Author Archives: admin

356O: 80s Children’s picture book with animal protagonists and moral lessons including the danger of electricity and getting lost

1 Reply

I read a children’s picture book in the mid to late 80s in the US that was about moral lessons/behaving. Sorry, can’t remember what the cover looked like. There’s probably like 10 stories including: 1. A young hippo waits too long on a train to use the bathroom and poops his pants. An older animal tells him if he pays attention to his tummy and uses the toilet, the other animals will want to spend time with him. 2. A mother tells her young child (sorry, forget what type of animal it is) that electricity is dangerous and warns against putting things in the electrical outlets. A monkey encourages the child to stick a knife or fork in the socket and the child says no, so the monkey does it himself — book shows monkey getting electrocuted. 3. A panda or bear goes walking and ends up getting lost even though his mom warned him against it. The police end up getting involved. 4. There’s also a story about behaving for the babysitter when your parents go out and/or a story about how to behave when you get a new sibling. There’s no humans in the book and the illustrations are cartoony, not super realistic.

356M: A Baby May Climb Mount Everest Someday

Leave a reply

Looking for a children's Picture book. Guessing it was published between 1990-2015. It's about a baby and the very last page mentions Mt Everest. MAYBE the big brother is narrating - like my baby brother will do XXX when he grows up. Hopefully this is enough! I saw it ONCE in a library - my good friend who climbed Mt. Everest is pregnant I want to get her this book! 🙂 HELP.

356L: Middle grade novel — girls fix up old purple house for brother

Leave a reply

This is a short middle-grade novel which I read as a library book in the late ’80s or early ’90s, but may be older. A group of female friends (I think three) fix up and decorate an old house for the older brother of the narrator. He is just getting out of the hospital, either for mental illness or a suicide attempt, and they want to give him a nice place to feel at peace. They paint the walls purple. The brother may be named Joe. When he sees the house (or maybe it’s just a room?), he seems underwhelmed and doesn’t say anything. The main character is very disappointed. Later she goes back to the house and discovers the plants have been watered and the brother has been using it after all. But there’s a sad tinge; maybe the brother has gone back to the hospital or disappeared? One of the girls is Japanese-American and gets romantically involved with one of the older boys who is helping, and the main character is jealous. The illustrations are kind of trippy, showing the girls with very long hair. The cover or illustrations are purple, or possibly the word purple is in the title.

356K: Dead Bird Virus causes Zombie Like Creatures

1 Reply

I am looking for a book, possibly teen horror fiction that I read back between 1980-1983. The premise was a girl living with aunt/mom in a coastal town when a virus hits. She notices dead birds around the town and people start disappearing. The virus causes the infected to seek out the dark and they pass the virus by holding the person down and breathing into their mouth. Her family and friends become infected and she is left with a bunch of teen survivors who slowly get picked off. She ends up in an old house with a boy. I can’t remember the ending.

356I: Seeking the name of a YA book from the 80s

2 Replies

So there’s this YA book I read as a kid that I’ve been trying to figure out for years. Here’s what I know/remember about it:

*It was about a girl, age 9ish-12ish, who was an only child.

*Her mom gets pregnant, which I don’t think the kid was thrilled about, but mom has a stillbirth or miscarriage.

*There’s a scene where mom comes home from the hospital after losing the baby and the girl is cuddling with her and there’s a rather detailed description of what the mom’s tummy feels like now that there’s no longer a baby in it.

*There’s also a scene where the girl’s aunt is babysitting her, I think while mom is in the hospital, and the aunt takes the girl to a bar for dinner where the aunt’s boyfriend’s band plays. The girl orders spaghetti and a chocolate shake. I remember this because it blew my mind at the time and sounded like the best dinner ever.

*I THINK there may have been another book to the story, wherein the mom winds up having another healthy baby.

*It was written in the 70s or 80s.

*I read it sometime in the late 80s.

*It was similar in style to a Beverly Cleary or Judy Blume, but I DON’T think it was written by either of them or by any of the other really well known children’s authors of that time.

*I am NOT thinking of the Anastasia Krupnik series.

That’s it. Any ideas? There’s no particular reason for me trying to remember, except that it pops into my head every once in a while and drives me bananas.

356H: Christie-like mystery, solved by time required to dial phone number

2 Replies

I was sure this was a Tuppence & Tommy book (Christie), but it's not -- and I just finished reading all her books again. No luck; it's not one of hers! This mystery hinges on the time it takes (used to take) to dial a phone number -- the way a 9 on a rotary phone took longer to rotate back, when you dialed, than, say, a 2 would. Someone heard a number being dialed in the next room, at the beginning of the book, and realizes much later the reported phone number had to have been a lie -- didn't fit the sounds actually heard. I read this book around 1975, and it was old then. Thank you!!

356G: People With Special Powers Live On Narrow Inhabitable Strip Of Planet

Leave a reply

This is about a two-book series that was likely written between 1975 and 1999. The survivors of a planet lived on a narrow inhabitable strip of the planet. On both sides there were less habitable areas. On one side lived mutants who were like vampires and werewolves. In the strip lived the main characters in a town, one a strongman, one a mind reader whose wife was a healer and operated a clinic, one a blind woman who could see the future. There were several towns. The mind reader has a female child whose skin changed colors and also had a son. The leader of the werewolves had a son who killed those living in the town where the main characters lived. When the blind woman got her sight back temporarily, she lost the ability to see the future. The healer’s wife died near the end of the book and the mind reader decided to move to another town where his children had previously moved.