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345D: Search for children’s book vaguely remembered – White Girl Joins African Tribe

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I am looking for a juvenile book I vaguely remember. I can remember the library I borrowed it from and the exact look of that library, but not the book title, author, or clear details!  My only memories of the book are: 
 
I believe it was a story about a white (American? British?) girl who somehow passes through (a mirror? a book?) into the life of an African tribal people. After becoming friends with (another child? the tribe?) she regrettably has to return to her modern life through the same (magic?) process she used getting there. I believe the friend/tribe give her a string of beads to remember them by (?).  The book would have been been appropriate reading for probably pre-puberty ages – 10-14? 
 
That’s all the info I have, and I hope you are NOT stumped! This book has always stayed in my mind, no matter how vague my memory is, and I want to read it again to find out why. 

345C: Children’s Princess book with a dress making competition to find new Queen

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I’m looking for a book that I remember absolutely loving when I was about 6 or 7. The plot that I remember is about a young princess whose mother died when she was young. She loves dresses and her father the King thinks that as she grows up, it’s very important that she has a mother figure. So he (or maybe someone else) decides to start a kingdom-wide competition where all the women design their own gowns and there will be a big ball and the princess will choose which dress she likes best, and that will be her new mother. I think the book shows all the rich women in the kingdom spending all of their money on these fancy dresses and then there is a poor woman who makes her own beautiful and simple dress and goes to the ball and of course she gets picked to be the new Queen! I think there may be other details about the poor woman and the princess, but I can’t remember any! I thought that the title was something like The Princess Dress or something like that, but that may be completely wrong too.
This would be a fantasy children’s picture book. Probably aimed at grades kindergarten to second grade. I read it around the years of 2000-2002, but I don’t know when it was published.
I hope you can help! This has been driving me crazy for years!!

345B: Musical Love Story from Harlequin Era

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I'm looking for a book which may be Harlequin from late 1970s or early 1980s, about a young widow of a rock and roll band member who may have committed suicide. She falls for his band mate, who has long been in love with her, and it turns out, she has a hidden singing talent. I believe the setting is at a beach house, in Florida perhaps.

345A: Geometric Mood Diary (Solved!)

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I have been searching for a book for a few years now without much success. I read it between the ages of 7-10 (I am 43), it was a chapter book in a diary format, the cover was black and white (maybe speckled?) and each diary entry had some sort of drawing — I want to say a geometric pattern to describe the mood of the entry. That is all i remember, besides the fact that I loved the book and continually checked it out from the 79th street public library in NYC.

344Z: Melting gold and first period

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I read this book in 7th grade language arts in 1994/95 in Astoria, OR. Might have been by a regional author. The plot felt a little dystopian, maybe, and involved a young girl who was a member of a close-knit, sort of secluded community. Key plot points included a ritual that involved melting a piece of gold into a small shape and wearing a specific outfit (probably red) to a ceremony/festival after getting her first period. I don’t think the word “period” was ever mentioned. Sewing was involved, maybe by the whole community. It’s possible it took place in the distant past. I believe the title started with an S and was a single word like Stitchers, Spindles, or Spinners.

344Y: Parable Book From the 70’s or 80’s

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I remember this book being popular (I think) in the 70s/80s. I think I read it or looked thru it when I was around 7/8 (1980/81). I think the main character was a boy who went on a journey to different towns.


I feel like it was a parable of some kind.
And I want to say Heidi was involved...or maybe that was just another parable book in my house.


Do you have any clue of what I am talking about?
It’s driving me crazy.

 

344X: Secret Pointe Shoes

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I had a flash of a memory of a childhood book.  I have googled and googled but can’t find it, and it is driving me crazy!!!  So here goes the parts I remember:

It was a book about girls, not sure how many, that take ballet classes at a studio which I think was located in a mall or a strip mall.  Rival studio that is fancier is a possibility but more vague memory of that so could be wrong.  One of the girls sees a pair of pointe shoes in the store that are an unusual color, maybe purple?  And she decides she wants to get them and learn how to use them, but she does it in secret because her ballet teacher says she is not at all ready to start with pointe.  There is something that makes her feel like she is less than the other girls and that leads her to use the pointe shoes in secret.  I think she even ruins her feet and ballet progress in the process.  I also want to say that it is a part of a series, either a ballet series or as a ballet focused book in a larger series.  Also very good chance it was a book fair book , I got a lot of books that way.

344W: Young Adults in Frontier America

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I am searching for a young adult adventure series I read in the 70's, although I think the series was several decades old at the time. It was based on the adventures of young adults on the frontier of colonial, American Revolution and Post American Revolution America. Debby Boone was the main character of one book, and she leaves the message "D Boone cilled a bar" carved into a tree after dispatching a bear. Another book had the heir to the French throne being brought up in a cabin in the remote mountains of frontier America. The title of the series was something like "The Young Rifles" or the "Young Frontiersmen". I've never run across the series, but would love to find them.

344V: The Cloud Book

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The book I’m looking for was a hardback children’s book with a dark blue, textured cover. It was either square or landscape. I would have read it around 1998-2001, but I don’t know if it was new or second hand at the time. It had illustrations of clouds and a little boy, and I think he may have walked on or slept on the clouds at some point during the story.

Unfortunately I don’t remember many details other than that, and I just called it “the cloud book” so I don’t know the actual title. There are books by that title, but none of the ones I have found match up.

344U: Grumpy Doll in Dollhouse

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• children’s book read in 2006-2011. Could have been quite old by then
• a new doll came to live in the doll house and didn’t trust the human caring for them, she stole things like a coin and a piece of hair to try and cast a spell on them
• the human returned from a trip and gave the doll something nice like a new rug or bed spread and it made the doll realize she was wanted and loved
• this was a traditional dollhouse – old and beautiful. The human was fixing it up and making it nice again. She was very thoughtful towards the dolls.
• this is not The Dolls’ House by Rumer Godden
• might have had a pink cover. It was a chapter book but not very lengthy