Category Archives: Solved

338H: English girl falls in love with the boy next door, eventually (Solved!)

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I have been searching for a book I remembered for years and then I heard about you guys. I have no idea if you can help me because it isn’t a children’s book, but it’s worth a chance. It’s from before 2006 because I read it when I was in high school (wow!) from the library.
I believe it is set in England. The main character is a girl and she is friends with the boy next door since they were little kids. She goes to prom with a guy, has sex and ends up getting pregnant. I think she continues to live with her parents after she has the baby, which is a girl. Her friend ends up needing to move to America. They stay in contact over email. Some of the book has the reader read their conversation like an email.
Her dream is to manage a hotel one day and after working her way up the ladder, she does. I remember her describing how the chandelier looked in the hotel and how elegant and beautiful it was. Eventually, she realizes she loves the boy (now a man) next door. He has a child with someone and it was a boy. I think at the end of the book he moves back to England and their children become friends or something and I am pretty sure they end up professing their love for one another.
I look forward to seeing if you can find the book. It’s the last one from my childhood I couldn’t remember that I can’t get out of my head.

337Y: During WWI, Grumpy Old Man Befriends Teen Girl (Solved!)

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So the book is set in America in WWI around 1918 during the flu epidemic. I want to say Philadelphia or New York. The main character is a female teen or preteen. Prior to being sent to the country to escape the flu, there was a scene with the mother’s favorite tea cup boiled in milk to repair a break.
The girl is sent to live with an older man in the country. She gets sick and he has her shining vinegar as a curative. After she’s well, they collect peach pits for gas masks, knit scarves and socks for soldiers, sew gauze masks, etc for the war effort.  The old man also fries fresh donuts as a treat for him and the girl.
I know they eventually become great friends, although she thought he was scary and grumpy at first meeting.

337V: Society that enjoys watercress sandwiches (Solved!)

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I read this book in six grade in the mid-80s.  I think it was a fantasy type story.  This society had once been in contact with humans (or maybe just one human).  He may have come over the mountains on a hot air balloon.


They got a few things confused about humans.  For example, they had a painting of a tree and a diagram of a family tree (genealogy chart).  They called the genealogy chart a picture and the painting of the tree a family tree.  So everyone in this society had a very carefully tended “family tree” in their yard.  Unfortunately, I remember nothing about the actual plot.

337N: Earth History As Scenes In A Play (Solved!)

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Children's illustrated science book about earth history, in which each age (formation of the solar system, age of dinosaurs, building Egypt's pyramids, etc.) is presented as a scene on stage in a play, with curtains to the sides. Last scene is at a typical house in the present day. Might have been printed in the 1930s or 1940s, was available in a grade-school library in the late 1970s.

337D: A boy, a little good luck person, fighting roaches (Solved!)

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I read this book as a young child in my grandmother’s house so it must have been published prior to 1950 ( late 30s?- 49?)  My sister thinks it was called Piccolo, but that title brings up no hits.  It is the story of a young boy who get a little “person” good luck charm who helps him. ( I think bullying was a theme back then too!)   In one illustration the little charm person is seen in his shirt pocket when a photo is taken of the boy doing something heroic, I think.   Along the way, the little charmer meets up with a cockroach who is going to attack, but the little guy puts a sewing pin in him ( I know weird)  but they become friends with the little boy, who paints the cockroach bright colors and he becomes the leader of his group winning against his adversary because of the paint job and pin!
The good luck little person ends up leaving because the boy doesn’t need him anymore.
It was an oblong book with plain blue/grey sort of cloth cover and had “flat” illustrations.  Another illustration showed the cockroach all painted different colors.

 

337A: The Adventures of Merlin the Magician (Solved!)

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I am looking for two books from the 70’s featuring Merlin the Magician.
A little boy and his dog (Max?) go for a walk in the fog and find a store. The store is actually run by Merlin, who tries to trap the boy. The boy damages Merlin’s hat, which is the source of his power.
The boy and his dog escape, and are later unable to.find the store.
In the sequel, Merlin poses as “Auntie Nilrem” and bakes pies – all the while looking for the boy.
Illustrations were black and white with some pink for Merlin’s clothing.
I hope this helps.

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!