Category Archives: 1990s-

375C: Girls hide and take care of abused horse (Solved!)

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It was a children’s fiction novel I read in the early to mid 1990s. The story was about a horse that had escaped from its owners, who I think were neglecting it. The escaped horse was found by two young girls who were friends, both of whom want to help the horse when they realise he’s hungry and in poor condition. Knowing that if they return the horse to the rightful owners that he’ll probably just continue to be neglected, the girls decide to care for him in secret rather than return him to the abusive owners. There’s an abandoned, overgrown stable at the back of a nearby property that is owned by a mysterious recluse who lives in the property’s main house, so the girls have to be very careful to not get caught trespassing by the landowner. The girls have to clear a tall enough path through the undergrowth and remove the poison ivy so they can move the horse into the old stable, which they do their best to clean and repair. They share the responsibility of caring for the horse, taking odd jobs around their neighbourhood to earn extra cash and they pool their pocket money to purchase the feed and supplies they need from the hardware store. Much of the story revolves around the girls working to feed the horse up to improve his physical condition and health, but it is also stressful and difficult for the young girls to constantly manage the demanding routine by themselves and still keep it secret from everyone, which creates some tension in their friendship. Eventually they get found out by the landowner, and the girls are terrified he will call the police and that they’ll be in big trouble for stabling the horse on his property without his permission. But when they finally speak to the man who owns the old stable they are surprised to find that he is actually a kind man and not scary like the schoolyard rumours said. He explains to them that he let the stable go to seed after his horse-loving daughter died, as it was just too painful for him to look at it and constantly be reminded of her. The young girls explain their side of the story to him and the man is touched by their passion and empathy for the neglected horse. To his surprise they remind him of his daughter, but not in the painful way he used to experience in years gone past. Instead he feels quite touched by their efforts to care for the horse and he realises that he also wants to see the horse properly looked after because his daughter would have wanted the same thing. He gives the girls permission to keep stabling the horse on his property, and I think he even promises to help repair stable and maybe even assist with some of expenses associated with keeping the horse. But the condition he gives them is that they have to come clean to their parents about what they’ve been doing. By the end of the book the girls are very happy to be caring for the horse openly with the permission of the owner and their parents, but they kind of miss the excitement of keeping such a huge and exciting secret from everyone.

374Z: Children’s book that existed between 1992-2002 (Solved!)

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Full color picture book. A boys parents warn him not to go into woods. He sneaks out anyway, each page is a separate part of the woods and he encounters a unique type of creature/monster per page. I think one is like a colony of tree people, but at the end of the woods and in the final pages he starts getting chased by a smog creature, for like 4 pages he’s just running as the color pages are filling up with smoke. He barely escaped the forest and gets back into house or bed and thinks to himself “never doing that again”. The big part of the book is the escaping through the forest and running home from the smoke (which looks similar to a dragon maybe) but I think they never reveal what the monster is. This book is probably 14-33 pages. The other identifier is that each stage of the forest is a unique creature. Fantasy vibes. Pretty sure the book as color as well. – I know it’s not where are the wild things, and I know it’s not the tomtins. 

354Q: Bastard Child, Kidnapping, and a Mysterious Stranger

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All I can remember is that this woman was engaged to a man that her sister wanted. This sister got her drunk one night & walked her into a room with a strange man. The man had a lot of clout in his family. The sister told her fiancé & father what she did & the wedding was called off. The father sent her away when he found out she was pregnant by a stranger.

The woman gets a message from her father to come home for his youngest daughter’s engagement party. (This is the same man that she was engaged to 4 years ago.) The sister & fiancé pick her up at the airport. This man overheard the conversation that the family was saying about her son being a bastard. The man speaks up & introduces himself as the woman’s husband. The family shut up & was surprised she had a man. Well the little boy speaks up & says thank you daddy for helping mommy from these bad people.

It ends there until they run into each other again at a restaurant & from that point on the little boy keeps calling him daddy from here on out. This stranger comes to her rescue time & time again. He really has feelings for her but he never says a thing. Natalie tells the handsome stranger that she is going back home to her own place but her father takes her passport & tells her she isn’t going anywhere till she marries this old man who is a stranger to her.

He runs into Natalie again & he tells her I thought you were going home. She said she was till her father stepped in & changed all that. He invites the woman to his family home & introduces her to his mother. The little boy is very polite and says hi to the woman. The handsome stranger’s mother tell him that the little boy looks just like him when he was younger. She wanted to know who this woman & child were & why were they there.

He invites this woman to live in his home free of charge. He comes up with a contract for them to sign that says they are together but not in a sexual way so there is no drama. The both of them have their own lives & separate bedrooms.

When he moved her into his house he had the house assistant give her anything she wants. The house keeper even enrolls the boy into a prestigious school that the man went to himself when he was younger. The housekeeper tell him the same thing his mother said. How he looks just like him when was younger?
The housekeeper then suggest that the both of them take him & pick him up together so the boy knows he’s loved. This stranger has fallen in love with this woman but again he never says a word.

