Category Archives: Status

336Y: Pioneer Girl Loses Locket, Then Family, Then Works Her Way To New Home (Solved!)

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This book was one I read in maybe elementary or middle school (between 2000-2006) that I have been unable to find anything about for years. I’ve googled every detail I remember, called libraries and purchased books online that I thought might be it only to be disappointed.

The books cover I think was beige or brown, with maybe the back of a covered wagon on it?

It starts out that the family of the girl the book is centered on is moving to settle land in maybe the west? I assume they are settlers or pioneers. They are going to a big wooded area to build a log cabin. She has a little brother or possibly little sister.

Before they depart, the girl’s grandmother gives her a locket with a piece of her hair in it to take along with her. I remember the hair maybe being brown or gold and the grandmother joking her hair had not always been silver. They leave and along the way they stop at an inn/tavern? Some men try to mug or harass them and the little girl’s braids are tugged by these men hard enough to hurt. That night she was so upset about this that she took a pocketknife and sawed them right off at the base. Her hair was very short after doing it. Her mother is very upset when she wakes up to discover this and smooths them out on her lap. Her younger sibling remarks they looked like maple syrup? I could be falsely remembering that. The father was very angry, thinking those men had done this to his daughter in the dead of night. The girl admits it was her, though.

They leave this area and somewhere along the way it starts to storm horribly. The children are in the back of the covered wagon resting. The younger sibling is asleep and somehow the girl’s locket falls off the wagon. I distinctly remember her hopping off the wagon and it explaining she concentrated very hard to visualize where she saw it fall. She plunged her hand into a puddle and felt something cold, her locket! She found it and tried to run to catch up to the wagon, but could not for whatever reason. The storm was too loud for her family to hear her shouting to them, so she was left behind.

She now has to go the direction she knows her family is going and find them. The rest of the book describes her journey.

At one point, she finds her way to another inn where she begs for food. The owner is a woman who makes her work for her food, clearing the tables. When she is done, the innkeeper sits down with the little girl and watches her eat the scraps and leftovers. She is allowed to stay so long as she works. There are two? other girls staying there as well. They make fun of her short hair calling her “fuzzy” as a mean nickname. One night she has trouble getting to sleep and somehow sloshes pickle juice onto her clothes. The other girls kick her out of bed because she stinks, so she gets up and leaves.

Along the way she is walking through a wood and encounters a hunter? who she is afraid of. The hunter realizes this and starts to tell a story or sing so that she comes out and comes to him. He remarks he thought she was a little boy. The man is kind and helps her find her way. It’s blurry here, but he either helps her find a sign to follow or he helps her all the way to her family. When they get close to her family, she observes the trees are all cut from the very tops. Someone explains that they were cutting the trees down and cutting off the narrow part on the top and when they do that, the trees base is so heavy it ends up standing back up by itself with a loud “thump”? Sounds weird so don’t take this detail to heart.

She does find her family eventually and its great and her father has already begun work on their cabin. They celebrate with new neighbors and family. There is dancing and everything. The mother ties a ribbon in her daughter’s short hair and runs her fingers through it, remarking on how there was a natural curl to it. I think the girl dances with the hunter that helped her? and that’s the end of what I remember.

I think maybe there might be “home” or “journey” in the title but I have expanded beyond that.

It is a lot of info but I have dug and dug and I haven’t found anything for this book. I know more of what book it is NOT than I do about what it is. I’ve looked over every archive of ‘pioneer’, ‘covered wagon’, and ‘Oregon trail’ on the internet.

It is none of the little house books, it is NOT Ellie by Dean Cummings. This was the closest I could find to it and bought it because there was no summary of the book online. It is not Painted Sky, not Sarah Plain and Tall. It is not Pioneer Girl. I’ve looked at the Dear/My America books and it doesn’t seem to be any of those. I’m super stuck on this.

Thanks for any help!

336X: Wild 3-D Mazes

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I have been looking for a book I had as a child, it was like a 3-D maze book that had the wildest maze designs, like vacuum cleaners, factory belts, and so on…I thought it was David Macaulay but, have had no luck…wish I could remember what it was…if I saw the cover I could possibly point it out..

336W: The Apple Family

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I don’t know the title of the book or the author, but I believe it was probably a chapter book I would’ve read when age 10-14? Our library’s copy had a well worn green cover. It was about a family and they all had apple names, I think, like Granny Smith and Jonathon, etc. I think they were actually apples, rather than people? I know that is very little to go on! I would have been those ages from 1968-1972 and I think it was an older book then. I can still remember the feel of it in my hands, as I checked it out over and over.

336V: Funny Dragon-ish creature (Kaz?)

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I think the book was to be one of a series, but I only read the first one. It was set in a land with a limited map, like a world within a land, and the people who lived in the land where unaware of the wider world.

There was a red dragon or lizard named Jaz or Baz or Kaz who was funny and the best friend of the human, who I believe was female.

The cover had the lizard-type creature perched on a roadside boulder, with the road winding down a hill and maybe clouds around the edges.
I believe I read it in the 90’s or 00’s

 In addition, my son says this:
Kaz is the name of the dragon for sure. The land is separated by walls, and one or some start breaking down and that’s the main conflict. Later they find out that the world is set up that way because of fantasy space computers.

336U: Space Cruise In Nice Fit Body Goes Awry

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There is a science fiction novel I read in the 1980's, and I think it was a new title in that decade, although I am not certain about that. It was the story of a fat guy who had saved for a luxury space cruise vacation and had rented a sexy, fit body to occupy for his trip. After boarding the cruise ship, he discovered the body he was given by accident was a special combat model, and people thought he was someone else. They were chasing him to interrogate and/or kill him, and he had to rely upon the combat reflexes of the rented body to keep him alive, while trying to figure out what was going on.

336R: Large painted picture book with little people at war in forest (Solved!)

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I read this book in the 80’s in my elementary school library. Large, detailed paintings, rendered realistically, of little cartoon-ish humanoid people dressed in WWI type clothes and gear. They lived and fought in the forest and used animals as we would use machines. I remember the pictures always showing both sides trying to get the upper hand on one another in each picture, and one wore WWI German type gear, while the other side wore British.
One picture was a guy riding a sparrow, dressed as a fighter ace, the sparrow having a intricate harness to hold the rider and two maxim machine guns mounted to its back. He is looking behind him, or below at the opposing Sparrow pilot.

I have included sketches of what I remember.

336Q: Brigands

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I wish I had something more for hints, but this query comes for a book I believe was published in the 1930’s.  Had it been in the 1940’s I would have been able to read it myself, and I don’t think I ever could.
It was hard backed but not more that a half-inch thick, all black and white.  Illustrations included stick figures or possibly pear-shaped bodies (inverted?) with stick arms and legs.  These figures or characters were called “Brigands” and were bad.  I have no idea what the title may be.
There seem to have been two stories in the book.  It’s possible one was “Ferdinand the Bull,” but that may be a merged memory.
That’s all I’ve got and I really don’t expect anything.  You’d have to be older than I am with a marvelous memory.

336P: Girl with tangled hair and a fat uncle barefoot in a mudpuddle (Solved!)

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Seeking a children’s book about a slight girl with very long, slightly tangled dark hair, illustrated in realistic colored pencil, maybe?  On one page, there is a very affable, very fat uncle-type character, with his trousers rolled up, no socks or shoes on, and he’s in a stream or a mud puddle.  I feel like the girl has to be patient with her uncle(s) because he/they are very scatterbrained.