Category Archives: 1990s-

352Z: Jazz Musicians Guide Boy Falsely Accused of Theft (Solved!)

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I’m looking for a young adult book which I read in the late 80s/early 90s. It’s about a boy, who gets accused of stealing in school, big  jazz elements as there are some jazz musicians who help him (and references to many jazz greats), it’s about righting wrongs without having to tattle.
So : a bit more detail. He gets accused. He didn’t do it but knows his wealthy classmate did it.
In the early part of the book, he wears a t-shirt that says “Don’t cheer boys, the poor fellows are dying” which is a quote from John Woodward Phillip and his t-shirt is met with disapproval from the principal.
The kid is in deep trouble as everyone thinks he stole and he has to go see a judge in court, I think.
Finally, and most importantly, there are a number of jazz musicians who provide the protagonist kid with help and guidance.
The book is about jazz, doing the right thing and the reality of being a poor kid whom everyone assumes has stolen whereas the rich kid is not even a suspect cos why would he even need to steal?
It’s really well written but I can’t remember the name or author and would love to read it again.

352U: Beast Prince and Locked Door

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It’s a children’s book from around the 1990’s. The main heroine travels to cure the curse of the Beast Prince. I think he had the head of a pig/boar. The plot is similar to East of the Sun, West of the Moon but that is not the book. Near the end the heroine must unlock a door but lost the key. She must cut off her finger and use it as the key instead.

352Q: Looking for book of literature/novel, only recall the cover (Solved!)

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I'm old now, just turned into my 76th year on earth and for the life of me I cannot find this one book that I think is a novel that I wanted to read, but it slipped away in memory as to it's title or even it's plot.

This is a description of the cover as I recall it and I’m hoping someone might remember the cover and thereby know the title. The cover was striking:

Cover background was dark, maybe black.
The central image was a realistic whitish semi-see-through delicate garment, maybe a woman’s blouse, or a girl child’s article of clothing or?

I’m going to guess that I first saw the book perhaps 15 years ago+/-, or a bit less than that. It seems it was prominent amongst readers of novels at the time. But I have googled the cover details and come up with nothing.

It is a very striking cover. I will know it when I see it.

352G: The Symbol in the Magical Wall

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I read this book in 2009 or 2010. I believe it was considered a young adult book but it was a good reading level for me in 6th grade. The book seems so scattered and has gotten worse in my memory over the years so excuse me if I seem to jump around in the story.

The cover I believe had a sort of symbol that is important in the book. I remember the cover being mostly red and black but couldn’t say for sure.
The main character is a boy around 12 who is in the foster system (?) and comes to live with this old woman who is introduced as talking to the TV (I believe Jeopardy) and talks to the TV as if the person on the show Is talking directly to her (indicating schizophrenia), but the TV actually changes from the show to sending her secret code within the show (?).
Somehow they end up in her house deep in the woods, the child service worker leaves and the boys weird gets weird (in like a magical seance) and he likes to walk around the woods surrounding the property and find a magical wall of some kind that the symbol then becomes important in. The story gets so back and forth from there it would be impossible to explain. This book somehow helped me a lot in the part of life I was in and I really just need to read the series again.

352E: Pig has fun at amusement park (Solved!)

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This is a 80s/90s picture book with no words or few words. A female pig runs wild at an amusement park, it could be a department store rather than an amusement park, trying on hats and eating lots of ice creams and rides the rides and possibly gets chased by a policeman (for having no money to pay for ice-cream?) before finding true love with a wild boar and having several piglets at the end of the book.

352B: Children travel to other worlds with animals

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It starts with some kids (possibly siblings, there are two or three kids) in, I think, a shop, a thrift, antique, or pawn shop, with no adults around and they are visited by these creatures. One is like a bear that talks in a phonetic southern-US style accent and one is like a dragonfly whose words allruntogetherlikethis. When I say “like” a bear and dragonfly, I think they were described as similar to these but not exactly the same. I think the creatures come from the kids interacting with an object in the shop.
They visit other worlds or dimensions and at one point they’re in a desert and tiny bugs swarm them and try to get to the moisture in the kids’ eyes and mouths so they have to keep them shut tight. They have to figure out how to outwit the antagonist without opening their eyes or mouths.
That’s all I remember. It was most likely written in the 70s or maybe 80s but definitely no later than mid-nineties. I read it around 2000 and it seemed old at the time.
I’ve spent so long looking for this because I just don’t believe no one else has read this and I think about it every time a gnat flies in my face! I feel like I’m in another dimension myself!!

351X: Part comic/part written book series maybe called ‘Freak’?

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I’d really like some help finding a comic I haven’t read since I was in school in 2001. I’ve tried googling it with no luck. I swear it was called ‘F.R.E.A.K’ or something. The front cover had a teenager jumping in the air clutching/firing lightning from his hands. There were two issues I think, one with a blue background cover and one with a green background.

It was about some teenager who stumbles into an alternate dimension (after getting beaten up in the street by hooligans) and meets a bipedal lioness who can talk. There were other animal people, and they were at war.

The lions were mostly police, and some of the characters had psychic powers and they were referred to as ‘TK’s’. The main bad guys were a vulture woman and a fat guy with angel wings. They used guns and were rivals. The angel wings guy says in one panel that ‘I like to keep ahead of the competition’ or something similar, and it shows a severed head on a spike.

The lionnes jams a gun with her mind as the teenager is about to be shot, but Angel wing guy thinks the teen did it and that he’s a ‘TK’.

There were also lizard people and monkey people. One of the lizard people pretends to be prison guard to help rescue the teenager. It was partially comic and partially written story. I remember it being very violent and adult oriented. Please does anyone know what it is? Any help would be most appreciated

351T: Young boy with red/brown hair and glasses solves mysteries using science

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One book cover includes him on the cover with a lab coat and beakers. The cover may have been blue or purple. It was very block cartoonish. He solves mysteries with a girl who is also on the cover with a lab coat on. They may have had a dog. I believe they solved mysteries in their apartment complex or school. It was a series that may have been Scholastic as I believe I got it from a book fair as a child. The book would have been out in the early 2000s.

351F: Disfigured Man Brought Out of the Dark by Lover

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The book is a historical romance. The two characters had met before but separated for whatever reason. Later in the story (midway ish?) the man’s older brother is thought to be dead and his face is now terribly scarred. He is now left with his brother’s title and 2 daughters. He keeps to the dark, won’t come out in the daylight or shave and neglects the girls as a result. She comes back and he tells her that she will have to marry him to stay and take care of the girls and she agrees because she loves him. He basically drags her to an old alter that’s cracking and falling apart and then makes off with her for their wedding night. He likes the dark so she can’t see him so he tries to keep it dark but she’s terrified of the dark.
Eventually she tells him to get over himself that it’s just a scar and he’s being a big baby and not treating his nieces the way he should. He shaves and goes to see them in bed and one of the girls wakes up screaming (neither had seen his face with or without the beard since before the incident that caused him to be scarred). I think that’s when she tells him off and leaves him to his own devices. He sacks up and starts rejoining the world he had cut himself off of, only for his brother to come back, turns out he was alive and well (ish) and eager to be home with his brother and children. This is the climax area, something makes them both rush off, I think she gets trapped somewhere dark and he and his brother have to find and help her and she’s in such a state she doesn’t even realize that her husband is clean shaven and in broad daylight.
That’s it that’s all I remember, I’ve been trying periodically for years to find the book title but I’m at a loss. I think I read it between 2004-2011? But would have been from my library so it could be older by a decade or more, I come from a really small town in Michigan.