The lady’s name I believe was Natalie. Well to her family Natalie is nothing to them. Natalie’s father wants her to marry this older man so their family will be in business together. Natalie’s father kidnapped her son to force her into marrying this old man. When this stranger finds out he sends his friend & another man to find him. During this time we find out Natalie had an important job back home. She works with movie stars in her last job so she knows what she is capable of.

This stranger family owns a music business. It’s under one of his other companies. This strangers cousin runs it but he is running it into the ground. His big name actor is being forced to do whatever his representative says & the actor wants out of his contract with the company because of him. Well Natalie gets the job & takes this actor jobs to new heights. This actor has a sister who has some medical problems & if he gets some work he can get her that needed surgery. Natalie pays for his sister’s surgery out of her own pocket.

Well this cousin wants his client back & he will do anything to get him. The cousin is at a party that Natalie attends. His friend helps him get Natalie drunk & take her upstairs to a room in the hotel they are at. The actor is at the party & waits outside the bathroom door for Natalie too return to the party. The cousin & his friend takes Natalie a different direction so she won’t be seen. The handsome stranger is at a party himself that his company throws ever year but this is the first time he has ever attended. He comes downstairs looking for Natalie & he runs into the actor Natalie is representing. The handsome stranger goes in the bathroom & he notices she’s not there. He asks for the manager of the hotel & they go into the communication office where
all the cameras are. He notices what his cousin has done & the handsome stranger sends in his best friend to handle the situation. To get Natalie out of there. The cousin will be handled by him at a later time.

There is a little more to say but I believe I’ve said enough. I hope you can find this. I know it’s not to old maybe just a couple of years if that.

374O: Doll family loses grandfather in garden

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This is a book from the 1990’s because I remember buying it for my son who was born in 1989.  It was about a doll family, or a tiny statue family who lived in the bathroom (?) and a child played with them when they took a bath.  At some point one of the statues/dolls gets lost– grandfather or grandmother and they think it blew into the garden when the window was open. They all decide to go look for the missing statue, and have adventures in the garden.  They find the statue and it ends with the grandma and grandpa dancing together.  Beautiful colored illustrations.d

374M: The Rose of Death (Solved!)

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Seeking a murder mystery about drowned boy who was bullied probably published around 2000-2003, maybe up to 2005 this book was for high schooler and young adults and I think the cover was blue with a rose. The main story line of the book was an investigator was trying to find the cause of death of a teenage boy who was found in the river who they initially thought was a drowning but then found stool in his lungs that was his cause of asphyxiation. The river had once had a sewage issue, but that was investigated and found that the problem was fixed. He was accidentally killed by other students who gave him a swirly (dunked head into a toilet) that had stool in it that caused him to suffocate. The reason that he was given the swirly was he had a crush on a girl and had given her a rose he had changed the color of from red to (possibly) blue as a magic trick, the book did describe the chemical trick used to perform this. I do not remember the color of the rose, apologies. The girl’s bf or some other significant male figure.

373X: One Fine Grandpa?

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This was a children’s book where the grandpa lives with his grandkids (for some reason I think he lives above their garage?) and is starting to get dementia. He keeps insisting nothing is wrong with him- he just has a sinus infection? I thought the book was called One Fine Grandpa. I remember reading this book in the 1990’s and early 2000’s. 

373T: Zen Koans for Young Adults

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This was a book I purchased for my elementary school library in the mid 90’s through early 2000’s.  I think it was published in 94 or 95.  It was a slender black hardcover book with white lettering (I think) about 21.6 cm x 16.5 cm.  I don’t remember a cover image but if there was one it was a simple line drawing.

I think one or more of the keywords Japan, Japanese, stories, koans, or zen were in the title or prologue.  It had brief stories (one page or less).

Here are two I remember:
*The master pours tea in a student’s cup, but the cup is full so what the master poured spills over the sides.
*The master and student are walking down a muddy road.  They encounter a woman standing before a muddy muddle.  The master carries the woman to the other side of the puddle, puts her down, and he and the student trudged on.  After many minutes the student blurts (something like) “Master why did you carry that woman?  You know (avoiding women?) is part of our practice. The master replied that he carried the woman but a few steps but the student was still carrying her.
I’ve scrolled through what seems like millions of hits for Zen and koans with no luck. It was written for young people (5th-adult?) according to my search tools.  It was not in a picture book format like the Muth books. And it pre-dates them by many years.

373R: Wizard with a floating kettle

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I read a book in the 1980s, or possibly even very early 1990s, but the book may have been published long before then. All I remember about it is that there is a scene where a tea kettle is hovering behind a wizard, and the wizard says something about it keeping the water “just at the boil”. I think the character who stumbles upon this wizard becomes his apprentice, or the two travel together, or something, and I believe the sorcerer/wizard/whatever he was is in a clearing in a forest. Formulaic, I know, could be describing a hundred fantasy books – except for that teapot that is consistently at the boiling point! Help?