kids fiction book from the 1950s about a girl who has a chemistry lab and teaches her friends about atoms, electrons, etc and the periodic table by building up from hydrogen and going through element by element, chapter by chapter in the book. i reread this book many times when i was about 12.
Category Archives: MG (grades 2-6)
190D: Girl Moves in to a Family Full of Boys (Solved)
I am searching for a book I read when I was a teenager, so it would have been in the 1960’s or 1970’s. I cannot remember the name, and the details are a bit foggy. But, it was about a girl whose parents died or were gone or something like that. She was living with a family that had a number of boys. She fell in love with one of the boys, and another of the boys hated her. She was trapped in a cellar, and almost died, but did recover. The boy she was in love with died, and the boy who hated her eventually fell in love with her. I wish I could remember more! I hope you can identify this book for me!
190C: Girl starts Babysitting to Buy Christmas Presents (Solves)
I’m looking for a book I enjoyed as a child around 1995, although I believe it was published well before then, probably around the 50s. It is about a girl who starts her own babysitting business because she wants to buy Christmas presents for her family. It details her escapes with the children along the way…she eventually gets her mother a set of orange (or maybe apricot?) scented bath products…bubble bath etc. Can you help with this? I’d so love to have this book for the holidays.
189A: Princess, a rose, sheet music in the book (solved)
I’m looking for a slim paperback, probably from the late 1970s early 1980s, possibly from one of the Scholastic book fairs. It was about a princess, I think secluded in some castle, and I recall it being a romance. A rose featured prominently in the story, and the most specific part of the book that I recall was that there was a song included in the back of the book, in sheet music for the piano, that was about the rose. I remember trying to play the song on the piano as a child…I believe that there were only a few illustrations, and those were in pen / ink…not colored. Thanks for any help!
188G: Children’s book about a boy who learns about different secret codes from a mentor
I believe I read this book in the sixth grade (which would have been late 1970s). I got it from the school library. I would guess it was written prior to the late 1970s because we never had any new books at the school library. In the book, the boy meets a man who teaches him about different kinds of codes and how to break them. It included info about how people used to wrap paper around a cylinder and then write messages on the spiraled paper (so the reader would need a cylinder of the same radius to read the message correctly). It also had a tic-tac-toe type code (Different squares of the tic tac toe shape would represent different letters so an A would look like a backwards L and a B would look like a U). It also talked about E, T, A, and O being the most common letters (in English) so when you are trying to decode a message, the more commonly used symbols probably stand for one of those letters.
188F: Kids on spaceship schoolbus accidentally knock it off course and end up on strange planet
A kid/teenager’s book about three kids that are on a spaceship school bus that is taking them home (the last three kids furthest away from school) who mess with the autopilot and end up loosing control of the spaceship. It ends up at another planet altogether where there are people dressed in fur.
It might have been published in the 80s. It had images for each chapter.
188E: Bike Possessed By Horse
I read the book in elementary school, it was in the beginning of the fiction section, so i assume the name of the author came mid to early in the alphabet. It was about a kid whose bike is possessed by a horse or that they think it is? the cover has a large black horse rearing up on what i think was a leafy bg or a canopy of trees… i believe the bicycle was also on the cover?
188D: Western book read aloud in class
It is an old west book and all i can remember is in the end, the wagons are circled and the main character hides beneath a wagon or something and when an indian crawls under to kill him, he sees who the main character is and basically wont kill him because the kid somehow impressed the native americans sometime in the book by killing a buffalo i believe? i am inclined to think it is a buffalo bill book – but i cannot seem to find the book itself. it was read to my class in fifth grade and we read it again in sixth, if that helps at all.
188C: searching for remembered anthology
I am looking for a favorite children’s book. Here is all I remember about it:
1) I think it was a Reader’s Digest anthology, but since I have not been able to find it, perhaps it was another common name from the time that sponsored the collection.
2) I believe the cover was blue–but I could be completely wrong about that.
3) I am quite sure that it was at least 9×12, possibly 10×14. It was large enough that I recall the depth of the book (spine width) being only an inch and looking thin in comparison with the rest of the book.
4) I read it between the ages of 6-12 (1960-1966).
5) The stories had enough words that they were either directed toward young adult readers (high school) or junior high.
6) My most compelling memories are of two stories in the anthology:
The first was about a family crossing the desert in the American southwest. Their car broke down and they had to survive by collecting condensation on parts of their car, which they dismantled. They also created signage so that a plane could see them.
The other story was about a pony or colt with a broken leg. The family suspended the colt in a hammock while its leg healed. The vet had told them it would never work, but it did.
187G: BURNING TOE BURIED IN TOBACCO TIN
This is a children’s book that was read to us in class during the mid-1970s, and I think it was more contemporary. It was humorous tales of mountain life. I believe it was from the perspective of a young boy. It is a collection of humorous short stories. In one of them, one of the characters gets his toe gets lopped off by an axe. The toe is buried in a tobacco tin. The amputee is tormented by burning sensation where the toe used to be. He believes it is burning because the tobacco is irritating the severed toe, so the boy has to find the tin, rinse the tobacco off. They do, and coincidentally (?) his pain is relieved.