Category Archives: 1970s

127E: Boy builds plane from vacuum cleaner

A boy builds an airplane from a vacuum cleaner and flies off to rescue his dad. I think it’s to get him home for Christmas. On the way back home they stop off to buy presents for each other, and they buy the boy’s mom some perfume from Paris.

Addition: It’s a picture book – a fairly short story on large, colourful pages. I read it in the 1970s and it seemed of its time. Borrowed from my (then) local library, in fact. Would it help to mention I’m in the UK?

 

124B: Collection of Ghost Stories for Young Adults

I don’t remember the title, but I think it may have been from Scholastic. I want to say in the 1980-1983 range.                                                                

I do remember the very first story was called “Hugh” and it was the classic hitchhiker story, and in this case Hugh the ghost saves the driver (if I’m not mistaken) from an accident.

 

122C: Romance Between White Woman and Native American Man

Romance between a white woman and a Native American man. Set in New England. She was unhappy with her home life (being forced to marry some lout?), and ran away. It was winter; they fell in love and had a child. One section that I recall vividly – she was ill during pregnancy and having difficulty urinating (it was made more romantic than it sounds!) and he brewed herbs and cured her. The title was something like Eagle and Dove or Fox and Rose – one of those Blank and Blank titles. I read this book in the late 1970’s and it was new.

121I: Pre-Teen Romance Anthology (Solved)

I read this book sometime between 6th and 8th grades, so between 1976 and 1979. It was not great literature but catered very much to pubescent and pre-pubescent girls. It was a mass-market paperback anthology of short stories, and I think they all dealt with romance and/or the characters’ first kisses. There might have been some that were just about the trials and tribulations of being that age, but if so, I don’t recall specifics. I do remember one of the stories mentioning chocolate pudding. In another -or maybe the same story- the protagonist went on her first date (possibly a school dance?), and when she and the boy walked home, he kissed her, and she said his lips tasted sweet like Coca-Cola.

 

103H: Boy’s Summer in the Country Novel (Solved!)

In 1976 I read a children’s full length softcover novel about a boy who moves to the country.  A girl lives nearby and she claims she can do anything as well as he can.  He has a weight set and can lift the heaviest weight.  She can lift it, too.  They visit a man who lives on a houseboat on a nearby lake.  “How deep is the lake?” he asks.  “Pretty deep,” she answers.  “A car went in it once.”  The girl sprains her ankle and the boy helps her home.