Category Archives: Solved

334O: Orphans adopted by sadistic older couple (Solved!)

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I read a YA series of (I believe 3 books) in the 1980's about 3 children who were orphaned and sent to live with an older couple off of the eastern US coast in a large mansion (perhaps Maine).  The children were regularly subjected to gaslighting and emotional abuse.  No adult believed them until the end of the very last book because the couple was so well regarded in the town.   There was a cliff near the house where the tide came in very quickly and that played into the books very frequently.

334E: Argyle Socks For Birds Unravels Business Plans (Solved!)

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This is an illustrated children’s book about a little Scottish boy (possibly named Angus) who makes friends with a sparrow in the winter. The boy’s family owns an argyle sock factory. The poor little sparrow is so cold outside in the winter, it sits shivering on a tree branch, switching from one foot to another in an attempt to stay warm. The little boy has the “perfect” solution to this problem: make his little bird friend a wee pair of argyle socks.

Well, the little sparrow is so chuffed about his own new cozy warm socks, he goes to the other birds in the trees to show them off. Soon, all the birds think they too should have a pair of lovely warm argyle socks, and so either the boy or the bird decides to go into the factory (full of huge spools of wool yarn), and make thousands of pairs of wee birdie socks.

In the morning, the boy’s family comes to work, but alas, there is no more yarn left for their business. They will be ruined! So, feeling bad for taking advantage of the little boy’s kindness, all the birds unravel their socks, and reassemble the giant spools of yarn. The factory is saved! Afterwards, the birds get to live in the factory rafters, where they are always warm, and don’t need socks.

The book may have originally been brought back by a relative from the UK (they’ve since passed), but it was read in Kentucky if that helps pinpoint the origin.

Thank you for your help.

334B: Teen romance, wheelchair, wheelchair basketball (Solved!)

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Read this the summer of '72 in Santa Maria, California. It was a library book. A girl in a wheelchair and her older sister are shopping and the chair gets 2 flat tires. A young guy (ex-Army, I think) with a prosthetic leg helps them get home. He and the older sister date, but he steps on her foot as they dance. He plays wheelchair basketball, his chair tips and he's standing upright for a second, then face-plants and everyone laughs. I know this isn't much to go on, but it's all I've got.

334A: High school romance, heirloom chickens (Solved!)

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I read it sometime in the early 70's. All I remember is that a girl is in science class and the teacher is talking about how certain breeds of chickens are gone because they've been cross-bred out of existence. The next day, a male student brings in cages filled with the birds that the teacher said were extinct. The girl is impressed by the boy and asks to see more.

333Z: Australian Teenager on the Road, Searching for Biological Mother (Solved!)

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In the first half of 2002, I got most of the way through a self-contained YA mystery series. I think there were ten books in total, each about 100-120 pages, probably published recently. I was attending a Canadian high school at the time and discovered the series while volunteering at another school’s library. I read all but the last one (I suspect the school year ended before I had a chance to borrow that one). I’d like to know how the series concluded, but every attempt I’ve made at finding these books online has hit a dead end. I either find nothing, or I find an earlier online description of the series that I wrote in 2015.
The protagonist is a young woman from Australia (as I recall), about sixteen, named something like Blake or Blaine. The series has her name in the title along the lines of ‘The Blake Journals’ or ‘The Blaine Files’ or the like. The first volume opens with her leaving home in a carefully thought-out plan to run away. She disappears in the middle of the night, grabs her possessions, and takes to the road on some kind of motor scooter or moped. We eventually learn that her goal is to locate her biological mother, who vanished years ago. As I recall, there’s very little in terms of action-adventure: this is more about a quiet and painstaking solo quest.
The books’ cover images were nearly identical. They all had the series title in large yellow-and-black typography, staggered a bit for a vintage-typewriter look to convey mystery/edginess. If I had to guess, a publishing house cranked these out in a short period of time as a one-off, but clearly the series intrigued me enough that I read about 90% of it, and now I’m finding it tantalizing.

 

333Y: SciFi Plot Fragment – The Harmony and The Melody (Solved!)

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I read this book at the Boulder Library, it was written in this century (I think).
Earth humans are subjugated by a technologically superior species.  At first the foolish Earthlings (are there any other kind?) think the superior species is a bunch of evil meanies.   They come to find out that the meanies are actually helpful in protecting humans from far more pitiless and powerful adversaries, who have factions called Harmony and Melody, and when a defector from the adversary conveys information to the meanies, it is compelled to destroy itself because it’s contaminated by inferiors.

