Category Archives: Solved

145L: Finding A Package for Andy (solved)

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I am looking for a Children’s picture book which my daughter loved in 1985, I remember the title as A Package For Andy. It is the story of a boy named Andy, who receives a gift in the mail. When he opens the package, it contains a stuffed bear, Andy is very disappointed. He thinks it is a terrible present and tosses it aside. That night the bear comes into Andy’s bedroom and takes Andy on a great adventure. They fly out of his window into a wonderful fantasy world. Andy can fly with the aid of an umbrella. When Andy awakens loves the bear who becomes his favorite toy.

 

145G: 90’s horror anthology (solved)

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A horror anthology read in the early 90s, found at a school book fair.

-A girl has the power to shrink people who she feels betray her and keeps them in a dollhouse or birdcage.
-Two siblings befriend the new neighbor only to find that she’s a vampire
-A girl keeps hearing something in the cellar begging her for help. It turns out to be some mummified creature that drags her under the floor and that it had meant “help” as in “I’m hungry”
-SHADOWS COME TO LIFE AND KILL PEOPLE. There’s this big scene at the end where the latest victim family is desperately trying to light matches to keep the shadows away.

145F: Alien cube steals knowledge (Solved)

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I read this in the late 80’s / early 90’s.  A girl discovers that her friends are using a cube like device that when activated sends them on adventures. The only adventure I remember is all of them being shrunk and swimming in a pool of spilled soda.   But with each use, they lose more of their knowledge and start using other words because they can’t remember the actual one-in one case saying “Hitchcock” instead of ketchup.   The girl finds out through her dreams(?) that the device has been sent from another world by a queen who’s already drained all of her subjects of all their knowledge.   I remember the cover was mainly black with the girl looking into a light. 

145C: Horror story Collection (solved)

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This was a collection of short horror stories I read in the early 90s. The version I read was hardcover with an illustration of leaves swirling down a hallway. Here’s what else I remember: 

1. A boy who hates raking leaves is attacked by them

2. A depressed girl meets a giant talking rabbit who also plays the fiddle

3. A girl babysits twins with a complicated ritual that they say keeps monsters from eating them. The babysitter is saved from an intruder by these monsters because he didn’t know the ritual and she did. 

4. A boy writes a screenplay about defeating brain-eating alien mosquitoes.  Later it turns out that the studio executive he gave the screenplay to is a brain-eating alien mosquito!

 5. A young boy who’s desperately trying to lose weight keeps fantasizing about his favorite junk cereal. Then there’s a scene where I think a Thanksgiving turkey comes to life? But mainly he just really wants that cereal.

145B: Vegetarian Meals Embarrass Girl (solved)

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A girl in middle(?) school finds out that her mother has become vegetarian during the summer and wants her to do the same. The kid is so embarrassed by the new style of lunches her mom makes that she starts eating under the bleachers.   People start eating with her because she tells them that she’s part of a club, and they all eventually have dinner at her house and the girl decides that she’s not embarrassed anymore.   A few days later, her mom (who the girl describes as changing her mind frequently) decides that she wants to start eating meat again. The girl gets upset because she’d just started getting used to things. She and her mom discuss this and decide that from now on the girl can mostly choose her own meals. 

145A: Unicorn History (solved)

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This was a book read in the late 80s which presented the unicorn as history instead of myth. The drawings were in brown and white and done to look as though they were very old.   The basis of the book was the unicorn as an angelic creature, and one of the stories described it fighting demons disguised as dragons.   I’ve already checked the books of Bruce Coville and Jane Yolen – nothing. 

 

144F: Children’s book of short stories about a boy named Charles – British? (Solved)

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I am looking for a  book of short stories I was very fond of as a child. Unfortunately, I do not have a title. The book was published before 1974 because I remember reading it before starting kindergarden. It was a slightly large book with burnt orange cloth boards. It was probably British. The book contained several short stories all related, most of them circled around a young boy named Charles. He would visit his Grandmother by the sea or play in the garden. Sometimes he was with other children exploring by the sea picking up sea glass and pebbles. One story was told by the point of view of a small toad and his little house in the garden and living under mushrooms. The most memorable story for me was a sad tale about a set of Russian nesting dolls that a child left standing up on a sea wall and the waves swept them off the wall one by one. The book contained pencil sketches depicting scenes from each chapter. My mother believes she bought the book at the Creative Playthings factory outlet in Princeton, NJ, but that might not be the case.