Category Archives: Solved

118L: Ghost boy, lake setting, island playhouse (Solved!)

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I have been searching for this book for years.  It captured my imagination during childhood, and I must have read it at some point in the 1980’s – may well have been published well before that.  I am sure I have some details wrong, but the plot involves a child coming to visit a large home near a lake for the summer, with an older woman as the guardian for the summer.  This woman had years ago lost her own child, her son, who I believe drowned in the lake.  The details I remember more clearly involve a special lake island playhouse that she built especially for her son – the playhouse had its own furniture, dishes, silverware, etc.  This special playhouse and island was off limits now that the son was dead, and the woman did not want to talk about him.  I believe the dead son’s name could have been Trelawney, or something like that.  The child now visiting for the summer sneaks to explore the world of the island and the playhouse, and falls into some sort of danger.  The ghost boy (? Trelawney) helps save the day.  For some reason I am thinking the word “green” may be in the title, but that could be wrong.  Please help!!  Thank you!

118K: The Bucket in the Attic (solved)

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A girl has a secret refuge, either in the attic of her house or a loft in a barn, where a wise, nurturing grandmother type lives. There is a beautiful, soft bed where she can rest and a magic tub, where she can wash away all cares and fatigue. But when she shares the refuge with another girl, this girl tells her there’s no grandmother, the bed is just a pile of straw and the tub is just an old wooden bucket. However, the main character still believes what she has seen and experienced. I think the book is British and was probably written in the 30s or 40s, although I read it in the early 50s. It may be part of a series. I remember it was included in a New Yorker Christmas books for kids article in the late 80s (should have saved that article!) so maybe some kind of anniversary edition was issued then.

117D: Mystery of hidden brooch (Solved)

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Mystery of the Hidden Brooch was a book I read in elementary school in early to mid 70’s.  It was a mystery about a missing brooch.  There was an old house with a brick wall or chimney upstairs, possibly covered by wallpaper.  One of the bricks was a drawer, where I believe the brooch was found.  The mystery was solved by a young girl, possibly other children also.  I could be confusing a couple of books.

 

115B: Boy and Mountain Lion book – Solved

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I’m looking for a book that I read as a young boy but whose name now eludes me. I have no recollection of the title but can provide some detail regarding the story and the cover art (at least the version I had).

 

The story is about a young boy who moves with his family (father and mother) from a city to a country farm/ranch, despite his initial misgivings. One of the first thing he experiences is a hunt for a mountain lion which has been killing livestock in the area. He sees a mother mountain lion killed and then two cubs thrown to a pack of dogs. Later, he finds a female, runt cub in the mountain lions’ cave (she was too weak to come out and, therefore, escaped notice). He takes her home and secretly raises her. I am fairly certain that he calls her “Beauty” but I am not 100% certain. The book continues with the boy raising the cub to young adulthood, including teaching her how to hunt. Near the end of the book, the father is injured and the mother is somehow incapacitated so the boy (and his secret mountain lion companion) have to walk several miles to town to get a doctor/medicine. Finally, the boy needs to release the mountain lion back into the wild. The book ends with their separation.

 

I believe the book was published by Scholastic Reader and would have been published sometime in the 1970’s (I think). The cover has artwork that shows the young boy crouching up on a rock to feed or pet the mountain lion who is standing on the top of the rock.

 

113B: Brother and sister find magic item – 2 books

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I remember reading two books by the same author one summer when I was about 10 to 12 (I was born in 68.)  I think there was a brother and a sister who may have been staying at an old house with a grandfather or uncle and they find some sort of magic item.  There may have been a magic genie involved.  Not sure.    I do distinctly remember one scene from one of the books and the brother, I believe, is caught in a large bubble and travels either to another place (the desert maybe) or travels to another time.  The other book by same author was similar but not sure if it contained the same characters.  Seems like covers were similar but with slight variations.  May have had a house on the front. 

113A: American woman seeking actor father in England—Christian book?

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 I think this book is from a Christian publisher, and the main characters do share struggles in Christian belief.

The lead female character is an American, in her mid-20s I think. She has come to England to find her father

The lead female character is an American, in her mid-20s I think. She has come to England to find her father. Her mother was a travelling American actress, who had an affair with an English actor, and is now dead. She has some infomation but (IIRC) not a name.

She winds up in this town on the night of a local Christmas play, and winds up meeting several of the performers/stagehands. One is the son of a famous actor, his wife, etc. The actor had died a year or two earlier, but was highly respected throughout the country, and known internationally. She winds up staying with this family during a snowstorm, and discovers ties to her own past. The main character also meets a friend of this family and a relationship begins to develop. There is a second book where the relationship with both the family and the friend of the family develops, and the actor’s wife has to come to terms with her anger of his new child showing up.

I’m interested in finding both books.

112A, solved: Girl’s father falls in love with witch, girl tries to prove/stop it

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I read a paperback book from my junior high school library in 1989. It’s about a girl and her father meets a pretty woman who has a son or daughter too (can’t remember who moved into the area or how they meet). The youngsters become friends. The father falls in love with the woman, but the girl gets suspicious of her – she notices that the woman is a bit strange. She discovers photos of her looking exactly the same in past decades. She finds out the woman is a witch and does not age, the witch’s son or daughter doesn’t either.  The witch had been dating, marrying, and killing the husbands after a few years because they see that the woman and kid stay young. The girl tries to prove to her father that he is in danger and tries to stop him from marrying her. I think the book is set in either the south or in New England, I remember fog and time playing a role in the story.