Category Archives: MG (grades 2-6)

150J: jokes/quotes to escape from a shell, selecting future selves (solved)

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Looking for a children’s book, brother and sister, a series of magical challenges.  One requires that they escape from a conch shell with increasingly important quotes.  They start with jokes/riddles and end up needing powerful quotes for the final sections of the shell. 

Also there is a scene where the sister (Nora maybe? Ellie?) is faced with a series of doors, each in a set of two where she chooses one based on her reflection.  At first she chooses more sophisticated versions, with fewer of her hated freckles, but ends up very uptight and opts to return and take another path. 

 

149A: Three animals living in a tree

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This is a story of, I believe, three animals.
There is a crow, and two others whom I cannot remember. These three animals live in a tree that they share.  They are trying to survive, and much of the story surrounds their attempts to Cook good meals.  They may make stone soup.  The book has chapters and it has some illustrations.  It focuses on animals staying warm and staying well fed.  For example, They eat biscuits.  I would LOVE to know the title of this book.  Help?
My Mom gave me the book in the 3rd grade.

147C: Kids’ Island Nation

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I was very happy to find your website. I am currently stumped by a book I read as a child (lets say, during the 70s). Generally speaking, the plot is that a group of kids/teenagers take over an island in between Canada and US and create a nation.  The book opens (I think …) with the sister arguing with her brother who is in a band (I think …) and she has red hair (I think … ).  I believe (I think …) the ending does not work out that well for the newly formed nation / the kids, and that there is some “father knows best” sentiment, ultimately.  In any case the bit I am most confident about is the nation / island / US-Canada waters. 

Thank you for any help!

 

147A: 1950’s book…COLONIAL GIRL TURNING SPIT, ROCKING BABY IN CRADLE

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I read this book in the 1950’s…it was purchased I believe during a vacation on Cape Cod. It was the story of a family from the perspective of the daughter. She helps her mother with the chores, sweeping with a corn broom, turning the spit and tending a cauldron and fire while rocking the baby in a cradle.The book describes their clothing…both their everyday working clothes and their dress clothes that they change into to meet this important person the whole community is waiting for…Peter Stuyvesant…Governor of New Amsterdam.
The illustrations were done either in colored pencils, water colors or pastels…not quite sure which after all this time.
Thanks for your time and efforts.

 

145Y: Nonfiction book on racism for preteens

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This could easily be post-1990, but not post-2006. It’s a thin hardcover – maybe no more than 60 pages – presumably meant for school libraries. One striking anecdote I remember was about how racism doesn’t have to be taught through words. In it, a white Southern woman, probably born in the 1950s, told how her mother was an impeccable lady and also “quite a racist.” However, the mother never said an unkind word about any person based on that person’s skin color, because “she was too much of a lady for that.” Even so, every time the mother and her daughter went shopping and had to talk to a black cashier or sales employee, the mother used a tone of voice as if she were talking to a silly preschooler. So, wrote the daughter, (not verbatim) “she passed on her racist views to me without a single word being exchanged between us on the subject!”

 

145K: Children’s Illustrated Mystery Book from late 1970’s?

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I have been trying for decades to find a book from my childhood. I would have been about 6 or 7 when I got it, so it would seem to be late 1970’s/early 1980’s. It was a hardcover book, about 8.5 x 11 size, with illustrations on each page that had the reader solve a mystery. I cannot remember the title though I seem to think it was a set of two, and perhaps the main character had “professor” in his name somehow. I also seem to recall one or both mysteries being set on a dock and/or boat. The illustrations were brightly colored with dark outlines; a graphic style more so than a detailed realistic illustration. Any help would be appreciated!