Category Archives: MG (grades 2-6)

169D: Modern Fantasy Adventures with a character named Broccoli

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I remember a children’s (possibly young adult) modern-set fantasy series about two boys who adventure together. The books were embossed, and each one has a major antagonist’s face on the front (which was the embossing), usually a monster. I remember a werewolf and a zombie (each on a different book). The narration was from the 1st person, and he lived next door to a boy who was named something like Brock Lee. He called him Broccoli for most of the series. The main character had a Game Boy that had mystical powers, and could open doors…supposedly even the gates of Hell. He was also revealed to be The Chronicler, which is basically the Narrator of the Universe, unbeknownst to him. Broccoli was the Key, which gave him an ever-expanding suite of powers, largely mystical. In one book the main character sold his soul to a demon, and found a loophole out of it. I believe in the later books they meet an adventuring group of kids who were investigating a vaguely Lovecraftian monster of some sort. I know the series was at least 4-5 books long. Thank you for reading my ramblings; I’ve been looking for this series for over a decade!

168E: Non-fiction book on making wooden toys

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I am looking for a non-fiction book that I took out in the 1990s. Last week I contacted my old junior high in hopes that they still might have it, since there were encyclopedias there from the 60s and 70s when I went there…who knows how long old books languish in the stacks.

1. Woodworking book with fun and simple projects

2. All the information I can remember about the book and what I tried is here: This is what I remember:

    • Black and white photographs, line drawings for the patterns

 

    • Cover was blue with black and white photographs

 

    • It seems it would have been published in the 1960s or 1970s

 

    • It was not exclusively aimed at young people

 

  • The projects included a castle, castle residents (I traced these onto balsa wood :-)), a catapult, a siege tower, a modern bungalow dollhouse, wooden boxes with a combination lock, possibly a puzzle or two like a tanagram, an elephant with a mahout. The projects were pretty unique and charming

I started my search on Alibris and ABE, but I fear that the title was something generic like “Making Wooden Toys” (of course!) or “Wooden Toys You Can Make”. I went to World Cat to narrow it by year and got a decent list of titles, but looking them up on Google gives me results that I don’t remember and that don’t sound like the book. Or, sellers have not provided a photo of the book. Woe! I can tell you that the book is:

    • Not part of a series or published by a sponsor (Dover, Time-Life, WOOD etc)

 

    • Not by Richard Blizzard

 

  • Not More Wooden Toys That You Can Make by WG Alton

Unfortunately I can only find out what book it is *not*. The search is made difficult by the generic title it had, which of course, I can’t remember exactly. Is this enough detail? The book was in English, and I read it in Canada, which means that the publisher could have been American or British.

166F: Under the Mulberry Bush (solved)

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This is a book I read as a child and borrowed from the school library in the early 1990s. I’m fairly certain it was a fictional book, not an autobiography. I think it was called ‘Under the Mulberry Bush’ but could be wrong, as I can’t seem to find any book that matches that. It was about a girl (possibly with a French grandmother?) who goes to live with another family that’s experiencing some financial troubles, and they have a lot of mulberry bushes, which means that they have a lot of silkworms, which eat mulberry leaves. She comes up with the idea of using the silkworms to make money by harvesting the silk they produce and selling it. It’s a very risky proposition, and it takes a lot of exhausting work because she doesn’t know anything about silkworms and harvesting their silk, but she manages to learn all she needs to and get it to work. In the end, she saves the family and falls in love with one of the family’s sons, even though they didn’t get along at first. (and I want to say they have some sort of private joke about crab apples, and in one of the ending scenes, he throws a crab apple at her and she catches it)

Sorry, I don’t have much more than that! As a child I remember it being a sweetly romantic tale that I would love to buy and reread.

 

165B: The Other Treasure Seekers (solved)

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This is a book I borrowed from the library at school in approx 1970.  I remember the title as The Treasure Seekers, or something like that, but it is not the classic by E Nesbitt, and also I may be completely wrong about the title!   The story, as I remember it, involved a family of children who lived with their mother in a big old house, they were facing financial ruin, and there was an evil landlord (or similar) who was threatening them with eviction.  The children get wind of a rumour of hidden treasure, and the story follows their attempts to find the treasure in the house and grounds.  I am not sure of any of these details, but the one thing I remember clearly was that the plot came to a climax when they found a missing clue pasted to the walls of the dolls’ house in the nursery.  This is one of the earliest books I can remember reading independently and the sense of being completely gripped by the developing story contributed to my life-long love of reading.  I would love to find out what the book was, and perhaps share it with some of the children in my life now to see if it stood the test of time.