I read this novel in the 1970s when I was in early-mid elementary school. The main character and her family live in a state in the upper Midwest; she’s wicked into competitive figure skating and has been training/competing for years. Because of her dad’s job (he might be a college professor), they move from a city to a more rural part of the state where there are no indoor skating facilities and no training. She checks out the lake where the other kids skate, but finds it unsatisfactory (perhaps the surface is always bumpy). She finds a perfect pond! Ice is always clear of snow and smooth. But the locals shun it. She’s happy to train there alone. Eventually, she learns the reason why the spot is shunned by locals. It was a tragedy. The family that owned the mill was holding a party there for their daughter (about the same age as the novel’s main character), there was a fire, and the girl was killed.
Category Archives: Solved
352R: Horse novel from the 60s or 70s (Solved!)
I got a Penguin boxed set for Christmas one year … included an anthology of horse poems, stories and excerpts from novels etc. The Brumby and THIS book that I cannot remember. A young woman in, I think Wales, buys a mountain pony and trains it with the help of a gruff but caring veteran horse owner. The girl is very compassionate about her horse and takes it to a pony club day and gets a ribbon for being so patient with her green mare. There is a ring of sheep rustlers going around and they surprise them in the act one night. The girl and the horse are injured but they survive and the last line of the book is “You will know us by our limps” or something like that. It’s driving me mental not being able to find it. There is a line in it when she thought her horse had died and it is something with the sentiment that she mourned her horse not just for her loss but for her horse’s life in the world … that she loved living so much and now she wasn’t … I would love to read it again and really want to get that quote correctly.
I’ve posted on some book finder blogs and no luck so far … unfortunately my parents’ house flooded in 2008 and they had to throw out a bunch of stuff from the basement … up until then this boxed set would have been there. Sigh. And original editions of The Black Stallion, a large picture book on the creation of the Misty of Chincoteague series etc. etc. I try not to think about that too much.
352Q: Looking for book of literature/novel, only recall the cover (Solved!)
I'm old now, just turned into my 76th year on earth and for the life of me I cannot find this one book that I think is a novel that I wanted to read, but it slipped away in memory as to it's title or even it's plot.
This is a description of the cover as I recall it and I’m hoping someone might remember the cover and thereby know the title. The cover was striking:
Cover background was dark, maybe black.
The central image was a realistic whitish semi-see-through delicate garment, maybe a woman’s blouse, or a girl child’s article of clothing or?
I’m going to guess that I first saw the book perhaps 15 years ago+/-, or a bit less than that. It seems it was prominent amongst readers of novels at the time. But I have googled the cover details and come up with nothing.
It is a very striking cover. I will know it when I see it.
352K: Twins Megan and Morgan Share a Horse (Solved!)
I’m looking for a book I loved when I was in later elementary school in late 1980s about twin red headed girls named Megan (sp?) and Morgan who shared a horse and went to their first horse show. I think their horse was a palomino but am not positive. I think it was a chapter book and possibly part of a series.
351W: 11 Year Old Girl Rehabilitates Horse Named Black Baldwin (Solved!)
I am looking for a children’s/YA horse story from the late fifties or early sixties. It features a somewhat broken down horse named Black Baldwin, who was bought/adopted by an eleven year old girl desperate to have a horse. She rehabilitates him and eventually wins second prize in some kind of horse show event. The book had small pen and ink drawings throughout. I don’t remember the book jacket though, I believe it had one.
I searched for a long time thinking the horse’s name was the title of the book. Either it is and every copy is long gone, or there is some other title.
351U: Please help me find the actual title of a book I thought was named “Honey” (Solved!)
I am an author/illustrator of books for children, and am so pleased to have been directed to your bookstore in my search for a favorite old book. Loganberry looks like such a cool shop! I’d love to come do an event some day, post-Covid. I am currently locked down in Malaysia where my husband is working at an international school.
When I was a tween I read and re-read a book that I’d really like to find. Probably published in the late 1970’s, it was a Scholastic Book Club paperback. When I first started looking for the book I was convinced that the title was Honey, but after searching for months I’m wondering if my memory is playing tricks on me. Wouldn’t be the first time. 😊
The cover featured a close-up portrait of a blonde girl (whose name was Honey?), wavy hair pulled back. She was smiling, looking up and off to the left.
351S: Book about a girl with a delightful long string of names (Solved!)
351R: Doll Runs Doll Hospital (Solved!)
– cover was a cool tone color?
351P: Fire Chief vs. Student in Spelling Bee (Solved!)
I’m trying to find a children’s book for a friend in which a fire chief or some other first responder goes up against a student in a spelling bee. One of the words they have to spell is barbecue. The book was probably published between the 1960s and 1980s.
351H: Goose and Gorilla kid’s book? (Solved!)
We’ve got a memory of a kids book about a goose and a gorilla.
It was published before 1990 for sure, but it could be quite a bit older.
It had a similar feel to the recent hit “Boy Mole Fox Horse” book in which a child is taught various lessons by different animals.
Anyway, that’s what I’ve got to go on, basic google searches got mired down in ‘mother goose’ and ‘good night gorilla’ type books.
Thanks for the help,