charity shops that remind me of my childhood to read to my own children & that was one of them!

Matildatoldsuchdreadfullies thank you but it's not the Mary Stewart book, which is a lovely one, I know. The one I look for is very much a young child's picture book. Really don't think I'll ever find it!

dayswithaY, I’d love to take the credit, but I just lifted the author from another thread - somebody else did all the googling.

Clawdy, sorry. It just sounded so Ludo-ish. Is there any chance that Mary Stewart wrote it as a simpler picture book?

I think I'd have remembered if it was a Mary Stewart actually, as she was a best friend of my secondary school headteacher, and we were persuaded to read all her adult adventure romance novels! They were quite good fun !

I have to admit to enjoying her romances too - although they’d make the most half-hearted feminist recoil! And I love the Arthurian books. So I’m a bit jealous of your school.

@Deathraystare, the book with Gypsy Latimer joining the Guides is The Rising of the Larks. It was in my primary school library in the 80s and I loved it!

I've watched the first two episodes of the TV adaptation of The Diddakoi now, blimey, pretty terrible acting! Funny to see Miriam Margolyes!

I've had one nagging at me for years, but I can remember very little of it. Seem to be some experts on here, so here goes. It was about a woman who rode a motorbike (or a bike, but I think it was a motorbike). It had incredible illustrations - I remember one showed a room of her house that was piled to the ceiling with all kinds of weird stuff. One of the final images was of her digging in the garden - I remember it being quite a dark image, and I always thought it looked like she was digging a grave (she wasn't.) It was more pictures than words, so am guessing it was for younger kids. Bit of a long shot, but you never know!

Oh, should add that this would have been around the 1980s.

Nothing much to add other than I love the tottie book. I wanted to call my daughter apple, my dolls were all called apple. I had sons (and a sensible husband)
My cat is now called apple :-)

Did the OP @eatsleepread ever come back to confirm that the book had been identified correctly?

This is the strangest book I remember.

My word, I had no idea my thread had gone on for so long! And I'm pleased it evoked some happy childhood story memories ... as well as successfully matching up titles with those stories.

@Tangelafangela you have just solved a 40 year old mystery!! Thank you so much.

Does anyone remember a book about a family who were in some sort of religious cult. It was based around the daughter.I think she had a sister. I remember they were never allowed to communicate with anyone outside of their group/religion? I think the front cover was of a girl with red hair. It was our class reader in 89/90. I've been trying to find it for years. I keep thinking it's called children of the corn but obviously it's not.

For the Carbonel fans there's a third book called Carbonel and Calidor...about his son

I love Strullpeter. I bought it for my children and they know lots of them off by heart....

@ClosedTheBlueEyes sadly it doesn’t appear to be on kindle...

I loved the Carbonel books when I was younger... now how do I get Amazon to make a kindle version?