Category Archives: 1990s-

312K: People Across The Lake

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The book I’m looking for would have been written before 1990. It would be fiction it would be about a prehistoric tribe that believes that although there were once other people (the lake people or the people across the lake) they are the only people left (they’re either ‘the people’ or the people of the forest, forest people, etc.). One of the main characters would be a girl named Zillah or a variant thereof. She has an overbearing father and at the end of the book she either dreams she sees or actually sees a person in a boat floating towards her on the lake.

 

312I: Missing Man

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I’m looking for a fantasy book I read in the 80’s or 90’s. I believe the author was a woman. The story was about a man that is pulled into a fantasy world by a broken down cripple, to impersonate a guy that disappeared. There’s a stone that’s embedded into his skin, with memories. He has to convince an old wizard, and a beautiful woman. He also has to confront a bad guy. In the end, it’s revealed that the broken down guy is the missing guy, and that he was corrupted and broken by the evil guy.

312E: A Boy Living In A Village

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I read this book sometime in the 80-84 time frame, possibly slightly earlier and no later than 1985.
I only recall that a boy was living in a village and he was training at various occupations – mining chalk (?) possibly from some chalk downs, studying astronomy and such things.
He at some point runs away or gets away and falls into some sort of underground crypt where he encounters the remains of some warrior lying there with a green stone axe on its chest.
He takes the axe….and that’s the last I remember.

312D:In Heaven Before Birth

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I have been trying to remember a picture book I read to my children back in the mid 1990s. My son now has a child and wants to find that book. I am pretty sure it is a Japanese folk tale ( but maybe Chinese?) .  The story is  about a deformed scholar who is hired to tutor the beautiful young daughter of an important rich person.  There is a myth that before a baby is born, they know the person who they are matched to be with, their “soul mate”. But before a baby is born one of the angels will press a finger to the middle of the upper lip ( hence the dent in our lips)  causing the baby to forget all memories of this person.  then they search during their lives for that one person.
Apparently in heaven before birth, the deformed scholar was a handsome baby and the young girl was the one with deformities . For some reason… ones I cannot remember, he switches with her so she will be beautiful and he will carry her deformities. They end up falling in love down on earth. This was such a lovely book that both my children remember even 20+ yrs later

312B:Island Of Mozambique

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This children’s book I used to have was this paperback book about two brothers who live on the island of Mozambique. Its a fairy tale story that take place in the modernize world early 1900s. One i thing i remember is this particular scene from the book. The brother kills a snake with a machete that is trying to kill his brother and his brothers wife in bed. When they wake up the brother in bed accuses the brother with the machete of trying to kill him. When the brother with the machete explains what really happened he turns into stone. Its a really beautifully illustrated book and uses a lot of deep blues and greens. I bought it in Boston around the late 1990s.

311Y:Narcolepsy

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Novel about hillbilly-type farm family talked into turning farm into guest farm. Grandpa has apparent narcolepsy and ends up passes out anywhere and everywhere. A visiting couple finds watching cows being butchered erotic. I remember describing wallpaper of old magazines and newspapers because so poor. Read around late 1980s to mid 1990s?

307W: Shout

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I am looking for a “picture book” for older students.  It was probably published between 2002 and 2012.  It is narrated by an African American girl who tells the story of going to church with her mama. The book is written in poetry and is beautifully illustrated.  I think it has the word “shout” in its title.  Here are the last 9 lines of the text:

 

I can still hear a myriad of

African musicians playing

On our shoulder, on our heartstrings

And we, still spirit-touched in

Our modern dance, move

Onward, upward, reaching

Til we’re tracing back through time

The same steps, that same familiar…

 

AMEN!

 

307N: Expat parents killed in Africa

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Published pre 2006, probably UK author.

In the prologue, a UK expat family is somewhere in Africa, and the parents are suddenly killed, I think in a helicopter crash that turns out not to be an accident.  The children sounded interesting, but they aren’t very relevant to the rest of the story.

The rest of the story focuses on a single male protagonist, in his 30s or 40s, probably the brother of the woman who was killed.  He is drawn into some international conspiracy, is at some physical peril, and solves things.

I thought it was by Sam Llewellyn but I can’t find it on his website.  It has that kind of feel – like Sam Llewellyn or Dick Francis or the Canadian Jon Evans, a likeable but lonely amateur accidentally falling into a crime network.

In the mass market paperback edition I read in Canada in the late 1990s or early 2000s, the cover might have had a silhouette of a tree on a yellowish sky, and the title might have been Under the (some variety of exotic) Tree.