Author Archives: admin

265E: A girl wants to be an investigative reporter (Solved)

I’m looking for a book that I would have read no later than 1992. It was almost certainly published in the mid/late 80s or very early 90’s. A light, funny YA (possibly upper-middle grade or tween) book in the vein of Ellen Conford or Paula Danziger, although I don’t believe it was actually by either of them. The version I read was a hardcover, with an illustrated cover that was more cartoonish than realistic. I believe the cover features a girl in a dumpster or garbage can, although it’s possible that was just an episode in the book that I’m conflating with the cover in my memory.

It’s about a girl who wants to be an investigative reporter. She’s working for the school newspaper and begins to uncover some kind of light mystery. (Not a murder or anything like that.) The most specific thing that sticks out in my mind is that the girl and her friend use a lot of lingo and abbreviations in casual conversation, including the shorthand “L.L.A.” to mean “lifelong ambition.”

I believe the title has the girl’s name in it. I feel like the title might have a similar construction to Otherwise Known As Sheila the Great, although it’s obviously not that book. The book is also not Buffalo Brenda by Jill Pinkwater. Anyway, it’s driving me crazy. (I still think about my L.L.A.’s all the time.) Please help me put this to rest!

265B: ’80s or ’90s children’s books about a lottery mystery (Solved)

This one has been bugging me for years! I read this book in the late ’80s or early ’90s, and I don’t remember much about it other than these two things: (1) there was some sort of mystery with a lottery ticket, and I’m pretty sure what had happened was that the guy selling tickets at the store somehow knew the ticket was a winner and kept it for himself – I want to say the person who was trying to buy it was mentally challenged in some way perhaps, or there was some other reason why he thought the person wouldn’t appreciate the winning ticket; and (2) there’s a scene where the main character (a young girl) is in a body of water and trying to hide from a boat – I’m pretty sure it’s night and that she is floating in an inner tube, and to hide, she ducks her head inside the tube. Oh, and I think the cover was edged in a bright blue. Thanks!

265A: A boy lives in the rural south after WWII

It was a young person’s book which I read when I was 10 or 12 years old in Canada.  It would have been in the late 1960’s or early 1970’s when I found it in our school library. It was set in the Southern USA and I think that the period was shortly after WWII. The book was the story of a boy that was staying with a family in a big old rural home. There was something about hunting raccoons at night with dogs.  I think there was actually quite a bit about the dogs and something sad happened to one of them. There was something about hearing trains running in the distance at night.  There was something sad associated with this (maybe to do with the dogs?). The family had a black (I think) cook with whom the boy spent considerable time.  She was rather nurturing.  And a WWII vet who was rather troubled would come to the back/kitchen door and she would give him food.  I think that the boy was afraid of him. My recollection is that it was a rather haunting, sentimental, sad and yet hopeful story.  I think that the boy was trying to determine how he fit into the world.

264F: Seeking 1970s Dystopian Novella

Read this in 1993. From what I remember of the paperback cover, it was likely published in the 1970s, but possibly 1980s. A futuristic society records their citizens’ dreams (through their pillows?) and if your number is announced that means your dream will be broadcast to the entire community the next morning. If your dream is somehow controversial or doesn’t fall in line with community standards and teachings, you may be sent for reeducation/punishment. An adolescent/young teenage girl is the narrator. She is super concerned her crush may be revealed in her dreams. It was less than 200 pages. Probably intended for a young adult audience, but couldn’t say for sure.

264D: Children’s picture book about creatures in a cave

I am looking for a children’s picture book  that I am 90% sure was published before 1990. It follows a group of explorers through a cave. Page after page there are different looking creatures staring at them from behind rocks and on the stalagmites on the ceiling as they pass through the cavern. Some of the creatures sort of look like the ones from Where the Wild Things Are, or in the same spirit of Mercer mayor’s monsters. I have looked at both their respective catalogs and can’t kind a book that fits this description. I am pretty sure it is a rectangular shaped book. This one has stumped me for years and I really want to find it. Appreciate the help

264C: Boy Inventor solves mysteries through creativity (Solved)

From the early 1960’s, a young boy invents various devices in his home to solve mysteries.  He can’t wake up, so he invents an alarm clock with string attached to his toe – alarm goes off, string winds up and tugs his toe. Does he invent a periscope to spy on a suspicious neighbor?

Name might have been Henry (perhaps with alliterative last name).  Several books were published with his adventures, thin young (young?) adult fiction.

264B: 60’s Two Girls Living on Opposite sides of a River

I had a book when I was a young person (10 to 12 year old maybe) in the 60’s, where there were two girls living with their respective families on either side of a river. It was written from the perspective of one of the girls, whom I think was poorer than the family on the other side, and she always looked on the other girl’s life with envy. I cannot remember the event that led to her ending up on the other side of the river and living with the other family but when this happened she was then in a position of looking across the river at her own family, missing them and realising the folly of her original yearnings. I have a feeling it may have been a Christian book – maybe Sunday school prize but I’m not certain about that. Any light shed on the name of the book would be appreciated.

PS, someone elsewhere suggested “We Live by the River” by Lois Lenski but this is not it.