Category Archives: 1990s-

350M: Boy Trains With Magic Sword

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I’m looking for a book I read sometime between 2005-2011. The cover was mostly blue and had a sword hilt on it I think. In the book a kid from our world somehow goes to another world. In this other world, the people fight with swords that the blade only actually exists if you believe? Little hazy on that part. I remember a scene where the main character loses a foot race to a younger kid from this other world. The people train using the swords by swinging them at giant boulders. The sword blade can heal any wound when pressed against it unless it’s caused by that type of sword. Might have had Christian themes. When in our world the main character was attacked by some sort of invisible monster that can’t be seen. Somebody saved him using one of the magic swords.

350J: Witch keeps girl’s lover in birdcage

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I’m looking for a darkly illustrated children’s book, probably published in the late 80’s/early 90’s.

There was very little text and mostly illustrations. The story involved a girl whose lover(?) is taken away by a witch. She goes to the witch’s lair and there are many birdcages with owls in them. Her lover(?) is also being kept in a birdcage when she saves him.

The pictures had a very dark colour scheme with a gothic/art nouveau art style, similar to Kay Nielsen but darker. I remember being fascinated with this book as a child as the content was so dark compared to my other books. I’ve been trying to locate it for years but cannot remember even slightly what the title was.

If it helps, I suspect the author was European given the content, so the original book was probably published in Finnish, Danish or German.

350H: Story Sound Bites

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I am searching for the title of a children’s book published in the 1990s that had push buttons (powered by a battery).  There were story sound bites on each button.
There was a female villain who said “I get what I want.”

I recall cartoon illustrations. Similar to The Magic Schoolbus type of illustrations maybe? … In the boys’ memory, the book was 101 Dalmations. We did have that push-button book, too; but that wasn’t it. Robert was so sure it was the Cruella DeVille button, that he looked it up (https://disney.fandom.com/wiki/101_Dalmatians_(Golden_Sound_Story)), but her button is a car engine. And I remember enough to recall it wasn’t a Disney movie/book. It was … I think a little White girl. On a farm? The villain was a White woman, too, similar to Cruella DeVille.

I searched your archives without luck.

350F: Cat is cared for by everyone in an apartment building

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Bright, colorful illustrations. A stray cat is cared for differently by each person in an apartment building (plays with someone’s yarn, someone else feeds fish). In the end, she has kittens and each person takes one to live with them. One of the illustrations is of the apartment windows/balcony with each of the kittens with their family. Maybe published late 80s/early90s? Not Six Dinner Sid or The Cat with Seven Names.

349T: Rich boy repairs exotic bird’s broken beak with soap

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The story is of a wealthy little boy who seems to be without parents.  There is a butler.  He receives a gift of an exotic bird (parrot/macaw/toucan?) who injures his beak and the boy fixes it with a bar of soap.  A heavy-set woman visits who I believe is an opera singer.  The illustrations are pen and ink with some color, but my overwhelming memory of the book is that it is basically in black, white and red.  All the characters, as I remember have large ovoid heads and small bodies.
I bought this book for my son in the early 2000s.  

349S: Picture Book about Spoiled Rotten Princess Who Lives With the Gypsies (Solved!)

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Here are all the details I can remember:
 
It was a picture book, but one with medium to a lot of words. I read it between 1990-1992, and I think it might have been a new copy, but I have no idea when the copyright was. I remember really loving the pictures!
 
It was a story about a little princess who is so loved by her father, but she is spoiled rotten and for her birthday he hires some gypsies to perform for her. She throws a fit over something and then, after she’s supposed to be in bed, she overhears him say that he wishes she would be a sweet girl (possibly like one of the gypsy girls?) or she will not be fit to run the kingdom.  
 
She either runs away or is taken by the gypsies, and they live a life of hard work and expect her to do it too. After only a little while, she fits right in and her skin turns brown from being out in the sun, and she almost forgets about her former life. 
 
The gypsies perform for lots of people, and they teach her to perform too. One day they go to a castle that seems familiar, but it isn’t until she sees her father that she remembers her previous home. She runs to his arms and he commends her for learning to be good. 
 
Anyway, that’s about all I can remember. I hope you can help!

349R: Travelog about Mongolia and Siberia with a female shaman

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The shaman woman told the author was identified as a shaman when a child because she did everything backwards, sleeping all day and staying awake all night. The author visited her in her remote tent in deep forest. Another girl they met was pleased to have won a prize for her poem about pine needles being her pillow and the forest stream being her wine. I think her poem started with “I am a girl of the Tuva”. It may have been about living in the Taiga? I think it was written in the 1990s. I read it in the first decade of the 1990s. I borrowed it from Plymouth Library in England.

349Q: The Four Elementals and the Earth Children Raised in World with Magic

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The book was a children’s/YA book published sometime between 2005 and 2012. It was meant to be a quartet. I know 2 came out and I was curious if it was ever finished.
It had two main characters, a boy on earth who was disabled because he born on a world with magic. And a girl who is from earth but was raised in the world with magic, she’s the only one who can’t use magic and is immune to it.
There are evil magicians who can travel between the worlds, but doing so damages the worlds. The two main characters can move back and forth together but it damages the worlds. They’re told the only solution is to seek help from each of four elementals, societies of magic creatures that, if all four can be convinced to help, can make a bridge between the worlds in a safe way. Both of the main characters have to go to their birth worlds or it’s bad for the fabric of the universe or something, and this can only be accomplished with their help. The bad guys use dark magic and want to hunt them down. The boy struggles to learn the magic of his birth world. The first book dealt with the water elementals and the second with the earth elementals, I think. I think the name of the magic world started with an F
There’s a scene where the girl is on earth for the first time while they’re on the run and they go to a McDonald’s and she experiences a soda for the first time. I think her name starts with a K (Kira?)and the boy’s might be Marcus.

349P: Forest Girl Falls in Love with City Boy

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I read this as a young adult (I was born in 1976). It was a beautiful novel about a girl who grew up in the forest with little / no interaction with the outside world. I remember she had a vivid imagination and maybe had a magical lake or bog she would visit. She meets someone from the “city” and they fall in love. I seem to remember he gave her gloves and she didn’t know what gloves were. I now have teenage daughters and would love to share this novel with them.
I’ve done a lot of searching with the words girl, lost, forest, tree but can’t seem to figure it out.

349K: Silver Bells

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My sister and I remember reading a book in the 90s that was word for word the lyrics to silver bells. It had photos that matched the lyrics – I remember the city sidewalks / busy sidewalks dressed in holiday style page was a snowy city street, darker outside, I believe with wreaths and other Christmas decor around town. I believe the whole song was printed out on the last page. It was a larger book, maybe 12” x 6” in size. Darker cover, hardback.