Category Archives: Unsolved

341N: 80s/90s dance book: poor teenage girl (Sal?) at local dance school

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I am looking for a book I read years ago, probably in the mid-nineties. It was about a teenager who went to a dance school and I think her name was Sal. Her family was quite poor so they often worried about money. I think she stayed at home with her parents for a while but they lived quite a long way from the school so she had to move closer, and they had an argument about that. Her parents weren’t keen on her going to the school anyway: maybe they wanted her to get a 'sensible job'.
The dance style was contemporary or ballet. I don't know about the location except that it was the UK or USA.  It was set in the present day when it was written, but that would have been in the 80s or 90s.

I remember very little of the story. At one point she realised she wasn't as supple as some of the other students so she stayed behind to do extra training. At the very end there is a show by the students and she was doing a solo. She got on stage and decided to abandon the dance she'd planned and just improvise with how the music make her feel. At the end she felt it hadn't gone very well but then got loads of applause.

I think there was a romance element as well with another music student, although it wasn't just a romance tale. I've searched through heaps of lists of young adult dance books and on Google Books but I can't seem to find it.

‘Say Goodnight, Gracie’ by Julie Reece Deaver was suggested on another forum, but it’s not that. The dance aspect is central to the story I’m looking for, whereas it’s just a supporting story in ‘Say Goodnight, Gracie’.

Jean Ure as an author was suggested as well, but most of her books seem to be for slightly younger readers.

I don't think this was amazing literary writing or anything, but for some reason I remember this book and would love to find it again.

341M: Chapter Book – Childrens’ House Floats Down River

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I am looking for a children's chapter book. The plot involves children whose house is able to float and they float down a river on it. This was a chapter book from the 1970’s or 1980’s. I don’t think it was a houseboat but rather their actual house was put on a raft, but my memory could be wrong. Thank you!!

341K: 70s-80s Book About Colors

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I don’t remember if there were characters or much of a plot, but what I do remember is that it had lushly illustrated two-page spreads where each spread was devoted to a single color. I think yellow was a picnic in a wheat field with buttered bread…I also think there was a spread that depicted the beach (not sure what color it might have represented). Also, I think in each spread there was a teaser color spot or object that represented the next color’s scene. I think the book ended with a scene of all the colors. I would have read this in the late 80s, but it might have been 70s etc. It was certainly bigger than a Golden Book or board book.

 

341J: A Family’s Year of American Adventures

1 Reply

I am looking for a book my uncle read while in 4th or 5th grade in the 1950’s. His teacher had assigned it to the entire class to read as a project. Some key points he remembers are a family pulled their children out of school for the year to travel the United States to experience new places and adventures. They went to a desert, they starred in a Hollywood movie, he also remembers something about birds – sparrow specifically – being in the book. He thinks there was a car on the cover, possibly pulling a trailer behind it.

Please help if you can, I would love to give him this book as a Father’s Day gift and he recently celebrated his 75th birthday too.

341G: Mix and Match Animals

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Children’s book pre-1965. All animals drawn to same size – page is then cut in half. A description is on the opposite page and is also cut in half.For example, you could end up with the top half of a giraffe on the bottom of a beagle with the appropriate description.

341F: Human Sterilization for Health Care

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It's not a children's book. I probably read this book 20 years ago and it was not a new book then. I'm guessing it was written some time between the 40s and 60s, but that's just a guess. The book takes place in a society where there have been lots of treatments for genetic diseases, so people who used to die before child-bearing age weren't, passing the diseases along, and health of the population was therefore less robust. (Plus possibly the cost of treatment.) So people were only allowed to get medical treatments, vaccinations, etc. if they were sterilized. I seem to recall people living in a sort of health-care ghetto and many people being anti-health care.

341E: Colorful Knights Defend White And Gold King

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The book I’m looking for is a children’s fiction book that included knights or warriors who were identified by color: green, blue, purple, etc. For sure my son remembers there was a purple one that almost got thrown into a pit of lava. These knights or warriors were defending a kingdom with a king who might have been identified through white and gold clothing. And they were trying to defeat a “dark Lord“ which is probably just a villain in the story and not referred to necessarily by those words.

Any help would be appreciated!

341C: Spoiled siblings are reformed by fixing up an old house

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Probably written in the 60s or 70s, this is a YA book about a pair of spoiled siblings growing up in the city (I think the opening scene is of them terrorizing a babysitter). Their parents announce quite suddenly that they (the parents) are going away for the summer and that the kids will live with a relative (an aunt or a cousin) in the country. Their aunt has a husband or boyfriend who I think is Native American and the kids are both afraid of him and passionately unhappy, especially since they are expected to help fix up the big old house in which they are all living. Eventually they start working (I remember clearly a scene in which they scrape all the old paint off of tall pillars out front) and gradually are reformed so that their parents hardly recognize them when they return.

341B: Little Girl Reluctantly Learns Ballet

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I read this book many, many years ago in elementary school. It is about a girl whose parents sign her up for ballet lessons. She doesn’t like ballet and is not excited to attend her lessons. She has an older sister who has been taking lessons for a few years already, and isn’t necessarily happy that her little sister is also taking classes. I remember a certain part where the younger sister is in the locker room and is mortified by the disfigured feet of the older girls in the ballet school.

In the end, she learns to enjoy taking lessons. This is really all I can remember.