Category Archives: MG (grades 2-6)

145G: 90’s horror anthology (solved)

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A horror anthology read in the early 90s, found at a school book fair.

-A girl has the power to shrink people who she feels betray her and keeps them in a dollhouse or birdcage.
-Two siblings befriend the new neighbor only to find that she’s a vampire
-A girl keeps hearing something in the cellar begging her for help. It turns out to be some mummified creature that drags her under the floor and that it had meant “help” as in “I’m hungry”
-SHADOWS COME TO LIFE AND KILL PEOPLE. There’s this big scene at the end where the latest victim family is desperately trying to light matches to keep the shadows away.

145F: Alien cube steals knowledge (Solved)

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I read this in the late 80’s / early 90’s.  A girl discovers that her friends are using a cube like device that when activated sends them on adventures. The only adventure I remember is all of them being shrunk and swimming in a pool of spilled soda.   But with each use, they lose more of their knowledge and start using other words because they can’t remember the actual one-in one case saying “Hitchcock” instead of ketchup.   The girl finds out through her dreams(?) that the device has been sent from another world by a queen who’s already drained all of her subjects of all their knowledge.   I remember the cover was mainly black with the girl looking into a light. 

145C: Horror story Collection (solved)

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This was a collection of short horror stories I read in the early 90s. The version I read was hardcover with an illustration of leaves swirling down a hallway. Here’s what else I remember: 

1. A boy who hates raking leaves is attacked by them

2. A depressed girl meets a giant talking rabbit who also plays the fiddle

3. A girl babysits twins with a complicated ritual that they say keeps monsters from eating them. The babysitter is saved from an intruder by these monsters because he didn’t know the ritual and she did. 

4. A boy writes a screenplay about defeating brain-eating alien mosquitoes.  Later it turns out that the studio executive he gave the screenplay to is a brain-eating alien mosquito!

 5. A young boy who’s desperately trying to lose weight keeps fantasizing about his favorite junk cereal. Then there’s a scene where I think a Thanksgiving turkey comes to life? But mainly he just really wants that cereal.

145B: Vegetarian Meals Embarrass Girl (solved)

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A girl in middle(?) school finds out that her mother has become vegetarian during the summer and wants her to do the same. The kid is so embarrassed by the new style of lunches her mom makes that she starts eating under the bleachers.   People start eating with her because she tells them that she’s part of a club, and they all eventually have dinner at her house and the girl decides that she’s not embarrassed anymore.   A few days later, her mom (who the girl describes as changing her mind frequently) decides that she wants to start eating meat again. The girl gets upset because she’d just started getting used to things. She and her mom discuss this and decide that from now on the girl can mostly choose her own meals. 

145A: Unicorn History (solved)

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This was a book read in the late 80s which presented the unicorn as history instead of myth. The drawings were in brown and white and done to look as though they were very old.   The basis of the book was the unicorn as an angelic creature, and one of the stories described it fighting demons disguised as dragons.   I’ve already checked the books of Bruce Coville and Jane Yolen – nothing. 

 

144I: Cabbage air freshener and a magical world?

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YA or kids’ book, fantasy or magical realism.  Protagonist is a young girl.  She gets sent to the store to buy something with a wick — either an air freshener or a candle?  The one she buys is the last on the shelf, it’s in a dented can, and it smells like something you wouldn’t want air freshener to smell like.  I think it’s either cabbages or broccoli.  It’s also magical, and either gives her access to a magical world or brings her a friend/companion from a magical world.  That’s all in the book’s set-up, like in the first chapter.  No idea what happens from there.

 

144D: Apprentice Witch summons frog-like helper (solved)

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Checked out of the library in the early 80s.
Hardback, tan cover with a cauldron on the front, green smoke coming out of the caldron and wrapping around the back.
An apprentice witch’s mistress is accused of some crime by other witches and taken away. The apprentice tries to find the real culprit. She is able to summon a frog-like helper who knows what is going on. Froggie at first cannot answer her questions, but hints broadly. She finds the next part of the spell and he is able to answer “yes” or “no”. Then she finds the last part and he can give full answers. (There is a wand or a book involved, I think)? If I’m not getting this confused with a different book, at some point she allies herself with two children from the circus who are trapeze artists.

 

144B: 1950’s YA boy & dad visit Abe Lincoln sites

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I Have been looking for over 50 years for a book I read during the late 50’s, most likely an offering from from the Weekly Reader’s Book Club or some other monthly book club of the era.

My hazy memory is that a boy and his dad (perhaps whole family), visit Lincoln’s birth site, etc., on some kind of vacation or road trip. Another book in this club was No Children, No Pets. Help! This is a chapter book.