Only story I remember from a book of stories I received in the 1st or 2nd grade, mid to late 1960’s. A hardcover book with color illustrations, about a boy and girl, lighthouse keeper’s children, who go with Mom to a big city department store with an escalator. No title, author or publisher.
A girl (Girl A) lives with her parents in a brownstone(?) or apartment building across the street or adjacent from Central Park. She has a good life but would like a friend of similar age. Very early on in the book, a girl about her age moves into the building! Girl A makes friends with this girl, has many high spirited adventures in and around Central Park & NYC.
This book is titled something like “The World of Xanadu” or “Xenon” or “Xenia”, but “Xanadu” sounds most right to me. the X-word is the title of the imaginary world that the girls have made up. Early on, Girl A daydreams that she will find a friend her age and when she does, she says “We will make a fantasy realm called ‘Xanadu'”. This aspect feels like it has a “Bridge To Terabithia” element to it.
The setting is very close to “The One Hundredth Thing About Caroline” by Lois Lowry, but it isn’t that, because that book has more of a mystery/suspense nature to it.
Any help would be wonderful! Thank you!
In late 50′s my grandmother read to me many times a book checked out from our local public library. It was about a little girl who broke her leg. Someone would carry her outside every day and she spent the summer in a hammock beside a brook. She made friends with the small animals. She mesmerized them with her soothing voice. Maybe that’s where the brook comes in – her voice was like a flowing brook. I don’t remember the little girl’s name or any other details. I have had several librarians through the years be on the lookout for the book, but no one has identified it yet.
The book I’m trying to find was probably published in the 1970s. It was mostly text, with some black and white line drawings. The storyline involved some kids visiting a fantasy world with an owl for a mayor. For the owl’s birthday, they bake him a cake in the shape of an owl. The owl is horrified and refuses to eat the cake because it looks like him. That’s all I remember, except that it also contained the word “turd” which greatly horrified my mother. It’s possible the book was written in verse, or that this was just one story in a collection, but I don’t remember. I think I had this book when I was about 10, so it was probably written for the tween market. The tone of the book was playful and irreverent.
I think it was in 1978, while in 2nd grade, I read a mystery book about a boy visiting a castle (I think in Scotland) and there were ghosts trying to tell him something. I think I remember something about the ocean and maybe characters who names were like those in Macbeth or another Shakespeare book
I am trying to find a book I started to read in middle school, but it is hard for me to remember all of the details because I didn’t finish reading it. It was a novel, I think from the 70s, with a strong environmentalist message, “save the trees” etc. It was about high school students (?), and had intermittent poems throughout the text, including one that went something like “acid rain, like a single tear drop, rolls down the flower”.
It appeared old and worn to me when I was in middle school in 1998, a small hardcover book with blue binding. I think the latest date of publication would be 1980, as it was about environmentalism and the messages were similar to the messages of the 1970s. Sorry I don’t have more details, but let me know if this jogs anyone’s memory.
Thank you!
The book I’m looking for is an English, children’s mystery novel set in an big rambling house, attached to a village bookshop. The main character is a boy whose family has moved there because an aged relative has recently died and left the house and the business to the boy’s father. Either the father, or the boy, is called Kit. The boy has at least one sibling. It was the first book that I’d ever read that mentioned Evensong (what? – my family is Australian and Methodist!). The house is quite close to the village green.
Anyway, the central mystery is that when the family arrives at the house/shop in the new village (I think they’ve come from London), all of the books that should be in stock in the shop – as well as all the books from the house’s library – are missing. Eventually, the boy (with other children, maybe?) discovers a hidden or secret room, with overgrown vegetation hiding the outside windows and a papered-over doorway in the front hall. Obviously, this hidden room contains all the missing books. It’s possible that A Clockwork Orange is mentioned amongst the recovered books.
I read it when I was about eleven (in the early eighties), and the copy I had was a small, second-hand, hardcover edition, with the edges of the pages stained red (I don’t remember the cover’s colour or whether it had a dust-jacket). My father was in the army, so every time we moved, mum would make me rationalize my book collection – this novel was one of the sacrifices! I would love to know a title and author, as it’s been bugging me, since I tried to describe it to a friend, over a week ago.
Let me start off by saying the book I am looking for is not ‘The Secret Garden’ by Burnett, and is not ‘Secret Friend’ by Marilyn Sachs. I’ve also considered but tossed out ‘Mystery Back of the Mountain’by Mary C Jane, although I think that’s the closest I ever got to a eureka moment but I don’t recall a male companion in the story.
Read the book in 4th grade, 1982, it was about 1″ in thickness, it was a hard cover, fabric, pale sage green. It didn’t seem new.
I recall a “W” on the spine of the book. In the author’s name perhaps?
I do not recall pictures, but that doesn’t mean there were none, just that this was a children’s novel, not a little kid’s book.
The title included words like Secret, Friend, Mysterious Friend, Garden ?…
The main character was a young girl, 10-12 years old possibly.
The book has the dark English feel to it similar to The Secret Garden. I recall grassy hills, gardens, whispers, not modern.
The biggest memory in the book is the main girl character meeting a mysterious girl named Olivia (which makes finding this on Google impossible due to the pig of the same name) and becoming friends with her.
This is why I don’t think that it’s Mystery Back of the Moutain, because I don’t recall a male character tagging along in their friendship but I might be wrong.
My other last ditch guess is “THE HOUSE OF SECRETS” aka “The Secret Passage” by Nina Bawden. Is there an OLIVIA in that book? This book however, also contains a male child that I don’t recall.
Would love to find this so I can pass it on to my daughter 🙂
Hi, I had this book probably in the late 90’s. It was a paperback book of fairy tales, but not traditional ones, “different” ones, and I’m pretty sure it was an anthology. I’ve thought of quite a few of the stories and plots but can’t remember the name of the book or editor. Anyways, The borders of the cover were red and there was some kind of blue and green forest type scene on the front I think? The colors looked like a drawing, not a real photo or anything. One of the stories is about a prince crossing an ocean and his boat begins to sink. A mermaid kisses him all over his face and he can breath underwater. He goes to live with her for a while but also wants to go back and tell his parents he’s ok, he does, meets a girl on land and marries her, and when he crosses the ocean again the sea princess drowns him I think. Another one is about a girl getting ready to be married and she meets some kind of half man half stag in a forest and he puts a braid of his hair around her finger. When she goes back home and goes to get married, the ring won’t go on her finger and the stag man shows up to take her back to the forest. The third story I remember is just about a girl with blue hair (maybe a mermaid?) who’s missing and her brothers are coming to a town one by one to search for her. They all end up getting indentured to different people and she shows up in town (or something) riding a tiger. And last, a princess stitches her dog into a tapestry she’s creating and stitches herself in too. Wanted to escape the castle or marriage or something. I found a similar answered question about a story like my very last one, but I know this one was in a book with lots of other stories, not by itself.
I’m looking for a children s book where a group of children (I believe all siblings) go into town and pick up ingredients to make a loaf of bread except they don’t measure and when they bake the bread in the oven it over flows the oven, and eventually over takes the house coming out of the windows. I believe they end up cutting of pieces and either giving it or selling it to their neighbors in the small town, or village.