Help me track down a story

username123

There was a story in these ancient encyclopedias we had about dragons, and the end of the story was basically the world was completely taken over by dragons, there was an illustration of a UK city (maybe London) with dragons on top of the spires of buildings and on roofs etc... I dont know the name of the story or the author or the encyclopedias but I sure would love to read it again.

I posted the above in another thread but it got me thinking that someone might be able to help me over here.

Im sketchy on the details of the story itself, I just remember it was about dragons, and there was a child in it, but the encyclopedias were smallish, like an A4 width but not so tall. There were a number of them and they were different colours. I remember one was a kind of mustard yellow, one was red, there was a blue one, a green one, a brown one. One of them specifically was about Literature and had this dragons story in it. I think there were 7 or 8 of them in total, each about a different subject.

My family home was destroyed in a house fire and my parents are dead so I have no way to track these encyclopedias down bar asking if anyone remembers them. We werent well off, its likely these were inherited (they werent that up to date) or came from a sale of work or something.

The dragon story has always stuck with me. Id really love to track it down.

username123

I've found them!!

They were The Modern Childrens Library of Knowledge.



I found an old listing on ebay. This is the subject of each book:

THE MODERN CHILDREN'S LIBRARY OF KNOWLEDGE HARDBACK BOOKS

8 BOOKS....OLDHAMS PRESS 1957 (THE NEW EDUCATIONAL PRESS) PUBLISHED 1957 REPRINTED 1960

BOOK (GREEN) ONE:- THE WORLD OF NATURE BY LESSLIE WOLFF

BOOK (BLUE) TWO:- THE WORLD WE LIVE IN BY W.G. MOORE

BOOK (RED) THREE:- THE WORLD OF THE PAST BY HARRY MCNICOL

BOOK (GREY) FOUR:- THE WORLD OF SCIENCE AND INVENTION BY GORDON NUNN

BOOK (BROWN) FIVE:- THE WORLD OF ARTS AND PASTIMES BY EVELYN CLARK AND OTHERS

BOOK (ORANGE) SIX :- THE SCHOOL COMPANION BY ENID BLYTON AND OTHERS

BOOK (YELLOW) SEVEN:- THE WORLD OF BOOKS BY ERIC DUTHIE REPRINTED 1963

BOOK (RED) EIGHT:-THE PICTORIAL DICTIONARY BY JEAN ROBERTSON REPRINTED 1963

I'm pretty sure the story was in Book Seven. I found a copy on amazon for £1.77, hopefully it's the right one. I'm really excited about rediscovering the dragon story!!

mrsdewinter

Delighted that you tracked tgem down. I'm not familiar with that book series at all. I thought you were talking about the World Book children's books! Do you know their provenance?

username123

Thanks, I'm thrilled myself. I've gone googling before and came to nothing. Thus time 'books of knowledge' kept coming to me and I was trawling through google images when I found a pic I recognised. It's like finding a piece of childhood.

Looks to be a British publishing company, not sure at all how we came to have them growing up but I suspect they came from a second hand source, I don't ever remember them new. They were actually really good but as I was born mid 70s, were a bit dated even by mid 80s.

username123

I thought Id come back and update this.

The book arrived and the minute I read the table of contents I recognised the long forgotten story (it was like stepping into childhood again to get the book).

The story in question was "The Deliverers of Their Country" by E Nesbit from The Book of Dragons - which I was able to find an illustrated epub of, free from Project Gutenberg so now I can read the rest of the stories from it.