I am looking for a children's book that is long out of

[murielm99]

print.

I read it in about 1959.

In the story, the eldest daughter of the family will not live at home any more. She moves down the road to live with a dour older woman. She changes her last name to the name of the woman.

The two younger children go to see her. They find a closet with a door to another world. (No, this is not The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe). When they go through the door, they cross over a bridge and become small. They go to a castle and come back terribly bratty and spoiled.

A seemingly addled neighbor solves the problem, and the story ends.

This book is, as I remember it, suspenseful and satirical. I would love to locate it again. I believe the oldest daughter was called Annabelle Potts, or something similar.

Help!

[TuxedoKat]

1. Sometimes

librarians are good at figuring out the book in question. I just googled this for you too:

http://kidlit.myfreeforum.org/

or

http://www.kidlit.co.uk/

[murielm99]

2. Thanks, Kat, but I am a librarian. n/t

[murielm99]

3. I am sorry. I did not mean my reply to be so abrupt.

I have checked many resources, and asked several librarians. I will check your links, too.

I just remembered one former colleague whom I have not asked. (I am not working now). She is like me, in that she has read everything in sight and remembers most of it. Her expertise is adult fiction, but she may have read this book earlier in her life. Most librarians are bookworms. I will ask her when I next see her.

[murpheeslaw]

4. Maybe ANOTHER "lost" book by Andre Norton - Lavender Green Magic

http://www.amazon.com/Lavender-Green-Magic-Books-5/dp/0765353016/ref=cm_cr_pr_product_top

Set in the 1970's

From Amazon:
" A mysterious maze
Eleven-year-old Holly Wade and her twin siblings, Judy and Crockett, are sent to live with their grandparents in the small town of Dimsdale, Massachusetts when their father is declared missing in action in Vietnam. Dimsdale is nothing like Boston; there are only two other African-American children in the entire school. Even worse, Grandpa and Grandma Wade live in an old junkyard! While exploring one day, Holly, Judy, and Crockett wander into an overgrown hedge maze--and find themselves transported back in time to Dimsdale's past. Can they right an ancient wrong and free the town of Dimsdale from a witch's curse?"

"Yet what I particularly liked about the book were the characters. Holly makes for a very interesting heroine since you spend half the book wishing she'd stop being such a jerk. When she allies herself with a particularly nasty witch of the past, the reader has the painful task of watching as she makes a bad situation for herself even worse."

[murielm99]

5. My book is a bit older than that.

I read in in 1959. It had to have been published a few years before that.