Category Archives: Solved

290B: A school bus that is not magical (Solved)

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Hello, this is a middle grade paperback book I read in the 1980s. It had simple black and white pen-type illustrations. (I think. It’s possible there were no illustrations.)

A professor takes a select group of kids to live for the summer in a school bus near the beach. It is not magical. Everyone gets to choose their own bunk and decorate their area.  They study nature like tide pools and write in notebooks.They have to write every day.  The professor plays the guitar and write his own lyrics.

One of the songs goes something like this:

Yes is best, but next to that is maybe.

We’ll say can sometimes grow to yes,

but when they say I doubt it, you’re on your way to no.

I don’t think so, I don’t think so,

down, down, down,

there’s no where else to go

but frown and then say no.

They make a clam pit and have a clam bake. They go visit a mansion and everyone chooses a room and picks out clothes from the closet of that room to wear to dinner. One girl wears “paper ballet slippers” to the dinner and  I have spent my entire life trying to figure out how that would work. Everyone suddenly sees her as beautiful.

There was also something about how they managed privacy and all the kids created their own outdoor “rooms” where they could be alone and undisturbed when they got over peopled.

 

290A: A young lady travels to Carmel-by-the-sea (Solved)

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I’ve been looking for the following for years with no luck. YA novel from possibly 1980-1990’s about a young lady (18ish). I cannot remember the title or main heroine name but distinctly recall her traveling to Carmel-by-the-sea and the white wicker furniture that she decorated with. Possibly summer time or just after graduation. Seems she ended up going to work for a lady in interior design. And of course there was a boy…

Possibly part of the just for girls series or similar to that. 

289J: Spaceship disaster thriller (Solved)

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[/private role="author"]Brandy Hartnett, bhartnett808@gmail.com[/private]

I read this in elementary school in the 90s. It’s more of a young adult book not a children’s book. There was a spaceship that people lived on and something happened, I think the ship got torn in half by an asteroid or a meteor or something like that. I think an asteroid/meteor field was coming their way, so everyone on the ship was supposed to evacuate to one side of the ship so they could seal off the middle in case of damage from the asteroid and a couple of kids or people got stuck on the side that everyone had evacuated from. They thought they were going to die but the side with all the people on it ended up being breached and everyone was exposed to space and died. So now the group of people or kids on the other side were alone. And all the controls for the ship had been on the side that got destroyed. So they try to figure out how to get rescued or land somewhere. I remember the end being very depressing. Their last hope of survival was to get their floating ruined spaceship close enough to the last planet that there were any people on, which I believe was Pluto, so that someone could essentially snag their spaceship. But they were too far away and the book ended with them floating off into space with the impression that they would starve to death. I always remember the book title having something to do with butterflies but I could be wrong. I remember the cover having a purple/ red magenta space swirl incorporated on it.

289D: A family of dogs (Solved)

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I am looking for a children’s book that I used to read in the late 80s/early 90s at my public library in Merrick, NY.  It was about a family of dogs. I believe the main character is a male dog named Sammie or Sammy.  His mother dog is feeling ill, so his brother dog takes care of feeding him breakfast and getting him off to school. However, he is so used to the way his mother does everything that, when his brother tries to do things for him, he often replies that “Mommy doesn’t do it like that.”

288F: Boy in pajamas chases illusory tiger (Solved)

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I’m looking for a children’s book I read in the late 80’s. From what I can remember it was about a boy in pajamas that is chasing a tiger or other large cat, but pretty sure it wasn’t a lion, I don’t remember a mane. The tiger was hidden on every page, in the background such as hidden as a pattern of stars in the night sky, a symbol on the border of a tent, or made of vines. As far as the setting I believe it was in the boys’ dreams. The book had a very surreal feel to it, and the book was filled with illusions. These illusions made a thing look like another, like a strongman made entirely of things from the sea, like seashells, crabs, etc. Here’s an example of the type of illusions I remember in the book

They do visit a circus at one point, because I seem to remember one page outside the circus tent, and possibly one more. But the book wasn’t entirely centered around the circus, it felt like they were just passing through. The circus is a google trap though, there are lots of kids book involving the circus and a tiger, and I haven’t found one yet that matches what I remember. The book is definitely not I Spy A Tiger, Heart of A Tiger, Riding the Tiger, A Lion in the Meadow, A Tiger Took Me to the Circus, It’s a Tiger, or Come the Terrible Tiger. Please help! I’ve spent hours searching on the internet, but I keep getting nothing.

288E: Ragamuffins and a talking cat (Solved)

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I remember my mother reading aloud to us a chapter book (in the early 1960s) about a group of children called Ragamuffins (maybe just four children). They meet a talking cat named Pouffon (that is how she pronounced the name; I don’t know how it is spelled). Each time the cat speaks though, it loses one of it’s special whiskers, or it’s whiskers changes back to a normal color. It was very sad when the cat spoke for the last time, to help the children, since the cat only had one special whisker left. I think the book is probably a literary award winning book, since my mother made sure we read all of the Newberry and Caldecott Award winning books. I hope it is still in print. I think the book had a navy blue cover, (hardback), and maybe a line drawing at the start of each chapter. It may have been published much earlier than the 60s. It was probably a library book, and was pretty well-worn then.

 

Thank you so much for your help!

288B: The fall of the house of something (Solved)

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Title was the fall of the house of something or the fall of something It starts off with the house finally being finished and a storm coming in. Main character is a guy who is an engineer, he has just completed a house and this group of people said it would have to be destroyed because it was forbidden. He said, okay but let me have a party in it first, you can be the guests. Then the people came to the party and he shows them the robots he made to look exactly like them. The entertainment is the robots being tortured and killed in awful ways. Each person of this committee kind of disappears until only one man was left and then he realized it was the people of the committee being tortured and killed and that it was the robots who are laughing and who he had thought were the people. And he is next in line to die.

287A: Children taking things literally (solved)

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It is a children’s book that is about the way children see the world literally.  One page says: dad left his blue prints in the snow and the picture is a blue prince in the snow with blue feet prints in the snow.  Another page says: dad said mom is playing bridge and not to disturb her and the picture is a female with her head on a chair and feet on a couch and the cat walking across her like she is a bridge.  Another page says: mom said that my sister has a frog in her throats and the picture is of a little girl with a frog inside her mouth.  Another page has a little horse with clothes on and the caption is: mom said my brother is a little horse.