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327D: Bejeweled Bird Comes To A Tragic End

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This is the story I am looking for. I was in elementary school when my father read it to me. I’m afraid that it might have morphed some in my memory. It has stuck with me a long time. I’m 65. So he would’ve read it to me in the mid 60’s. This story sounds vaguely similar to the Nightingale but I do not remember a mechanical bird in my story. It is tragic like the Brothers Grimm or Hans Christian Andersen stories. I do not have a title or an author.

This story involves a bird that a man, maybe a king, is enamored of, either because of its beauty or its song. I don’t remember which. The bird pleases the king so much that the king decorates it with jewels. It seemed like he thought he was was rewarding the bird. Giving it value. The bird can’t fly, can’t do bird things, is ostracized by its friends, becomes tragically lonely and dies of a broken heart. That’s what I remember.

327C: Max Moonpenny

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My mom is searching for a book she read as a pre-teen about a girl named Max Moonpenny. I have searched and searched (and I even work in a library) but I can’t find anything about this book! She’s not sure if the title is Max Moonpenny or if it is something else. My mom grew up in the 1960s & ‘70s in Wisconsin, and a friend of hers also remembers the book and her niece was even named Max Moonpenny after the character from the novel. Unfortunately, the niece is prolific on the internet and clogging up my search results.

Any assistance would be greatly appreciated!

327B: Time Traveling Girl

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No idea of publication year, I read it in 2003.  Title is something like “As Time Passes” or “Time Lost” but I honestly only know that it has something to do with time in the title.  No idea on character names, one might be Isabella ??  Plot description: has something to do with a girl traveling back in time to different eras, she meets a guy at one point who she falls in love with, but then travels to another time where she is maybe held captive in a royal castle where they think she is their daughter or something to that extent. I honestly don’t remember how she time travels, maybe because of a book she finds, or some kind of power??  I believe the front cover is like a pale yellow with a girl facing away with a braid in her hair.

327A: Collection of scary stories from the late 70s or early 80s (Solved!)

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I'm trying to track down a collection of short, scary stories that I read when I was young. I remember a story about a girl with a red cape (I believe her name was Lottie). There was also a story in the book about Sarah Winchester, the heir to the Winchester rifle fortune who continued building a mansion and never stopped construction because a medium told her she'd die if she stopped. I know it's a long shot, but I'd love to be able to find this book again.

326Z: Magical Land Emits Personalized Alluring Scents

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I read this book in middle school between 1998-2000 and checked the book out from my school library. It was probably published in the late 80’s or 90’s. It was from the fantasy genre and included a magical land that the young female main character found by following a trail that brought her to a waterfall with a hidden entrance. Once she was in the magical land, there was some kind of dangerous landmark that lured people by emitting a pleasant scent that specifically appealed to each individual. For the main character I think it was a warm scent like cinnamon/honey/nuts/vanilla. I think this book may have also featured a relationship between the main character and her grandmother. Please help!

326Y: Monster Hunters

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Read it in early 2000s. Two siblings hunt monsters with a book with ingredients, with stuff spilled all over the pages.  They are with their uncle who is a fox, or his name is Fox. There is a troll who can only eat things once and if he eats anything twice he dies. The kids feed him his toenails and he dies. At the end the uncle, who was thought to be dead, shows up again alive and well.

 

326W: A Raven, A Boy And A Mosquito

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I am looking for a book that I believe is a children’s book, published in the 1970’s or 1980’s.  It has a dark green cover (pine color) and has a raven on the cover.  It has a God-centered theme.  Includes a boy and a mosquito.  The cover may also have red on it.  This is all according to my son who was born in 1980 and is recalling what details he can.

Thank you for your help.

326V: Kittens, Kittens, Everywhere (Solved!)

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A family advertises for a kitten, people from everywhere bring them kittens, then they have too many so they give them away.  The children are then sad because they gave all the kittens away when one appears from behind a stove, I think.  Probably from the 60’s, Small book that I would of bought myself at a dime store.  I think it had a black and white kitten on the front.

326T: 1950’s young detective gang? (Solved!)

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I was in elementary school in the early 90’s and remember reading a series of novel/short stories in class from a book series. They were similar to Encyclopedia Brown and Nate the Great, but the time frame of the books was more low tech (they had flashlights or torches I think, but don’t remember TV ever being mentioned), probably circa 1930’s to 1950’s so a little before Encyclopedia Brown time frame.

I remember 3 distinct stories that happened. The main characters were young, elementary school aged, and engaged in small town mysteries and adventures. One of the stories involved one person from this young gang following someone or something into a local cave and the main character followed them/him but tied raw liver meat to his shoes and told a friend if he didn’t come out to get a police officer and a tracking dog to find him from the scent of the liver meat on his shoes. They ended up finding him and the person lost in the cave.

A second story involved a new teacher the main character didn’t like and he intended to frame him by making him appear to be an alcoholic and planting alcohol in his house. The plot may be located in a baptist southern town as the main character thought the alcohol conviction would be a death sentence for the guy. I don’t remember much of the rest of that specific plot except that Mint Schnapps were part of the story and how the teacher was purportedly covering up his alcohol breath. The teacher found him out and apologized to the kid that he did not like him being his teacher but the town had appointed him, the protagonist reconciled with him eventually.

A third minor story was the protagonist forgot to study for an exam and tried to contract mumps from a friend of his who was out sick that same week. He snuck over to his friends house and asked him to breath in his face repeatedly. The protagonist was young, coming of age, used m’am and pal a lot in his vocabulary. The book or series may have been published in the 70’s or 80’s but I don’t remember a whole lot of technology being used in the stories though, and the prohibition aspect lead me to believe it is older. It could be Encyclopedia Brown but I’ve read through what I believe to be all of the book plots and didn’t see it.