Childhood books.

So Ursula Le Guin died recently and its set up a few things in my mind that never were. Namely she wrote a book about a girl that could turn into a bear and that.  Can remember it so well, as a child it was one of the books that we were read to in class by our teacher (possibly by Miss James or a Miss Grealey) along with the Lion The Witch and  The Wardrobe.

Sadly after a few hours fruitless searching it turned out it was a false memory and what I  was actually remembering was the book Ursula Bear by Sheila Lavelle.  A girl called Ramona (Not the same one from Ramona and Beavis) finds a book of spells in a library that can turn her into a bear.  By repeating I'm a Bear she could change and by reversing it and saying Raeb am I she changed back. 

With this aced I decided to look for another book or series of books we had at school (Mid 80's this would be, complete with school milk and full on Garbage Pail Kid craze to boot).  This was a series of books featuring a dog called Shorty which were I suppose for less capable readers.  I  read these while I was supposed to be paying attention to the teacher (this time a Mr Bissett, he could play the piano and was cool). This was actually much easier to find as they had a picture of a scruffy mutt on the cover which after all these years I could pick out on Google Images.

Written by James Webster  they were a series of books starring this dog along with other stories too.  Its been ages since I've read them, and the artwork alone is enough for some serious nostalgia trip for me. 

This is the sort of thing we read.