333M: Boy (Artist?) Finds Flower Fairy, Keeps it in a Glass Dome (Solved!)

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This is a book my sister checked out from our Elementary School Library when we were kids. It’s a picture book. We read it some time between 1996–’99. Absolutely no later than 2001, as we moved to a different state and elementary school that year. I would guess that the book was published in the 80s or 90s. I thought the main character was a prince because I seem to remember him being dressed in fancy medieval purple clothes, but I’m not sure. I think it was just a medieval sort of setting in the story. My sister said she thought he was an artist who was sketching throughout the story. Obviously we don’t remember those details super well. I don’t remember how much text there was because I don’t think I was able to read when my sister got it and our mom read it to us. I don’t think it was a Golden book, but I’m honestly not sure about the cover or anything more technical like that. It MIGHT have been a taller book (rectangular and long on the vertical sides). I’m pretty darn sure it was a standard length bedtime story/picture book. What I remember the most is the major plot points, so that’s what’s most important to follow.
Plot:
The boy (prince or artist) is out in a beautiful garden (I think he was trying to sketch flowers, but I’m not sure) and he finds a beautiful fairy inside a flower. I think he tries to draw her but decides to take her home so he has a better chance to do so. He keeps the fairy in his house by the window in a glass dome (just like the dome over the rose in Disney’s Beauty and the Beast) and he tries to draw her again but just isn’t able to capture her beauty. The fairy needs flowers to stay alive, so he surrounds her with vases full of beautiful flowers. I think he must have told someone about her or something because I think people from all over end up visiting to see her, and they bring flowers until the room she’s in is brimming full with flowers. (Maybe this was how he made money for a while?) One day/night when there are no visitors, he decides to try to draw the fairy again (either that or he just wants to look at her again because she’s so beautiful), and he realizes that she’s still dying despite all the tons and tons of flowers around her. He realizes that she has to be outside with the living flowers in order to remain beautiful and survive, so he decides to let her go. It was kind of a bittersweet ending, and I remember having the feeling that he would never see her again, but she would at least be alive.
Illustrations:
The illustrations in this book were stunningly beautiful. They were more on the realistic end of the scale (NOT cartoony or made of scraps of paper or anything kitschy), and I think they were maybe pastels, watercolors, or colored pencil illustrations. I remember the main boy being blonde with bangs and almost shoulder-length hair (but I could be totally wrong about that). The fairy was the kind that was long, thin, and very elegant. I think she might have been dressed in a flower or dressed in very little, if at all. I remember lots of pictures of big, brightly colored flowers like Easter lilies, day lilies, and irises, etc. I have a specific memory of a two-page spread with the boy on the far left side looking at the fairy on the right side while it’s under the glass dome and next to the window, with a few flowers around it.
We both have absolutely no idea what the text in the book looks like (I only remember pictures), and we have absolutely no clue as to the title or author, but we’ve been wanting to find it and have kept our eyes peeled for 20+ years, so any help would be SO appreciated. So far I really haven’t found anything that seemed even a little bit similar.

333L: Science Fiction dystopia with two AIs and renegades (Solved!)

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The book I’m searching for is:

It starts with a common man who just lived his life, but his life has started to fall into pieces. He has two children with his wife, but as requested the children are genetically enhanced and have extremely high IQs. They have left their parents willingly for a special school, and they were even before that not much child-like.

This drove his wife into insanity (or into alcoholism/drugs). On his way home, he finds a body near their apartment and he is afraid of getting convicted for the murder, because he was the first one who is seen by the body.

Later, his wife is executed for the murder, without a trial. She is put to death in a public arena with a laser. (But I think her husband didn’t know this. He isn’t informed. To him, she just has disappeared.)

With his life torn apart, he starts running and on some days he even runs outside the city.

— The whole population lives in cities and most are dependent on a social allowance of some kind of nutrition bars from a local food bank … that are sometimes – whoops – poisonous. Being outside of a city is counted as suspicious behavior. Everything is controlled by a big AI. —

He encounters kind of a resistance to the government outside the city and he joins them, eventually. In German the resistance is called “Renegaten” so maybe the original term is “renegades”.

The resistance owns a big AI, too and during the endgame their AI fights the government AI. I remember the scene in which the renegade AI bids farewell to the main protagonist.

I can’t remember how the book ended but I think the renegade AI ‘died’.