Category Archives: MG (grades 2-6)

113B: Brother and sister find magic item – 2 books

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I remember reading two books by the same author one summer when I was about 10 to 12 (I was born in 68.)  I think there was a brother and a sister who may have been staying at an old house with a grandfather or uncle and they find some sort of magic item.  There may have been a magic genie involved.  Not sure.    I do distinctly remember one scene from one of the books and the brother, I believe, is caught in a large bubble and travels either to another place (the desert maybe) or travels to another time.  The other book by same author was similar but not sure if it contained the same characters.  Seems like covers were similar but with slight variations.  May have had a house on the front. 

112F: Children’s Outdoor How-To Book

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Children’s Outdoor How-To Book

I remember a book about a boy (possibly with his brother) and a group of friends who built all sorts of outdoor things to defend their farm & woods against a rival group of neighborhood kids.  The book alternated between the story and very detailed instructions & plans how to build the items.  

The few items I remember they built were a tree platform, a sailboat & slingshots (I think). 

The ending culminated with an apple-throwing battle and boy and his friends being victorious from all the items they had built.  

Book was paperback with black and white illustrations.  It was a rather large book and I the copy I had (lost to time) was in the mid-to-late 70’s

112B: Girl Befriends Boy Who Is Ultimately Murdered

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I must have read this book when I was in 3rd-5th grade, so it would have to be published prior to 1980. Parts of the plot I can recall is a young girl goes away from home, I think she goes to the south or was from the south, and she was probably 10-12 years old, meets a boy that is a little older than she is, and she befriends him, but he ultimately gets killed by some mean boys who drag him to his death with a car I believe. I think it takes place over the summer, because I don’t recall any school parts.

112A, solved: Girl’s father falls in love with witch, girl tries to prove/stop it

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I read a paperback book from my junior high school library in 1989. It’s about a girl and her father meets a pretty woman who has a son or daughter too (can’t remember who moved into the area or how they meet). The youngsters become friends. The father falls in love with the woman, but the girl gets suspicious of her – she notices that the woman is a bit strange. She discovers photos of her looking exactly the same in past decades. She finds out the woman is a witch and does not age, the witch’s son or daughter doesn’t either.  The witch had been dating, marrying, and killing the husbands after a few years because they see that the woman and kid stay young. The girl tries to prove to her father that he is in danger and tries to stop him from marrying her. I think the book is set in either the south or in New England, I remember fog and time playing a role in the story.

109C: Mysteries About Haunted/Spooky Cases

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Thanks in advance for any guidance you can offer here. For years I have been trying to remember the name of the chapter books I borrowed from my local library in the mid to late 80’s.  I remember loving them tremendously, but now only give you the vaguest details. Which are…

A boy who for some reason I want to call Harry or Peter or William and an older man who I want to call Professor go around solving haunted/spooky cases. My mind wants to call it Harry And the Haunted Knight, but no amount of googling brings that up.  The main thing I remember, and I know this is reaching, is that they in every book there would be these glorious descriptions of the two of them slurping down these most delicious sounding gooey desserts. It was one of the authors main identifying characteristics, those wonderful descriptions of the two of them eating the most amazing desserts.

I realize that this is probably a long shot, but I did want to try you and see if it called anything to mind. I would love to read them to my boy when he’s old enough.

Your site is truly wonderful.

109A: Leonardo DaVinci Time Traveler

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I read a book when I was maybe in sixth grade where the group of friends live in the future or something and there are these flying metal spheres chasing them on the cover, I think. The school bully goes back in time with them or something and he ends up getting stuck there and when they return they deduce that he went on to become Leonardo DaVinci because of his knowledge of the future. I cannot think of this book.

108B: Pigtails with Ribbons

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This book I remember reading in grade school.  The main character was a young girl who liked to have her hair in pigtails and she kept her ribbons for them all organized in the closet.She had red hair and freckles.  Maybe her name was Mandy?. I think she was dyslexic she described letters moving around.  She had a baseball alarm clock that she could throw to turn it off.  I know she was worried about her schoolwork a lot cause the letters moving stuff.  It made her act out towards family and friends I think. I read this book probably in the late 80’s to early 90’s.  It was most like a book fair book, you know the ones that came every year and we could buy books.  I just remember reading it a lot and would very much like to read it again if I can find it.

106E: Polar Bear in Pants, Possibly Named Victor (Solved)

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Published in the early to mid-80’s, perhaps. It was my absolute favorite somewhere between 1986 and 1988; I remember this because I have fond memories of reading it while in the refrigerator box fort in the backyard of the house we rented during that time. It was a paperback, thirty pages or so, stylish and clever (to my young senses). I recall only a single illustration: an expressionless polar bear on the second floor of a house or at the top of the landing of stairs; I could have sworn his name was “Victor” but I’ve found nothing similar about a polar bear with that name, other than the Victor Vito books, which this is not. It is also definitely a white bear (so is not Lebraun’s Little Brown Bear series or something by Frank Asch, despite similarly sparse illustrations). He was wearing (polka dotted? striped?) boxers or trousers. I’m nearly certain Alborough’s Bare Bear can’t be it because the plot (despite the reference to underwear) didn’t ring a bell at all, but one never knows. The only other thought I have is that it may be Le-Tan’s Voyage/Visit to the North Pole because his illustrations look familiar, and there’s a dog in the story named Victor, but I can’t find copies of either book at any of our local libraries or a cheap enough edition to risk being incorrect.