Category Archives: MG (grades 2-6)

353C: 1970s, Younger Female Teen Figure Skater, Moves with Family to Rural Part of State, Practices on Perfect Pond next to Burned-Down Mill (Solved!)

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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.

352W: Late 50’s early 60’s space fiction

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Late 50’s early 60’s space fiction about a boy on a planet (possibly mars) with his pet.  The boy needs to get to different city/friends home.  Walks via an old highway but the temperature dips extremely, causing the boy to find refuge in a giant cabbage like plant that closes at night, saving him.

Read this from the 5th grade 1961/62 Ellis Elementary School library in Sunnyvale California.

352I: Boy Performs Appendectomy in the Deep Woods

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I’m looking for a book I read in the late 70’s or early 80’s, about a boy who was deep in the woods with a man, maybe a relative, for an extended period of time. It may be a Canadian book. The man develops appendicitis, and instructs the boy how to cut out his appendix, to save his life. The boy does it, and it works. The boy must be at least 10 years old, he may have been a young teen, I’m not sure.

352F: The Nonsense Book

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The book I am looking for, a book I read at my elementary school library quite often, is a children’s book, maybe aimed at the 9-12 year old set. I suspect from the late 1960s to the mid 1970s. It was a book of self-proclaimed nonsense, with riddles and jokes and poems and shaggy dog stories, with surrealistic drawings and text. The sense of humor was counter-cultural and a bit Monty Pythonesque. I seem to recall that it had the “As I was going to St Ives” riddle in it.

It was a larger format book, 8.5”x11” or larger, and around 80 pages. I think the cover was a brownish green. The drawing style was in a similar borderline grotesque line-art mode as the illustrations for Shel Silverstein or Roald Dahl books, but with a significant amount of clip art and a throwback-y quality to it. I think the title itself had the word nonsense in it, or a word with a similar meaning.

I’ve been racking my brains trying to recall more about it, but that’s all I can seem to manage.

352D: Girl in the 40s or 50s Who Can’t Draw Wants Her Teacher to Hang Her Picture In Front of Class

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I’m looking for a chapter book I read probably in the mid to late 1980s. My guess is that it was published in that time frame. It was set in the 1940s or 1950s and was about a school-aged girl. The main plot point I remember is that every week her teacher put one of her students’ paintings on display at the front of the class. The girl wished that her picture would be chosen, but she was not much of an artist. She finally convinced her father to draw a picture of a child ice-skating for her, and she colored it with watercolors. Her teacher selected this drawing, but not because of the drawing of the ice skater. She was drawn to the girl’s use of color and the many shades of blue she used, which was how the sky really looked, rather than just one single shade.

I also remember that a ballpoint pen was a plot point in this book — the girl really wanted a ballpoint pen, which was new and cool, but I think the ink may have kept clumping up and she had to warm it up on the radiator. (Or maybe that’s what was happening with her fountain pen, and that’s why she wanted a ballpoint pen.) I also remember the name Molly, but I could be mixing it up with the American Girl doll from the same era.

352A: World’s Scariest Ghost Stories for Kids

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I’ve been trying to locate this children’s ghost stories book for decades now –
I got it through a school Weekly Reader form back in the 80s and the title was something like World’s Scariest Ghost Stories Ever …or something extremely close.

The book’s cover I had had a penciled like art on the front with a huge cloud in the sky with a mean looking old mans face blowing wind down at someone walking up a path.

It has multiple sub titled stories in it all teaching a lesson of some sort by the end.

One story is about a young girl who has 3 Golden Orbs and is made to sleep overnight in a haunted castle and must keep her orb until morning…again that’s the gist of it from my memory.

Another story is about a cook in big house and there’s is a little man who lives in the kitchen in a hole in the wall and makes a deal with the cook I think I believe the title of the story was Darby O Grady?

Yet another story was about skeleton’s skull that keeps crying out in a creepy old house in a room at the top of the stairs I think for “Crust of Bread”.

It was a paperback book I got it from a school Book Weekly Reader and I believe the book was published in the 70s originally as the book did have random art pages in it and the art was old time art with a renaissance clothing stye in the art. I remember in one art page there is a giant, who is a ghost in this big mansion who was chasing the little girl or something and the picture has a Giant in front of a large open shuttered window from the inside and the giant is standing but only has from his waist down and is missing his whole top half of his torso while holding a sword. He has renaissance knee high pants and high stockings like they wore in Benjamin Franklin’s era.

Another pic was from the Cook story where they show the cook standing in the kitchen at the stove area all of the art line illustration like a feather pen or pencil type simple but classic illustration. Only a handful of art pages scattered have art on them I believe its one art page for every sub story or less.

I am dying to find this book and capture a small piece of my childhood. If you can Help me at all in any way so that I can track this book and possibly buy one I would be Eternally Grateful.

Again thank you so very much for all your time and help with this 28 year long search.

351W: 11 Year Old Girl Rehabilitates Horse Named Black Baldwin (Solved!)

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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!)

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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.

The story is told from the girl’s point of view. I remember her explaining the pitfalls of her unruly hair, which may be why I felt so connected to her. Ha. Maybe she played tennis? I don’t remember that as well, but… maybe.
Mostly I remember that she met an African-American woman called Van, short for Vanilla, who helped her with her hair and with her problems. Apparently the girl was missing her mother, because Van explained to her that every child has a “mama pie” comprised of many mother figures.