Tag Archives: magic

371B: Girl Trapped By Apocalyptic Sorceress

The book was a large full-color graphic novel. It probably would’ve been published between 1990 and 2010. It was about this girl who lived in a huge palace with a very strict and secretive ‘mom’. This parental figure is rarely around and the girl is often taken care of by random people the lady employs. She gives the girl run of the place but tells her never to venture over the wall outside the palace. One day she gets mad and does it anyway. To her horror, she sees a desolate almost apocalyptic world and hundreds of slaves her ‘mom’ keeps. At first one of them was going to take her back to the palace but she persisted and found out her ‘mother’ is a very powerful sorceress who keeps the whole world under her control. A woman shows up and sees the girl standing by a man from the palace. She asks him point blank if this girl is her daughter that the sorceress took away from her. He basically says he can’t tell her then says something that strongly implies the answer is yes. The sorceress comes and finds out and drags her to the forest. She encases the girl in a small pod-like home grown into a tree where she lives trapped for years until her late teens when she escapes. She gets help from a boy about her age and goes back to the palace and defeats the sorceress. There was some part where they got help from a man a few years older than her who the sorceress had raised under similar circumstances and kept in the palace. He’d tried to defy her but it hadn’t worked. I don’t remember much else but it was long and had big pages.

Please help.

370R: Teen boy with blue hair (maybe!) flees bad guys and escapes to parallel world with help of mongoose (maybe!) (Solved!)

I read this book as a teen in the early 1970s. It had a typical teen book dust jacket design from the 70s: pen/watercolor painting of profile of boy with blue hair (I think) and I have a memory that it was called “The Blue Boy” or something similar but all searches have turned up nothing appropriate. 
Anyway, this memory is decades old, but what I recall is that this teen boy (probably orphan? no parents present in the story that I can recall) is somehow involved with a gang of bad people. Perhaps boy has magical abilities that they are taking advantage of for ill-gotten gains? Perhaps boy has blue hair as a gimmick? Maybe there is no blue hair but I swear there was. In any event, boy decides to escape from his situation and is pursued by bad guys who want to recapture? kill? otherwise cause problems for him. Boy is on the lam and has an unexpected mysterious ally who brings him food and perhaps finds him safe spaces to live. In my memory this ally is a talking mongoose, but crikey, how does this narrative even make sense? The boy is astonished to get ripe mangoes when in his world (the world of our narrative), mangoes are still green and unripe; months and months away from ripeness. It turns out this ally is from a parallel world, and the book ends with the ally helping our boy escape his pursuers by moving to the parallel universe. In my memory, book ends with boy on a sunrise-shining beach in this parallel world. 
I read it in English, but nothing about the story seems to be set in North America (mongoose and mangoes, or at least mangoes even if the mongoose is a figment of my imagination or faulty memory). 

369I: Girl summer magic or witchcraft (Solved!)

I read a book sometime in the late 70s/early 80s that was purchased from my school through a flyer or book fair.  It was a chapter book that may have had an illustration or two.  Best I can remember, a girl is spending her summer break maybe in a new home or at a relative’s home.  It seems like the summer may have been rainy and she was exploring the house.  She found something in a basement or cellar that was either magical or had to do with witchcraft.  She experimented with the magic but it seemed to turn out badly and there was  an explosion or climactic event in the basement.  In the end, all was resolved with a pleasant ending.  I don’t remember the book centering on any other characters so only one main female child.  I don’t remember the title or the cover but I have a vague recollection of orange and purple on it.  Here’s hoping someone remembers.

368B: Birthday Party Disappearing Children Cutlery (Solved!)

A little girl goes to stay with her eccentric aunt who spends most of her time gardening. The aunt is constantly digging up dishes, plates, and other items from her yard, and always holds on to those items. One day the little girl is in the library of her aunt’s house and discovers a book about a little girl who was at a birthday party that was cursed by a (fairy?) so that all of the children disappeared and the cutlery was buried in the yard. To undo the curse, the story girl would have to place all of the cutlery back just as it was when the curse was placed. The story girl would also be unable to communicate what happened to anyone else until the curse was listed. Thinking that her aunt might be the girl from the story, the little girl helps her aunt to dig up the last of the cutlery/dishware. Together they place the dishes/cutlery on the table as directed by the aunt. However, nothing happens after they do this, and the book ends.

367I: A Magical Trip

As a fourth grader in 1980, I had a teacher who kept a personal library of paperback books for us children to read when we were finished with all our other work. I read dozens of books in Mrs. Cohn’s classroom.
So assume this book to be anywhere from 1950s-1970s publication, a novel but fairly short. Things I recall:
There were at least two boys on the trip to another world/realm/dimension which they may have accessed via a cave.
Somehow they were equipped with a small wooden box of sausage and cheese. Intending to conserve their rations, they only ate half of each and discovered upon reopening the box that the food had regenerated to the full, original proportion.
They also had a blanket that would cover them both but fold down to pocket handkerchief sized and a “magic” match that could be struck and used again and again and even be stuck in a crevice and (perhaps rotated?) to become bright as a torch.
In one scene they passed a gangrel/beggar/wastrel on the road and as he came toward them he morphed into a well-clad, upright gentleman with a sandwich board or a handbell and advertised some type of ware or service and upon passing, returned to his former low state.

367E: Children’s book, dispute over bag, magical claims but ultimately not magic

From what I remember of this children’s book, there are people disputing over a small bag and someone asked them to describe what is in the bag to prove ownership. Fantastical claims are made of what’s in the bag, I believe they say animals are even in the bag, things that couldn’t possibly fit in a bag unless it was magic. In the end, the bag is not filled with any of these items. If I remember correctly, it is filled with fruit peels and seeds? Or something similar. I believe it’s set in the Middle East but I can’t fully remember. This is a book I thought about many times over the years since reading in the late 90s as a child but I’m not even sure I remember it correctly. I’m hoping someone can point me in the right direction.

367C: When the Sweets Come Alive

I remember this book from childhood, where on one page there is this bakery where it is either run by a witch or vampire and the treats are alive. Like the devil dog cakes are actual devil dogs with a tail and wings. The lady fingers are actual fingers. It was cute and cartoony and these treats were all in a glass case like a real bakery. It was definitely an elementary book like a beginner book. I must have been reading it in the 1990’s. I can’t recall the overall theme of the book but vividly remember this particular page. I think the overall theme must be fantastical or magical, maybe Halloween but I can’t remember a title or author. Please help me.

367A: “Meddlers”

I seek a book about a young boy who wakes up in a cave, has night vision and can see “Strings” of fate. Race is called Meddlers, and he’s being hunted due to their laws: “It is law that no meddler may create another meddler.” There’s magic, and the man who’s found him lives in a manor, with a butler named Balfour. He came from Earth, and has an “archive” of knowledge (which is really just a computer) since the Earth was dying. The boy goes and tries to save Earth, starting in the past and eventually succeeding.