Category Archives: 1990s-

290Y: A lady starts a diary

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I read this book in London in 1992. It was a used paperback. The writer was a woman.

The heroine is a (rather dislikable) single, English woman of a certain age; she considers herself “on the shelf” and not a success in life. She has a small world.

Then she decides to reinvent herself and starts a diary. She writes her diary entry for the day at the start of the day and then forces whatever she wrote to happen. She writes that she meets a man and that day she forces a quiet dude into becoming her suitor, etc.

It was a recent novel: probably the 80s.

290S: The chicken is delicious and possibly addictive

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A children’s book I read in the early-to-mid 90s; could have been published earlier. A school cafeteria serves chicken (I think), possibly tenders. The chicken is delicious and possibly addictive. A student, male, investigates the cafeteria situation and, towards the end of the book, discovers that the chicken is made with a poisonous ingredient hidden in the cafeteria kitchen that gives it its flavor/addicting quality; the ingredient is stored in a large vat. There’s a fight between the hero and the evil cafeteria employee. The book is NOT Bone Chillers: Back to School or Eat Your Poison Dear.

290O: The title might include the word yellow

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The (few) details:

Adult book

Title might include the word yellow

A short book, maybe 200 pages

Paperback

Read at least 15 years ago

Novel set in Southeast Asia

A woman wanders, losing herself, maybe also a child. Odd, sad, poetic, confusing. She may be starving and mentally ill, badly treated

I hope that’s enough to unearth the title! That would be wonderful.

Thank you.

290D: A fairy for every color

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I am looking for a children’s book that I used to read in the late 1980’s – early 1990’s that includes multiple short stories. I remember that there was a short story near the end of the book that involved fairies and the aurora borealis. There was a fairy for every color and one dark/black fairy that would try to story the colors. Every night the color fairies would form the aurora borealis and the dark fairy would try to stop them. The story ends by saying that this repeats every night. The main focus was on the aurora borealis. Unfortunately, this is all that I remember. I do remember that the illustrations were very colorful.

I appreciate any information you might have!

290A: A young lady travels to Carmel-by-the-sea (Solved)

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I’ve been looking for the following for years with no luck. YA novel from possibly 1980-1990’s about a young lady (18ish). I cannot remember the title or main heroine name but distinctly recall her traveling to Carmel-by-the-sea and the white wicker furniture that she decorated with. Possibly summer time or just after graduation. Seems she ended up going to work for a lady in interior design. And of course there was a boy…

Possibly part of the just for girls series or similar to that. 

289J: Spaceship disaster thriller (Solved)

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[/private role="author"]Brandy Hartnett, bhartnett808@gmail.com[/private]

I read this in elementary school in the 90s. It’s more of a young adult book not a children’s book. There was a spaceship that people lived on and something happened, I think the ship got torn in half by an asteroid or a meteor or something like that. I think an asteroid/meteor field was coming their way, so everyone on the ship was supposed to evacuate to one side of the ship so they could seal off the middle in case of damage from the asteroid and a couple of kids or people got stuck on the side that everyone had evacuated from. They thought they were going to die but the side with all the people on it ended up being breached and everyone was exposed to space and died. So now the group of people or kids on the other side were alone. And all the controls for the ship had been on the side that got destroyed. So they try to figure out how to get rescued or land somewhere. I remember the end being very depressing. Their last hope of survival was to get their floating ruined spaceship close enough to the last planet that there were any people on, which I believe was Pluto, so that someone could essentially snag their spaceship. But they were too far away and the book ended with them floating off into space with the impression that they would starve to death. I always remember the book title having something to do with butterflies but I could be wrong. I remember the cover having a purple/ red magenta space swirl incorporated on it.

289D: A family of dogs (Solved)

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I am looking for a children’s book that I used to read in the late 80s/early 90s at my public library in Merrick, NY.  It was about a family of dogs. I believe the main character is a male dog named Sammie or Sammy.  His mother dog is feeling ill, so his brother dog takes care of feeding him breakfast and getting him off to school. However, he is so used to the way his mother does everything that, when his brother tries to do things for him, he often replies that “Mommy doesn’t do it like that.”

288D: Woman in black kidnaps kids

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It is a “scary” children’s picture book about a woman dressed in all black and she kidnaps children. She has a black hat with a black veil, yet has yellow eyes that can still be seen. She carries an umbrella and a bag of bricks. She has pilgrim buckle type shoes. She can run really fast and creates a black streak as she passes. As she kidnaps more kids, the parents of the remaining children send them to school with protection. The zookeeper’s son arrives with a boa constrictor around his neck, the beekeeper’s son wears a beehive, the military kid rides up in a tank, etc. The lady in black even takes a teacher. They eventually catch her and she leads the police to a cave where the children and teacher are kept, unharmed. The lady then slips out of the handcuffs and escapes. The book was written in English and had colored illustrations. I read it in Minnesota, USA in the mid-to-late 90s. I remember a specific illustration in which the lady is hiding behind a pole at a bus stop, just before she takes a kid.

287D: Dark YA book about a girl who befriends fairies

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I read this book in the early 1990s, but have no idea when it was published. The details I remember are that there is a girl who is for some reason befriended by fairies. She shrinks down and goes to visit them. Maybe she’s going to become their queen or something? For some reason she ends up with this necklace made of thorns that she can’t take off. The only other thing I remember is that the fairies would feed her nectar from a flower.

286G: One day the animals started floating (Solved)

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I am hoping you can help me find a children’s book we used to get from the library in the late 1990’s and maybe early into the 2000’s.

It took place on a farm in the grain belt and one day the animals started floating up, then the tractor, then the whole farm separated from the ground and they were hovering in one spot, but not attached to the ground. In the end grandma got out her needle and thread and sewed the land back down and they ate a dinner of white food (white rice, white potatoes, white bread and milk).

Sorry this isn’t much to go on. I was hoping to get it for my daughter’s birthday as a surprise, but if you need more info I can ask her for more details.