A young boy becomes a roach- literally all I remember. However, the side story I do remember. His sister is some kind of super genius who didn’t speak until she was five and when she did finally speak she created a board game. She spends her day in front of the tv counting the number of times the commercial for the board game plays and how much money she is making.
Read this in January 1995. It is a Judy Blume or Louis Sachar-esque children’s chapter book. Some kids are doing some kind of report and/or competition to create outlandish dishes by new and inventive means.
The protagonist, a boy, decides to experiment by putting insects in the food. In one scene, he brings brownies to school that he’s put roaches in. (Particularly memorable because it just so happened I brought brownies to class for my birthday that day when we got to that chapter and everyone got a big laugh about the coincidence). He finds out that his chief rival is using the car to cook food; they come out of church or a PTA meeting to the smell of hamburgers because he put the patties on the hot engine. Thanks!
In 1962, my kindergarten class performed a play for children called Squeaker at the Zoo. The plot concerned a dog (Squeaker) who became lost at a zoo. The little girl who owns Squeaker goes around to the various animals at the zoo and asks them if they have seen her dog. Each group of animals answers, in turn, “No, no, no–we have not seen your dog.” Finally Squeaker turns up.
According to a newspaper article, “Squeaker at the Zoo” is described as an “operetta” or “song story” that is taken from a Reading Readiness Program workbook entitled “Here We Come.” The play seems to have been performed by many kindergarten classes across the country in 1963 and in the years after.
Can you find the play for children entitled, Squeaker at the Zoo?
I am looking for picture books (with words). I read as a child and checked it out from our local library in Seymour, IN. I believe there was more than one book by the author. I think they were square shaped hard back books. The children in them were cute with dimpled knees and very round faces (not Campbell Soup kid related or Dick and Jane). I recall a girl being sort of the main character in these books about their small adventures. This would have been the early to mid 1980s when I was reading these. The pictures were very simple. I think I recall a story about a mud puddle in one of the books and the girl’s name may have been Mary but I’m not sure.
In the world of this book, every time something happens, like a war, both outcomes come true. A new world is created with the alternate outcome. So there are many earths. The one that this one takes place on is not ours. In this Earth, America is called Atlantis.
The children survive the shipwreck because the boy is a witch and the sister hangs onto him. But you don’t find that out till the end. You think – because she says so – that she is the witch and she saved him.
He is left-handed, which where they came from is punished but where they have arrived at, is celebrated as it is a sign of being a witch. That’s all I remember….
I probably read it in the late seventies, possibly early 80’s. I was probably around 12 – it was a middle-year chapter book. It was really good.
I hope it sounds familiar to someone! Thanks for your help!
This is a small children’s book, most likely written in the 60’s. It was a small, orange book. It is out of print, possibly in the late 80s, since at one time I somehow was able to research it.
The story follows around a little girl, with a ponytail or pigtails who wears an animal swim tube around her. She is found in the pictures behind others or in groups, and stands out, due to her wearing this tube. Though I don’t remember, I’m guessing the story would have taken place in summer.
I’m sorry I remember so little about this book. My mom and I both remember reading it countless times in the library when I was young (probably early to mid 70’s)
At some point 15-25 years ago, I read a short story that I wanted to find for my son to read. I have googled like mad but cannot find it. Here is what I remember:
Set in a dystopian future, a couple puts on some special skin suits so they can have relations. Then they discuss their desire to adopt a child and how they found a broker who can help them. You learn that what children there are are wild and live outside the city. They drive out of the city into some ruined/abandoned area where the broker, an old man, is waiting at an old parking garage. In the end, it is the wild kids who control the broker, not the other way around and they have used this ruse to lure the couple into their trap.
I so hope you can put me out of my misery. These are the things that wake me up at night!
I’m looking for a children’s storybook whose title and author escape me.
Two children, a brother and a sister, fleeing from war, run into the woods. They travel through it and on the other side reunite with their parents. There is some suggestion that the family members have actually died and been reunited in an after-life, but I don’t believe this to have been explicitly stated. The color scheme was rather grim for a children’s book.
I believe the book was named, ” Don’t jump in the puddles.” I do remember some of the verbiage. “It was a rainy, rainy day, but I wanted go out and play. Mom said okay, but don’t jump in the puddles. I walked through the puddles, I ran through the puddles, I even stuck my hands in the puddles, but I did not jump in the puddles.”
It was a blue paperback children’s short story.
Mid to late 90s.
In 1988 I read a book in middle school reading class. It was a murder mystery and had a yellow cover with a cartoon hotel on it with people in the windows.
I believe there may have been a cat involved in the story.