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!

Phoebe Beeberbee, the chemist's daughter! She puts out a fire in her house by emptying all her hwbs over it!

Don't know of the books on here, apart from 'Strullpeter'. That book is absolutely terrifying to a child who read it as a five-year-old in primary school. I now have a copy of the original purchased from Hawkins Bazaar (who've now unfortunately gone out of business) on my bookshelves. It's scary, but it's a part of my childhood that I was thrilled to be able to find again.

yes that’s what DM just texted me about all our old books when I suggested she became an antiquarian bookseller. I won’t book any holidays in the Caribbean just yet.

Sorry that ^ was to bookworm14

What a wonderful thread!

I love children's literature, even now, however...

The older books seem so fantastical and surreal in comparison with modern books, and the language so much more complex.

Things like The Owl Service, and The Phantom Tollbooth required such a lot of the reader.

The reading age of books like Five Children and It, or the Noel Stretfield series about the children with P names- Petra, Posie etc. (Ballet Shoes?) is far above your average youngster now, I'd think.

Oh, Bedknobs and Broomsticks...

Oh this has been a nostalgia feast!

That was our reading book in secondary school back when secondary school years started from 1 and went up to 6th form

I mea t to add The Diddakoi

Ballet Shoes was Pauline, Petra and Posy.

@Binglebong

Ballet Shoes was Pauline, Petra and Posy.

It was Petrova not Petra

Petrova, not Petra.

Sorry, x cross post!

I loved "Phoebe and the hot water bottles". It was in the library, I think. Unfortunately I've never seen a reasonably priced copy or I'd buy it!

It's funny how books that seemed great to us as children, now seem horribly violent/abusive as we read them as adults. I wonder if children view them as such too?
I remember dd1 reading a modern version of The Faraway Tree and being confused by Dame Snap. She could clearly pick up that she was meant to be nasty, but didn't think what she was doing came across as nasty, in fact she thought she was more a figure of fun, and couldn't work out why the children were appearing so scared.
Of course the original version was Dame Slap. When she read that she found the story much more exciting because it meant that it really mattered that they all got away from her.

One book I've never managed to work out what it was, and I have asked on here:
I think the main character had been kidnapped. Can't remember why, may have been to get information from them. I remember the kidnapper as being very scary and violent.
The book went back to the library and then I regretted not finding out what happened next, but never found it again.

Witchend there are loads of books about kidnappings, I’m sure, but could it have been The Kidnapping of Suzie Q by Martin Waddell?

www.amazon.co.uk/Kidnapping-Suzie-Q-Martin-Waddell/dp/1564025306?tag=mumsnetforu03-21

That's it, the Fossil sisters. One of them was in the movies. Gosh. Takes me back.

Does anyone remember this book I read in junior school, late 1970s: some children go on holiday on a plane to an island and some sort of magical adventures? I remember them getting off the plane into the warm air and I think there was a parrot on the cover. Pretty certain it was a Puffin book.

Was that The Island of Adventure by Enid Blyton? Pretty sure they went on a seaplane to reach the island which had a load of puffins on it, and Jack was one of the characters with his parrot Kiki.

I don't recall any of these books! I'm a child of the 70s.
Does anyone remember a tv series called 'Maggie ' ? About a Scottish teenager? I can remember the theme tune but can't find anyone else who remembers watching it.....

@Potterymum I remember that! I had it in a large blue hardback anthology: "a children's garden of verse" or something it was called. I used to read it on weekend mornings in bed.

You're right, Petrova. That's the power of suggestion- it sounded fairly tight so I accepted it.

I think Island of Adventure was the first one with Kiki and they went by row boat. I do remember there was a seaplane one though.

As we are reminiscing about old books can anyone help me out? We read a book in school and I can’t remember for the life of me what it was called. It really disturbed me at the time. It was about a boy whose father had died and his mother went to be the house keeper for a wealthy man who also had a son. They became involved but the wealthy boy was viciously cruel to the other boy. I remember that tormented boy was terrified of crows. In the end tormented boy drowned himself.
All these years later it’s still disturbing as hell.

It's I'm the King of the Castle by Susan Hill - I heard it on Radio 4 when I was about 13/14 and the last episode was horrifying

I'd never heard of Phoebe and the hot water bottles. It sounds lovely. I found this, suggesting that the Fire Service complained about it:

www.theguardian.com/childrens-books-site/2013/nov/25/phoebe-and-the-hot-water-bottles-out-of-print

Sadly, one of the authors now has dementia (hope that is not too upsetting for those who love the book). This shows her reading the book with a volunteer or support worker. You can see some of the illustrations which are beautiful:

[quote Potterymum]@Genderwitched I remember a poem I think, The Land of Counterpaine. Where a boy created a land on his bed with pillows for hills and his knees making valleys.[/quote]
That was in “A Child’s Garden of Verses” and is Robert Louis Stevenson I think. My Granny gave it to me as a child and I am sad to say I really hated it!

There is the sea of adventure, one of my favourites in the adventure series, but it's not magical at all.

Can't be that, bookworm, as it was published in 96, and I read it about 10 years before that!