Category Archives: MG (grades 2-6)

163E: Creepiest Book in the World

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….And I found it in my high school library. It was newly released I think, so it must be six years old or so? Give or take a year or two on either side
It was this incredibly, indescribably creepy story about a young (pre-pubescent) girl living in a nightmare-version of government sponsored housing, a huge tower with individual apartments. If I’m remembering right, nobody was allowed to leave. The entire story took place indoors, and all of the characters, except a new resident and maybe the protagonist were horrifying, terrible people. The protagonists was the only kid mentioned, she didn’t have any parents or guardians, and survived by trading items/favors/information with the other residence.
There was a murder, and she was looking into it, I believe. There was a sub-plot about cannibalism in there somewhere, and the big climax of the book was this man (who the protagonist knew and did business with) carving a possibly Japanese-inspired design into her chest with knives and saltwater. Prior to that, he’d seemed like one of the nicer/saner characters.
At the very end, there’s a scene with the protagonist showing the new resident (she was a social worker if I remember right) how the business of trading worked in the tower and the new resident gave the  protagonist jelly beans.
I think the protagonist’s name was Jem. But don’t quote me on that.
It was the most disturbing thing I’d ever read at that point in my life, and I’ve never been able to find it again.

161E: youth book 60’s or 70’s (solved)

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Thin paperback book about a boy and his friend (a girl) who meet a woman in their community who is very mysterious.  When her hair floats, magic is happening.  Her name may have started with an M.  She helps the boy who we find at the end had some family tragedy that he was blocking out.  The woman helps him fly.  She shows up when he needs her but sometimes he can’t find her.

Cover may have had a picture of the woman with her floating hair.  It was probably published in the 60’s or 70’s and it might have been British.

 

160F: Children get humped backs because they ask a wizard if they can see their sins and have to go on a journey (solved)

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A stranger comes to a small town and he has a large hump on his back. The villagers are curious and ask him about it. He tells them the hump is a view of all the sins he has committed throughout his life. Some of the villagers don’t believe him and ask to see their own humps. He grants their request and they end up with humps of various sizes. They then want the humps  removed but the stranger can’t do that and advises them to go on a journey to ……. somewhere I can’t remember which I think is the title of the book. The main characters are two children who have to go on this journey with other hump-backed villagers who gradually drop out along the way.

I vaguely remember reading this book in the 1970’s. It might have had a tree design on the front cover.

 

160B: Otter in love with a fish

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Hi!
I’ve been searching for this book, on and off, for years…um, decades now. (Wow, that’s just…sad.) Anyway my latest google search lead me to you. I’ve tried to organize this semi-coherently, but I read it as a kid and my facts may be fuzzy.
Title/author/cover: no idea.
Publication: before 1992, likely before ’90. I’m guessing sometime in the ’80s.
Age: MG (shelved under Juvenile in the public library, where I found it)
Length: between 150-300 pages.
Style: anthropomorphic animals in their communities. No humans. No illustrations that I remember.

 Protagonist: A young (teenage?) male otter with a snakeskin eyepatch, who is high up in the otter tribe—the chief’s son, I think. He’s a quiet loner who doesn’t fit in and no one knows what to do with him.
Subplot #1:The community wants the loner to marry this girl otter, but she doesn’t want anything to do with him. She thinks he’s a poser, and wears the eyepatch to be “cool”. Besides, she’s in love with this other guy. She discovers late in the book that no, actually, he wears the eyepatch because he’s missing his eye. They become friends, though at the end the girl marries the other guy. We see the wedding, it’s one of the last scenes in the book.
Subplot #2: The loner falls in love with a fish! The fish cares about him, but doesn’t love him back. Not the way he loves her. She’s mostly like, “dude, seriously? This is insane. You’re insane. You’re an otter, I’m a fish, end of story.” And it IS the end—the final scene (I think) is her swimming away with her family/friends to a new river/ocean/somewhere. The move has been discussed throughout the story, and the loner knows it’s coming. He sits on the riverbank and watches her swim away.
Main plot??: A predatory bird (eagle? hawk?) is threatening…something. Either the otter community, the fish, or some other furry/scaly thing that will die if the bird isn’t stopped. But this is like birdzilla, and nobody goes against it and lives. The loner would know—this same bird killed his mother and sister (I think?) and captured/tried-to-capture him when he was young. That’s how he lost his eye. So the bird is wrecking/intends-to-wreck havoc, and the loner tries to gather help to stop it (including the girl otter and her guy), but no one will help. So the loner goes off alone to face the impossible. Once the girl otter realizes this, she runs to help and finds the loner dazed/unconscious from a fall—with his eyepatch shifted up. That’s how she finds out about his eye. Also something about a nest—the bird’s or some other bird’s…pretty sure the loner fell from the nest or was pushed out and that’s how he passed out…or something? Hmmm. Can’t remember if they kill the bird or not, but there may be a slingshot involved and the day is definitely saved.
So…you can totally see what bits of the story fascinated middle grade me. Hmmm.
Books it’s not:
— Otter & Odder: A Love Story. This PB is the first thing that comes up on google. Definitely not it.
— Anything by Brian Jacques. I loved the Redwall books, but this wasn’t one of them. And according to wiki, Jacques didn’t write non-Redwall stuff until waaaaay later, mostly 2001+.

 Thanks for the help! I really appreciate it.

 

158B: Sea Dog?

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I would have read this around 1978 or so in my gradeschool.  It had a aqua and black cover – with a dog standing on the porch of a houseboat? In a storm.  I thought it was called Sea Dog, but none of those titles give me the right story.  The dog rescues the kids uncle in a hurricane?