Category Archives: Unsolved

358Y: Stuff That Makes Kids Cranky

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Looking for a fairly recent children’s book. It is an oversized, paperback, picture book with some text. It is probably about 10-20 pages long. I read this to my daughter when she was young, probably around 2009-2012. It may have been published earlier. I recall the cover being yellowy-orange. It has very vibrant full-color illustrations that cover the entire pages. It’s a book about things you don’t like or want to do as a kid and being cranky/grumpy. I remember a few of the illustrations and words. There is reference to having to “pick up your room” and there is an illustration that show a boy picking up a room in his hand. There is reference to mom buying grown-up cereal with ingredients like sticks and sawdust instead of kid cereal. There is another illustration with a very long chore list rolled out like a scroll. There are also references to brother and grandma. It might be a scholastic book. That’s all I remember.

358X: Dystopian YA novel read around 2004 (not Brave New World)

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The book focuses on multiple points of view from different characters, but one character that stuck out specifically was a “drone” or something like that and he wasn’t supposed to have feelings but eventually does and becomes very depressed at the life he leads and the world he lives in and *trigger warning* commits suicide. I distinctly remember a quote by the “drone” and he broke a bottle or something and “digs and digs into his wrist until he dies”. Morbid but a distinct memory. This quote is the last part of the chapter if that helps at all? It was a chapter book and may have had a blue cover but I can’t totally remember.

358W: Letter Seems to Lead to Boyfriend Stealer’s Death (But Doesn’t)

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I don't recall the tile or author. I purchased the book via Scholastic books around 1985 in Toronto, Canada (from school).

Cover: A blond girl (I don't remember what she was wearing)

Synopsis: One summer, the blond girl visits her cousin who lives in another city (their mothers are sisters). The Christmas before, the blond girl visited her cousin. Her cousin had a boyfriend but she was sure another girl was trying to steal him away. So the blond girl and cousin want to get back at her. They write her secret admirer love letters asking her to meet somewhere. The "boyfriend stealer" drives out that night but dies in a car crash. The blond girl and cousin are distraught with guilt. That summer, the cousin tells the blond girl that she thinks the boyfriend stealer is haunting her. Strange things have been happening lately. Anyway, we find out that the strange events were due to the new gardener who loved the boyfriend stealer. He knew about the letter and blamed them for her death. But the boyfriend stealer thought the secret admirer letters were coming from the gardener, who would stalk her, so she ignored them. The night of the crash she was actually on her way to visit her own boyfriend. She never intended to steal the blond girl's cousin's boyfriend. They were only friends. Phewph! Very long, I'm sorry, but I'm hoping you could help me find this book.

358U: Book of children’s stories written 1930s-40s

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1. No Title (the cover is missing

2. Book is about 100 pages +/-; Chapters are individual stories with a moral such as: Page 17, The Storm, Page 2, The Burglar; Page 71, The Letter to Mama, etc.; also includes black/white photography of animals, children, people, scenes with captions & guessing the “origin” such as “@ Topical” or H.A. Roberts titled “It’s Lots of Fun Helping Daddy” page 64;  or Page 58 Gendreau “Feeding the Horse”;

3. There were at least 1 or 2 others books very similar to the above. Our mom would read a story at nap time or bedtime in the 1940s-1950s; The books we had were soft-back.

358T: Boy Coming of Age With the Edsel

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I’m hoping you can help me with the name and author of a book I started reading in 1996/97 as a teenager. I was about 1/4 of the way through it (it was a very large book if I recall) and was quite enjoying it…until my mother confiscated it because it wasn’t “church approved” 🙄 It was the story of a young boy in the 50’s. On the cover was a picture of an Edsel. The story sort of centralized on that car, and I *think* the father worked at the Edsel factory. There were a lot of coming of age themes, and I’ve never forgotten that book and wish to finish it now that I have my own teenagers. The author was a male, and he had multiple other books that I cannot remember either.

358S: Boy Switches Places with His Parallel Universe Version

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I need help finding a series I read about 10 years ago. I’ve been trying to find it for the last 6 months and have now made it a mission to find the series.
This is what I think I remember:
The books were in a public library in the young adult fiction section. It was about a boy that was transported to a parallel universe. I think it was a trilogy and one of the books had a purple-ish cover.I honestly don’t know if I’m remembering this right or mixing with another series.
The parallel universe version of him was then transferred to his world, so they basically switched places. They ended up meeting each other/themselves at the very end. The other universe he was transported to had knights I think? It was a fantasy world and different from his.

358R: Bedtime Stories Collection Book

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This was a large, hardcover book of bedtime stories for children.  It was red with gold page edging.  One of the stories in it was about a baker who forgot his glasses.  He mixed up his ingredients and made raisin cookies and chocolate chip bread instead of raisin bread and chocolate chip cookies.  Then, while making a birthday cake for his niece, he is unable to read the recipe properly because he lost his glasses.  So instead of using 2 cups of flour, he uses two crates.  And instead of 2 eggs, he uses two dozen eggs.  Then he presents this ginormous cake to his niece, who loves it, and lets him know she found his glasses.  I believe it was called The Birthday Cake Mix-up or something like that.  The characters in most of the stories in this collection are bugs of some sort.  Another story is about a little girl trying to get her hair done but she doesn’t like any of the styles the hairdresser makes.  Eventually the hairdresser asks her what hairstyle she wants and she says she wants pony tails but her mom says they aren’t fancy enough.  So the hairdresser makes her fancy pony tails with ribbons and curls, and she is happy.

358P: Originally Reluctant Woman Frees Prince

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I have used several other places, and have had no luck with this one.

It is a high fantasy type of book that takes place entirely in the fantasy world. It definitely seems like the beginning of a series. I vaguely remember it being written by a female Australian author and I believe it was published in the mid-later 1990s or early 2000’s. It was a trade paperback that I checked out from the library. The cover was a simple cover, not a complicated/traditional fantasy one.

It starts with a young woman working in her family’s inn/tavern and then she gets swept up with a prince who later gets imprisoned and who she frees at the end. At the beginning, she has a bad opinion of him, but then she travels to some place where he is getting ready for battle I think and gets to know him better. I believe there is magic based on elemental powers. I remember that she has to work with elemental beings, and they start learning to work together. At the end she ends up going to the castle where the prince is imprisoned and she frees him.

358O: Shrinking Farmer’s Wife Falls in Macaroni Bin at Store

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Farmer’s wife shrinks suddenly, unexpectedly, and often. At a store, she shrinks and falls into an open bin of dry macaroni. The farmer hears only “macaroni, macaroni!” as her tiny voice cries out. Another instance has her riding on the back of a crow. This could possibly be a stand-alone book, or it could be a story in a storybook collection.