To ask you help me find this 80’s kids’s book

[Eeksteek]

I have very poor recollection of it, but it bugs the hell out of me!

Boy and a girl. Herefordshire or Welsh borders. Go out looking for mushrooms in the early morning and find patterns on the frost leading to….. something supernatural. In order to prevent discovery by persons un-remembered (presumably evil) they go out with hot towels and melt the frost to hide the pattern. The girl may have been called Jane, and there may have been dragons, but honestly any of it could be suspect after all this time, so hit me with anything close. I probably read it late eighties, so it’s likely a late seventies/early eighties release, as I only read library books.

Why it made such an impression when I remember so little if it, I don’t know. It pops into my head every couple of months, despite the fact that I can’t remember where I put my bank card on the regular! (It’s driving me crackers in a repetitive, low key sort of way, and I’m overwhelmed and having a shit time in real life, so escaping onto kids books is about as good as it gets just now!).

Oh I remember this one, but I couldn't tell you what it was called. I'll ask my mum, she might know!

I have two that I've always wanted to find:

One is a story, possibly rhyming, younger children, illustrated, set in woodland called 'the dingelly(sp?) dell', all the characters are woodland animals and the 'bad guy' is a fox that wants to eat them. The very last line is 'and the fox had toast for tea'.

The second one is possibly written in the seventies/eighties? Two 'modern' girls go to a tree and there they meet a girl called Ann from Tudor times and they teach her to read from books with pictures of animals like Giraffes etc. They don't realise she (or perhaps they?) are time travelling, though, until the end(?) when they see an alphabet sampler in a museum(?) that she made, with pictures copied from the ones in their books.

I had this book! I will check tomo if it’s in with my dd’s I refused to part with any books as a child so still have them all somewhere! At one point the shoe left a mark or something along those lines. My dad read it to me often.

Lois Duncan? Stranger with my face. Laurie Somebody who lived in a lighthouse on an island with her artist mother and sci fi writer father, went to school by ferry, had romantic power cuts in storms, turned out be adopted and had an evil twin. I loved her books. Loved them. I wanted to go and live in a storm-battered New England lighthouse SO badly!

Getting nowhere with Jane and her Hereford mushrooms, though. Perhaps I dreamt the bloody thing! I wish I knew why it niggles me so much.

I don’t think it’s the Owl Service, I think there was something in the hills. I’ll see if I can track down a copy. I’ve checked all the others, and found nothing familiar. (It’s so sketchy though.)

Aw should have read on before I posted! Well done @User478 thats exactly it 👏

@geojellyfish - Emmie and the purple paint?

@TheMoth I loved Louise Lawrence, and Robert Westall (Urn Burial).

The Earth Witch by Louise Lawrence was sort of based on Welsh mythology and the idea of the triple goddess. I reread it during lockdown.

And if anyone can identify this story as it's been driving me nuts for years- I think it was a short story, and I would have read it in the 90's I think -

It starts with human soldiers on what appears to be a poor, technologically backwards planet. An alien child holds a doll that is strangely appealing. A soldier offers the child a chocolate bar in exchange for the doll, and the child reluctantly agrees. The doll is given to the soldiers daughter back on Earth and all her friends immediately want one.

The dolls become a huge craze, with millions being imported. Once enough of them are in place they activate and kill the humans by injecting them with something in their sleep, wiping out humanity.

Back on the alien planet, we see a secret base, and are shown that the aliens are not technologically backwards at all, and that this is not the first time they've used the dolls.

I’m delighted to see so many posters reunited with their forgotten favourites. I had high hopes of re-discovering them with my child, but she hasn’t opened a book without threats of wifi restriction since The Magic Faraway Tree. Sigh. She’s been ‘reading’ the same Darren Shan book for three terms, and certainly can’t be persuaded there is entertainment value in anything pre-TikTok.

My mother used to take us on holiday in the caravan, temporarily join the local library, borrow as many books from the delightfully new-to-us selection as they would let us have, raid the local fudge/pick and mix/bakery and we would all spend the inevitably rainy week with our noses in them. Happy days! One of which is where I read this blasted book that bugs the life out of me. Torbay, I think. Or maybe Cromer. If it had been in our local village library, I’d have read it several times and remember more about it, because they had about two shelves of children’s books, and we only got to go into town to the ‘big’ library once a month.

That's the one!

I read Louise Lawrence, though I was obsessed with and terrified by nuclear war, so I was both fascinated and horrified by Children of the Dust.

Could your Australian book be something by Margaret Mahy? NZ rather than Aus, but a fascinating writer and often blended environmental and sci fi themes.

@EilonwyWithRedGoldHair omg!! Someone else has read this story! I don't know what it's called but I would love to read it again. I had a vague feeling it was in an anthology of short stories perhaps by someone like Nicholas Fisk but I've never been able to track it down. I have such strong memories of it - the dolls were like patchwork and the planet they came from was secretly so much more advanced than earth thought.

Yes that’s it it’s Webfoot 😊😊😊. I was looking for this book when ds was little why didn’t I ask on here. Shall order for myself 😊 he is a teen now so won’t be interest (I shall try though) many thanks I have thought of this book so often I’m so pleased

and thank you deeplybaffled (I had wormball too) Dinosauratemydaffodils, YesItsMeIDontCare & TheLurkingOne

I am so chuffed 😊

And thank op for starting this thread

hopefully can be of help to someone <after browsing Webfoot)

I didn't read this, it was on Jackanory or a similar show.

There was the foundations of a house flooded underwater. It may have appeared as a complete ghostly house at some points in the story, I'm not sure.

Some kids find a piece of a cubic puzzle. At some point they are able to do the whole puzzle and this solves a bigger puzzle (maybe unlocks the ghost/time travelling house?)

They can't fit the piece they have into the full puzzle and realise they'll have to take it apart and redo it. Someone says of the?piece they already have "it was first out so it has to be last in" and that always annoyed me because that would just put them back in the same place.

It wouldn’t be “The Twelve Dancing Princesses” would it? About 12 sisters who go out secretly dancing at night and I seem to remember there was a gold room/theme, a silver one and maybe a diamond one. Possibly they all had dresses to match the theme. I had a completely beautiful edition of it.

I have either read this or something very similar - remember the sampler.

@EilonwyWithRedGoldHair I haven’t read that story but it sounds very much like Ray Bradbury. It’s similar to some of the stories in his Martian Chronicles. Not for children!!

@stravagante I'm relieved I didn't imagine the whole story!

@minipie I don't think it's Ray Bradbury, I've read a lot of his books and short stories as an adult.

I remember Children of the dust. I was a hyperlexic child and read it way too early, having obtained a copy from the library. I never talked about it with anyone, but the darkness stayed with me for years.

Oh youve just a memory off for me on this book! Gonna do my head in . I can exactly see the pictures !

I immediately thought Mr man type book when I was thinking if it!

Yep! That's the one I thought of!

Thanks op! Am now googling children of the dust and others. I love a good old fashioned ya book! Alan garner and Nicolas Fisk are brilliant.

Someone has actually put this reading of trillions on you tube from an old cassette, it’s wonderful and great for falling asleep to! my request is a book about two children on holiday by the sea and they get some rock with ‘ help’ running through it. It turns out that the cute holiday town has lots of kidnapped kids underground who have to paint the cliffs white, make the rock etc. there is some sort of dog food van (? Where the bone on the top revolves and is some kind of detector thing. Genius.

Have you checked out the Phil Rickman canon- his slightly supernatural tales are set in Hereford

It sounds like one of the “High House” series by Honor Arundel- maybe “Emma’s Island”.?