Category Archives: Solved

362U: 1980s British teens in love novel (Solved!)

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1980s British novel about working-class teens in love
I think the title was the names of the two characters, like “Frankie & Tina” (but not that.) (But “Tina” might be right.)

The novel was for adults, but it was about teenagers, and I read it as an American child in the early to mid 1980s. It was about two working-class teens coming of age who fall in love. It may have been an interracial romance, or possibly the girl on the cover just had darker skin in the drawing. I think they got married. They may have also had a baby. I think there was a lot of dialect or slang. It was a bit gritty and had vivid detail about their jobs and things like that, but it was pretty cheerful, not like a “kitchen sink” drama. It could have been an earlier book reprinted in the ’80s and I’m starting to think it could have been a British reprint of an Australian book. Basically starting to overthink everything. It is not the Kevin & Sadie series or Oscar & Lucinda.
The cover was a crayon-style drawing of the two characters. The way I remember it, it had a dark blue background on the cover and an orange spine. This makes me think Penguin (but not one the series that all have the same covers.) The cover art had very similar style to these covers:

362P: Pets Hold Surprise Birthday Party for Woman (Solved!)

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I have been looking for a book that was very important to me as a child that I lent to a friend and never was returned. It was about an older woman who lived alone with her pets , basically a picture book, the cover was a nighttime picture I believe of her house from a distance , as she was coming home to her animals , who had made her a birthday party to surprise her. It may have been called something like ‘the birthday party’, but I completely forget. I have been looking for many years for this book. No hits wherever I have searched, have tried all titles I could think of. Anyone? Probably 1950s.

362F: Daughter Schemes for Piano from Estate (Solved!)

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I am looking for a book that my mother-in-law was reading in the late 60s early 70s. It is a book based in San Francisco.
From what she remembers it is a story about a mother or a family member like a dad who dies. The daughters need to split up the estate.
They start in her house on the top floor.They are assigned an order that they must keep the entire time. One of the daughters desperately wants the piano which is on the bottom floor. Each of them takes a turn. The daughter who wants the piano is constantly negotiating with the other two sisters. She’s making side deals with them by telling them that she’ll get this item but she’ll trade it for the piano.
My mother-in-law never read the end of the book. She went to a wedding and she left the book in the hotel. So she never found out what happened at the end and if the daughter was successful in getting the piano.

362E: Wandering Through the Nursery Rhymes (Solved!)

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I’m looking for a children’s book that my partner used to have 30 years ago – she possibly even got it from her mother.
It’s a story that follows a boy on a journey through nursery rhymes – he goes on a walk and meets various nursery rhyme characters on the way. She can definitely remember him meeting Humpty Dumpty and she remembers at some point the boy visits a petrol station. The book is very well illustrated apparently and she thinks the cover may have been green but she’s not 100 percent certain on that.

362D: Appalachian Storm (Solved!)

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I’m looking for a beautifully illustrated children’s book, I *think* was called ‘Come a Flood’. It was set in I believe, the Appalachian mountains, and was written in that vernacular, about a coming rainstorm, that the grandma was forecasting, from the perspective of the damage it would cause to their farm, and the “holler”. Oddly, it was funny, and very cute, and neither of those qualities would come through, minus the illustrations. I came across the book in the early 2000’s, and feel in love, but couldn’t buy it, then – and haven’t seen it, since. I don’t know if it was a first edition, or a reprint.

I sincerely hope you can help me find it, so I’ll be able to read it to my grandchildren, someday…
Thank you!

361V: The Ungrateful Princess (Solved!)

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I don’t remember the name or author. I had this book as a child in the late 90s-early 2000s but it could be older. It had really beautiful illustrations with a cut paper kind of vibe? It was about a spoiled, selfish girl, maybe a princess. She drained all the water from a fountain and killed all the fish. And there was some kind of ceremony to find her a husband but she rejected all the gifts and was rude and she was sent away. She found a unicorn in a thorn bush and rescued him even though she got pricked by the thorns and tore her dress to bandage the unicorn’s leg and then she learned her lesson about being a jerk.

361Q: Pig Not as Knowledgeable About Human Objects as He Appears (Solved!)

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I’m looking for a book that I can’t remember the title, author, or illustrator of. I believe it was a collection of children’s stories with different contributors. I know for sure that one of the stories involved a group of animals finding a pencil. They’re all very confused by the pencil, so they take it to their friend the pig, who they believe is very knowledgeable about human matters because he wears a suit jacket and maybe a hat. But he puts the pencil on his snout, and is eventually corrected about the true use of the pencil by another animal who writes with it instead.
This collection or another in the series may have also involved two animal friends meeting for lunch, and one of the animals having a robot that serves them lunch. The robot malfunctions and keeps saying “More lunch!” and serving food that they can’t eat.
If I had to guess, I’d say it was published probably somewhere between 1980-2000.

361E: Boy lives in lighthouse, has AI companion, fights elemental monsters (Solved!)

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This is a children’s series
Boy lives in lighthouse with an AI companion who designs all-terrain ships/vehicles. Boy uses advanced technology mods to fight elemental monsters. There was a secret base underneath, and the main character fights elemental monsters that occur beyond the borders of human habitation. the areas are separated into the prime elements such as water, earth, air and fire along with mixed elements such as mud and lava.
My son was reading this at school in 2010/2011 and waiting for new publications at this time. He has confirmed that it is not ’The Edge’ series or ‘Monsters of the Earth’.