Category Archives: Unsolved

290S: The chicken is delicious and possibly addictive

A children’s book I read in the early-to-mid 90s; could have been published earlier. A school cafeteria serves chicken (I think), possibly tenders. The chicken is delicious and possibly addictive. A student, male, investigates the cafeteria situation and, towards the end of the book, discovers that the chicken is made with a poisonous ingredient hidden in the cafeteria kitchen that gives it its flavor/addicting quality; the ingredient is stored in a large vat. There’s a fight between the hero and the evil cafeteria employee. The book is NOT Bone Chillers: Back to School or Eat Your Poison Dear.

290R: A painter on a houseboat

I was born in 1965 and remember this book from when I was around 5-7.

It was about a painter that lived on a houseboat and painted abstract paintings. For some reason he broke the painting up into a bunch of small paintings and a buyer flew to his houseboat by seaplane to buy them I think the houseboat was near San Francisco. It was a large book, hardback, and illustrated.

290Q: YA historical novel about the Biblical matriarchs ca. 1980

The book was divided into several sections, most or all narrated in first person and each about one of the Biblical matriarchs: Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel, Leah, etc. Along the lines of “The Red Tent” but young adult and published somewhere around 1980, give or take a couple of years. The author was female, and I think it was published in US (though possibly UK or other British Commonwealth, since I got it out of a Canadian library).

290O: The title might include the word yellow

The (few) details:

Adult book

Title might include the word yellow

A short book, maybe 200 pages

Paperback

Read at least 15 years ago

Novel set in Southeast Asia

A woman wanders, losing herself, maybe also a child. Odd, sad, poetic, confusing. She may be starving and mentally ill, badly treated

I hope that’s enough to unearth the title! That would be wonderful.

Thank you.

290L: The Girl With the Disappointing (Mustard-Colored) Walls

Thanks to the Sunday NY Times, I now know who to ask the question that has been nagging at me for years: what O what was the book for teens (they didn’t call them YA novels yet) that I read in the 1960s (might’ve been published then, but also could’ve been published in the late 1950s) in which a daydreamy teenage girl envisioned painting her room gold, then painted it, then was bitterly disappointed that the walls were in fact “mustard yellow.” I remember nothing else about the girl, the story (or the walls) but the book must have had some kind of profound effect on me, because I’m over 60 now, a novelist and an English professor, and have read many, many novels since–and I’ve never forgotten it.

290K: 50s or 60s girl with doll builds wagon, makes friends

I read this novel in 1963 or 1964. A little girl is left to live with a childless couple in an apartment building, because her father goes away for work. The other children in the building talk about her among themselves, thinking she is like a snooty princess. But no, she is a very lonely little girl, and has only one possession, a doll. There is a broken wagon, and the children become friends with the girl when they all work together to repair the wagon. The wagon is a bed for the doll and it is given to the girl to take with her when her father returns.

290I: Kids have roof garden for pets

This is a picture book from the early 80s. My mom thinks it came from a mail order book club. Kids in an apartment building have amphibian pets: turtles, alligator. . . the alligator gets stuck in a tree. Balloons get him out (or got him in?). At the end the kids get a rooftop garden for their pets. Over the course of the story you see an ornate fountain being built in town.