Category Archives: Solved

346S: The no where land – Abstract Menace Engulfs World (Solved!)

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The book opens with a team of emergency responders in a bar. Suddenly an alarm goes off, which is a shock – this normally doesn’t happen. Their work is to contain something abstract that has become very physical (e.g. “nothingness”) that threatens to engulf the land/world and is the result of some sort of corporate greed in the past. There are large pipes that contain the menace. This assignment doesn’t go as planned and the protagonist (a man) embarks on a harrowing journey.  Later in the journey some outside group/nation that seemed vaguely Middle Eastern comes to help. A new order is established with things very different as a result of the abstract threat.
The title is something like “the no where land” or “the nothing world”. I would guess that the book was written in the last 15 years by a man. It is sci-fi / fantasy but the laws of reality within the book are constantly changing and it’s a real mind bender.

346R: Medieval prince feigning illness (Solved!)

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Looking for a children’s picture book from the 1970s. It was about a prince trying to get out of something. He draws red spots on his face to pretend to be ill. It’s set in medieval times, as he wore tights and those pointy slippers/shoes that turn up at the ends. That illustration or the cover was purple. Hardcover, portrait and about 8x10” or letter size. Might be British.

346Q: Fairy brings clay animals to life (Solved!)

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American book published some time around 1930 about a little blond boy on a farm. The farm animals were all his friends. One day there was a storm and all his animals were carried away and he was heartbroken. He went down to a stream and started making little animals out of clay in the shape of the animals he had lost. He fell asleep and a fairy who was riding around on a throne made of pink clouds saw him and had pity on him and used her magic wand to bring the animals to life. The book was illustrated in color and the title might have included something like Happy Valley Farm or Sunny Valley Farm.

346P: Teen Mystery Centered Around a Library (Solved!)

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It’s set in a small town where the main girl is a young teen/pre-teen and she lives with her grandparents and her uncle who is younger than her and is basically her little brother. They go to the library in town (the mystery of the book is centered around the library) and the library has a large mural of Andrew Carnegie burning in hell because the town hated him and refused one of his Libraries and built their own with a big “f you” to him in it.

346G: Stuffed Bunny Feels Replaced by Stuffed Bear (Solved!)

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There was a children’s book about a little girl with a bunny stuffed animal, the girl gets a new stuffed animal, a bear I think. The bunny feels replaced and tries to run away and ends up falling in the bathtub. I think it gets powder or something on it. It’s found and cleaned up and the girl has room to love for both stuffed animals in the end.

345U: Virgin Islands young adult mystery (Solved!)

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I am searching for a young adult mystery that was set in the Virgin Islands.  The protagonist, a young woman, receives a message from her father on an alphabet shell.  I think it was her father, who is a doctor, and who has been abandoned on an island.
Please help me.  This book was a seminal influence on my desire to live on islands. I now live in Manhattan.

345H: The Perfect Shot (Solved!)

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My grandson remembers a book he wants to read again. He’s 26 and thinks he was around ten when I read it to him. Setting is Africa in the bush and the whole “journey/goal” is leading toward this main character “hunting" down a tiger and getting the “perfect shot”. At the end the hunter turns out to be a photographer and what an ending that was - the tension in the library was so high when I read that story. So I’m glad my grandson remembers that book.

I was a librarian in a pre-school through 3rd grade school and I bought it for our library so that would be between 1995 and 2005 but that doesn’t mean it was a new book at that time. I often bought used books from some big online store in Portland as we were just learning how to “Google” items like that way back then 🙂

345G: “A place…” book for a Brit (Solved!)

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I am in desperate search of a book for my dear British friend. She grew up in Suffolk, England, born in 1958, and remembers a book she used to pour over as a girl:
Possible title: A Place of Your Own
Contents: pictures and descriptions of homes, rooms, treehouses and places where children (and maybe young adults) escape to be kids
Publication Dates: at least published by 1972
Location: read in Suffolk, England

345A: Geometric Mood Diary (Solved!)

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I have been searching for a book for a few years now without much success. I read it between the ages of 7-10 (I am 43), it was a chapter book in a diary format, the cover was black and white (maybe speckled?) and each diary entry had some sort of drawing — I want to say a geometric pattern to describe the mood of the entry. That is all i remember, besides the fact that I loved the book and continually checked it out from the 79th street public library in NYC.