Help me find a childrens book

November 23, 2007 1:56 PM

Please help me find the title of a hazy remembered childrens book with animals and a helicopter.

I remember finding this in our local public library in the early eighties and I am pretty sure it was originally an English book. It was about (anthropomorphized) animals. This might have been a series of two books.

The paintings were very detailed and sometimes spread across two pages beneath the text.

The thing I remember most vividly about this book was one picture with a cut-up view of a helicopter (something like a Sikorsky S-55 or a Sikorsky S-58t)

The format of the book was landscape, i.e. the pages were wider than high.

posted by Glow Bucket to writing & language (9 comments total)

Something by Richard Scarry? I remember a pig flying a helicopter in one.
posted by kuujjuarapik at 2:07 PM on November 23, 2007

I would second the notion that it was by Richard Scarry. Perhaps A Day at the Airport.
posted by electricinca at 2:50 PM on November 23, 2007

There's nothing like that in A Day at the Airport, or any other Richard Scarry book I can think of -- plus most of his books aren't landscape size.
posted by The corpse in the library at 2:55 PM on November 23, 2007

Could it have been David Macaulay's "The Way Things Work"?

He had a strange fetish for mammoths and they were all around his illustrations. If it was a mammoth suspended from the Sikorsky, then it's pretty much guaranteed that was the book.
posted by mjbraun at 3:44 PM on November 23, 2007

Scarry does have a book with a ginormous Sikorsky-like helicopter with all the parts labeled, and he often employed the cut-away technique and two-page spreads. All his characters were anthropomorphized animals. Not sure which book, though. Do you think his style matches?

The other angle that comes to mind is either Sarah Ferguson's Budgie the Helicopter book series (first one, 1989), or the Arthur Baldwin book it allegedly ripped off, Hector the Helicopter (first pub. 1964).

There's also Harold the Helicopter, from the Thomas the Tank Engine universe.
posted by dhartung at 11:46 PM on November 23, 2007

Thanks for the suggestions so far, but it most definitely was no Scarry book. The pictures in the book I am trying to remember were much more detailed and less comic like. Somewhat like Maurice Sendaks "Where the Wild Things Are" only with more brilliant colors. The animals, if memory serves me right were mostly small animals, i.e. mice, moles, frogs and toads, though I could be wrong about that.

Also not Macaulay, we had "The way things work" at home and again, the pictures in that are too comic like.

As for Budgie, Hector or Harold the helicopter: No, the book was not mainly about a helicopter. It is just the one image I have retained from that book.

The main story was about the animals, perhaps there were to factions that were somehow opposed or something but again, I am unsure of that.
posted by Glow Bucket at 3:12 AM on November 24, 2007

I think i have this book.. it was one of my favorites, I loved the detailed illustrations too... in fact I just dug it out to show it to a friend last weekend. I have a pic if it would help, but it's called Trumpets in Grumpetland by Peter Cross and it was originally printed in England. (Didn't know that til i looked but I did remember a tea reference.) Does that sound right??
posted by saltfiend at 7:52 AM on November 24, 2007

saltfiend, I had a look at the cover of the book and it prequel (Trouble for Trumpets) on Amazon and I am sure that that is it!

Thank you so very very much!
posted by Glow Bucket at 8:47 AM on November 24, 2007

This is spooky as a while back I found an old photograph of myself and my brother reading a book and I vaguely remembered it and wondered what it was called.

Turns out it was Trumpets in Grumpetland!

So thanks Glow Bucket for posting your question and helping me find the answer to a question that I'd forgotten I even had. And like dhartung I'm pretty sure I had a Richard Scarry book with a Sikorsky-like helicopter in it with all the parts labeled.
posted by electricinca at 2:47 PM on November 25, 2007