This was about a teen (18?) from Colorado who moves to Florida to be the live-in nanny for a young boy with rich parents. The boy is very intelligent and begins killing people using his inventions. Eventually he’s eaten by an alligator while trying to kill the girl in a swamp.
late 80’s-“we didn’t see London, we didn’t see France, but lucky us, we saw Iggy’s underpants”!
That’s basically all I remember about this book in which a grade-school boy is continually harassed by a female classmate. (The above was one of the things she said to him)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
This is the second of two books I read in elementary school more than 50 years ago, circa 1960. (I describe the first one in the “A Salmon’s Life Story” stumper.) They connected me with thoughts and feelings way beyond my tender years. I’ve never forgotten either one and would love to read them again.
This book was about a rabbit whom I’m fairly sure was a farmer. Early in the book he ignores a neighbor farmer who happened to be a skunk, because one simply doesn’t talk to skunks. Once shipwrecked, he has time to reflect on his life and realizes he had been wrong to snub his neighbor. The sentence that sticks in my memory is “he wished he had been kinder to the skunk,” or words to that effect. I’ve included a sketch of what I seem to remember the rabbit looked like – very sketchily drawn, very little facial expression.
The rabbit stood upright and wore only pants which I believe were solid black. (It’s possible I might be remembering a rabbit from an entirely different book, but I’m fairly sure he’s in the one I’m seeking.)
This was more than a half century ago, but I’ve never forgotten either of these two books. If I’ve grown into any kind of thoughtful person, they definitely helped point me in that direction.
Thank you!
children’s book from the mid to late 70’s about a sea turtle that is rescued by a child. The child names the turtle nicky due to knicks on it’s fins or shell, nurses the turtle to health and helps it back to the sea.