Thanks to the Sunday NY Times, I now know who to ask the question that has been nagging at me for years: what O what was the book for teens (they didn’t call them YA novels yet) that I read in the 1960s (might’ve been published then, but also could’ve been published in the late 1950s) in which a daydreamy teenage girl envisioned painting her room gold, then painted it, then was bitterly disappointed that the walls were in fact “mustard yellow.” I remember nothing else about the girl, the story (or the walls) but the book must have had some kind of profound effect on me, because I’m over 60 now, a novelist and an English professor, and have read many, many novels since–and I’ve never forgotten it.
Stump the Bookseller
New format, same book stumper solving.
I remember a story, I think in Seventeen magazine, like this in the 60s. The girl had seen a photo in a magazine and saved money to try to duplicate it in her bedroom. Her family, of course was poor. It seems like the colors were dark green and orange though. She was disappointed in the results. Her walls were not smooth, etc. I can’t remember much beyond this, but it has stayed with me too.
Could it be “The Yelllow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gillman?
Sounds a little familiar. Didn’t her aunt or some other meddling, nutty female relative want to help her redecorate with Baroque cherubs (possibly wallpaper) and other frou-frou, which horrified the girl? Did she save her lunch money to buy the paint? I remember something about a girl coming home “hollow as a reed” because she never ate lunch. If that’s the one, this girl is the younger sister in the family, and I believe the older sister is the narrator. The parents are absent. But that’s all I’ve got, sorry. Wouldn’t mind knowing the title myself.
Cris, your book is Meet the Malones, the first of the Beany Malone series.
Isnt there also a short story about a woman who has a messy house but keeps an idea book. She goes to the cuckoo house and while she’s gone, husband and neighbor redo the living per the idea book, to cheer her up. On her return, she notes that the yellow couch, which the dynamic duo could not match exactly, has faded.