I’m sure I got this book from Weekly Reader in the early 80s but was probably published in the 70s. Opens with protagonist making a homemade costume for school with spray painted gold boots and a sword. I think I remember parents getting a divorce. I remember main character going into his parents’ bedroom looking for help with costume and mom getting dressed and getting a run in her pantyhose and saying, “Damn!” which I perceived as scandalous as may mother would never use such language - ha! Protagonist has an older high school age brother who is enamored with girlfriend and their song is “Stairway to Heaven”.
Stump the Bookseller
New format, same book stumper solving.
Blubber, by Judy Blume.
Judy Blume’s Blubber features boots and (I think) the snag, and her It’s Not the End of the World has divorce and an older brother besotted with a girl.
(I don’t remember Stairway to Heaven specifically but certainly the brother is in lurv. A mother in one of Blume’s books does get a run in her nylons, and she says, “Damn, now I’ll have to wear pants.” It’s likely to be in INtEotW but I’m not certain.)
“Damn” is in Blubber.
Blubber HAS to be one of the two books, anyway. So I wanted to pass this blog along:
https://whatireadbackthen.wordpress.com/2009/04/18/a-person-gets-what-she-deserves-or-blubber/
I wrote the April 1, 2021 comment. Excerpt:
While I sympathize with those who don’t want kids to read it, since it could easily become a how-to manual, it should still be mandatory reading for parents and teachers everywhere. The message is clear: do your job, or this is how kids will behave when you’re not looking. Also, one critic accused the sullen 10-year-old narrator “bystander,” Jill, of looking at the world through “lemon-colored glasses,” but it only makes sense that Jill does, since the adults around her DON’T do their jobs and are just as self-centered and uncaring as she is!
(What I should have included, at that blog, was that the moral for CHILD readers is: learn to stick up for yourself in a hurry, because you can’t always count on adults to help you. But, it’s understandable that some critics have always said that the novel is primarily a work of sadistic voyeurism, especially since the implementation of that “moral,” in the second-to-last chapter, is pretty contrived.)