Category Archives: MG (grades 2-6)

176G: Boy’s toy soldiers come to life

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I would check this book out of the library when I was in elementary school. I would put the time period between 1990-1995. The book in question is an illustrated children’s book about a boy whose toys either come to life for real or in a dream. They are mostly toy soldiers and in the book are wonderful two page color illustrations of these scenes with the toys. I remember one scene is in a bath tub with a toy boat battle. I don’t think the book was any older than the eighties but I obviously could be mistaken.

175D: boy, ghost, orchard (solved)

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i don’t know the title or author, which is why i need you. this is a YA type mystery or horror (not sure how they categorized things back then) from the late 70s early 80s. I probably got it through scholastic at school (i was in 4th or 5th grade at the time). i’ve searched and searched book covers for years and am hoping you can help.

i don’t remember much, but finding this book means so much because of events surrounding it during that period. dark green cover with a broken gravestone on it, possibly a crow, possibly trees (an orchard or grove) as well. the story itself was a boy gone to live with his grandparents (? or relatives in general?) and befriends a ghost in the walls/closet/something in the house. ends up in the orchard out back. finds the boy’s grave. god that’s not a lot to go on!

Thank you in advance!!

174D: Spooky Quest For Cookie Recipe (solved)

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I’m trying to find a chapter book about a young boy and an older woman who search for a prize-winning cookie recipe.

They want to win a cookie baking competition, so the older woman searches the library in her house for her family’s best recipe. She either loses it or can’t find it. She had a pet named Peeves who might have been responsible somehow. She realizes that they can use the second-best recipe, which originally belonged to one of her female relatives, if they can find it in time. The search takes them to either a shack or an abandoned house on a hill where they find a recipe for aniseed cookies. There may have been ghosts or a graveyard involved. The old woman rushes home and bakes the cookies in time for the contest, where they win first prize.

The book was for middle readers; I think it was about the same length as an Encyclopedia Brown book. I read the book before the year 2000, and I’m fairly sure it was written after 1960.

173J: Little girl is a house-guest in her own family’s home.

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Little girl is a house-guest in her own family’s home. Children’s chapter book. Read in the 1960’s. Plot: a little girl wants to be a house-guest in her own family’s house – to sleep in the guest room and have special cookies made for her. Her parents go along with the little girl’s request. She packs a suitcase so that she can walk up to the door and be admitted as a guest. Also, the little girl has an aunt: The aunt does fun things when she visits, such as getting the whole town to play leap-frog. Many thanks!

173G: Cloned Girl (80’s book)

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There’s a girl and she’s tired of going to school and doing chores. She sees an ad in a magazine for an institute that can solve her problem by providing a copy of her that will do all the things she hates. She contacts them and they make her clone. Everyday they switch places and she goes to the institute where she can do what she wants while the clone lives her life. Then one day she decides she wants to go back to her life. She sneaks out the institute and she goes home where she sees the clone interacting with her parents. She tells the clone she’s done with her but the clone says they like me better. Then she realizes there’s a switch to turn her off on the back of her neck — and she realizes her best friend has the same switch.