Category Archives: Status

358A: Object Found in Attic Makes Inanimate Objects Come to Life

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I hope you can help me figure this out. I don’t remember much except it involved several siblings who find an object in the attic of their relative (aunt, grandparent, unsure) that brings inanimate objects to life – one was a lion skin rug, I think. The object might have been an orb but honestly I could be confusing it with Eilonwy’s ball from The Black Cauldron.
I do remember one of the characters talking about being able to make a wish on a piebald horse if you didn’t remember that you could make a wish. Does this ring any bells? I hope you can help.

357Y: 1980’s young reader fiction set in Boston

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I am trying to find the name of a book I read in 5th grade in 1983-84. It was a chapter book about a young girl whose family (just her and her parents) had to move, I think, because of one parent’s job change. She tries to prevent the move by demanding her parents find her a bedroom in a tower, and to her chagrin, they succeed. I don’t know that the book actually names Boston as the move destination, but looking back the girl clearly moved to the Back Bay area in Boston. There she befriended a group of loners, oddballs and outcasts. One of them is called Gertrudestein (one word) in the book. She is an older divorced woman who left her husband Lloyd because she could not bear his insistence that his name be pronounced “yoyd.” The young girl and a friend (maybe a similar-aged boy) decide to steal a swan boat in the middle of the night to take their menagerie of friends, who for various reasons are socially unacceptable as riders during the daytime, on a ride. A decent portion of the story is spent planning the heist.
I have a daughter in 5th grade myself now and am so desperate to find and share this book with her!

357X: Cat Gets Lost, Travels World

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The book I remember is a children’s book.  I think the cover showed the cat sitting in front of the Taj Mahal.

The cat eventually found its owners.

The book is not “Pooni at the Taj Mahal,” “Lost Cat,” Lost and Found Cat,” or “The Cat Who Found his Way Home.”

The cat may have been white or yellow.  I read it in between 1983 and 1993.

357W: Racy novel set in 1960s in Fashion Industry

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I read this novel in the early 90s. It had a mostly white cover, possibly with a woman decked out in white fur. Here’s what I remember:
— Novel is set in the 1960’s and in the fashion industry.
— Main character was traumatized when, as a child,  she saw her mother, Coral, having sex and thereafter had a lot of problems.
— Her best friend is overweight, marries a drug addict named Alastair. She is also a fashion designer I think, in the style of Mary Quant.
— Coral, her mother, is a magazine editor I believe and nearly dies in a fire.
— Set in London and New York
— Potboiler type novel. Possibly with the word White in the title but maybe not … could just be confusing it because the cover was white.

357V: Traveling between the realms

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It’s been bugging me for a while. This is a young adult book from my childhood likely read between 2006 and 2010 from my school library.
It’s a fantasy book and the cover has flames on it with (I think) electric blue writing on it (like literal lightning font).
My very rough description: there’s a group of people traveling between realms (sort of like heaven and hell).
I’m so sorry that’s all I have!

357U: Children’s Book with Blue Shoe or Boot on Cover

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Looking for a vintage children’s book that has a blue shoe or boot on the cover.  The story is based on the “There Was an Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe” nursery rhyme.  However, in this version the woman is nice and gives the children supper stew, not broth without bread.  It was published before 1980 but the exact date is unknown.  Please help identify this book!  Thanks!

357T: Three Interwoven Rings

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Would you please help me find this book?

The main character (could have been a girl) and a father who traveled to far off places or jungles a lot brought home a wooden crate and inside was a seraph. And it was in the attic or the main character played in the attic. Maybe someone was sick or dying in the hospital throughout the book. At the end something about three interconnected or interwoven rings.

I checked it out from a middle school library in the 1980s. It would’ve been a newer looking book at the time. That’s all I can remember.

357S: NOT “Iron Duke”

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Around 1952–54, I read just about every John R. Tunis baseball book I could find. Then, having exhausted Mr. Tunis’s baseball output, I checked a football book out of the library. All these years, I have thought Tunis wrote it, and that its title was Iron Duke. Now I suspect both memories are wrong because …

A) I see no such book by Tunis.
B) Iron Duke appears to be about track.
So here is what I think I do remember correctly about the book I’d like to find:
Unlike all the baseball books I had read, the one I am seeking was written in first person. The narrator is some sort of recruiter of football talent for a college. He hears about a big, strong player in a backwoods part of the country, such as rural Pennsylvania, and goes to scout him. With questions about whether the player can fit into a collegiate environment, the narrator of the story takes a chance on the kid. (Maybe he doesn’t even have proper shoes.)
Do you see where this is going? The rube blossoms as a player and person and turns out to have a brilliant football mind, often figuring out, for example, based on the way the offensive players line up, what sort of play they are going to run.
I had settled on the football book out of desperation, and wound up loving it. But now I don’t know who wrote the book or if the title was in any way similar to Iron Duke.
Given that my clues are skimpy––and that what I had always thought I’d remembered clearly seems to be incorrect––you have your work cut out for you.