Category Archives: Teen

377J: Looking for a teen funny book from 70’s (Solved!)

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I read a book in the early 70’s. It was about a teen boy and his misadventures in a small town. It had a cover with a kids driving and old blue jalopy In the book. In One of the stories he gets a commercial propeller and puts it on a car to make a go faster. It flies loose and goes flying through the town, destroying things. I think the book had a white hardback cover, and the picture of the boy in the car was like light blue drawing I think it may have been a Scholastic book. But it was about this young early teen boys misadventures. And I recall the propeller wrecking havoc story. The book may have been from the 60s. But I read it in the early 70s. It may have been one of my older siblings book. And it probably was from the Scholastic catalog.

377I: A Book From the 90’s

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I am looking for a book that I read in the 90’s.. with or 11th grade English.  It’s about an adolescent male who looses the friend. The friend may have died as a result of falling out of a tree OR…. The main character goes to the tree while processing his grief.  OR. There is a picture of a boy on the cover… sitting at the base of the tree. There is also a sort of soliloquy… where he talk about the death. 
I’ve been wondering about this book for years and the name isn’t even remotely close to the tip of my tongue.  

376K: Teens with Powers

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If I had to classify it, Young Adult fiction would be the genre, but it may just be broader fiction with a mostly teenage main cast.
I don’t remember much about the main character but he has some sort of power that I believe awakens, and he ends up on the run. He eventually comes across a mysterious girl and her relative (grandfather, I think) who rescues him and comes along with him. This girl seems to be able to see the future, and knows about him and that they will eventually be married.  I also believe that she can talk to animals, though this may not be the case. Her grandfather has trained her to fight and specifically talks about fortifying the house they were staying at with steel embedded in the door, before the government( or some evil corporation potentially) comes to get them.
I believe neat the end they find yet another youth who has powers, and end up infiltrating some sort of cult compound.
I’m pretty sure that it’s a relatively recent book, maybe 5 years old at most, because the sequel hadn’t been released yet, or it may have been a one off, I’m not sure.

375E: Very dark YA, MC teen boy dies saving girl he kidnapped

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Published date2002-2007 at least that is when we had it in Australia
Story– MC is a teen boy who doesn’t have any friends and is in high school, he is “good” however he is timid and very unsure of himself – he has a crush on a beautiful popular girl from school but she doesn’t know he exists- he makes friends with a boy who is nice to him and a little weird who has a group of friends outside of school so he introduces MC to them- the friends are all boys and they have extreme views and want to act out violently, however MC doesn’t care about this as he doesn’t think the boys will act on it and it’s better than being alone- one day the leader of the group devises a plan to kidnap someone from school to hold them hostage (for reasons I cannot remember sorry), the leader has a car and weapons and makes MC get involved as he is a weak character- it turns out the leader of the group wanted to kidnap the girl from MCs school who he has a crush on and he feels very conflicted about this but doesn’t know how to voice this and get out of the group or tell the police- they kidnap the girl and hold her hostage in a friend’s house but the kidnapping makes the news and it becomes a full blown investigation which escalates the situation quickly- MC had thought that they would just release the girl after the leaders demands are met however due to the kidnapping becoming breaking news he realises there is no way out- he tries to come up with plans to help her escape and make her feel less distressed without getting caught by the leader but it doesn’t work- the leader of the group decides that because his demands are not taken seriously by the police he will take the girl into the woods at night and kill her by hanging her- they tie her up and take her into the woods and put a noose around her however something happens and i think she slips and she suddenly becomes hung – at this point the police have found them and they all run away except MC who desperately tries to cut her free- he manages to save her however there’s a siege and the police find him and start shooting at him and so he runs- the story ends quickly after this chase as he is shot dead.
As you can see this is an incredibly dark story and I was super surprised that it was YA and in my school library! The book absolutely wrecked me for weeks when I was 15. I think it must be out of print as I can’t find it anywhere on google/goodreads.

374M: The Rose of Death (Solved!)

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Seeking a murder mystery about drowned boy who was bullied probably published around 2000-2003, maybe up to 2005 this book was for high schooler and young adults and I think the cover was blue with a rose. The main story line of the book was an investigator was trying to find the cause of death of a teenage boy who was found in the river who they initially thought was a drowning but then found stool in his lungs that was his cause of asphyxiation. The river had once had a sewage issue, but that was investigated and found that the problem was fixed. He was accidentally killed by other students who gave him a swirly (dunked head into a toilet) that had stool in it that caused him to suffocate. The reason that he was given the swirly was he had a crush on a girl and had given her a rose he had changed the color of from red to (possibly) blue as a magic trick, the book did describe the chemical trick used to perform this. I do not remember the color of the rose, apologies. The girl’s bf or some other significant male figure.

373Y: Black Ghost on Halloween and Adventures in the City

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Here is what I remember: In the early 1970’s I read a book about a girl (possibly named Ginny?) and it was a young teen/adult chapter book.  The girl does a number of fun things, like making her own Halloween costume.  I think she called it a black ghost.  She dyed fabric black and made strips of fabric that flew out as she spun around.  In another part she goes to the “city” with her dad.  Seems like it was around the Holidays and she eats clams with spicy sauce and talks about how they slip down her throat.  I wish I could remember more!  I loved that book so much and have lately been craving books from my youth.  It would have appealed to girls from 5th grade on.  

371D: French Fantasy Book

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I’m looking for a French kid’s or adolescent’s book. I read it in French class in middle school. It had watercolor illustrations and had to do with color. Maybe color leaving the world or being stolen? I think the main character was a boy with colorful wisps for hair. He was on a journey? I remember a villain, but I might be mixing up another book. It had a wide, white face and big eyes. Sorry, I know this might just not be enough!

371A: The Girl Attends All Boy Calligraphy School (Solved!)

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I’d read this in the 8th grade which I’d loaned from my schools library but it’s about this young white girl who attends an all boy’s calligraphy school at the calligraphy teacher’s farm home. I don’t remember how she got the chance to attend the school but I remember she’s not well off and her youngest brother is sick. Before she leaves on the train to the school her older brother buys her a grey wool bonnet and writes to her while she is away. 
There was a page of the book that had shown one of her brother’s letters written in the crosshatching/ cross writing technique. While at the school the girl has an assignment that a boy in her class sabotages by spilling ink on it. Little details i remember are her needing a stack of bricks for her to place her feet on because she cannot reach the floor white sitting on her desk, the girl helping a woman remove garden peas from the pod, and her getting ready for a fourth of July festival in the town her school is in. There’s also a mention that her teacher has written his calligraphy in his own blood. 
I believe this was set within the late 1800’s – early 1900’s in the United states. 
I’ve been looking for this book for years so any help whatsoever is appreciated! Thank you so much! 

370X: The Dark Fairy Prince (Solved!)

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I read this library book as a teenager in the mid-1970’s, and it’s one of the last books from my childhood that I haven’t managed to track down, so it’s always lingered in the back of my mind. In fact, I may have sent a Stumper before, and it might even have been solved, but I can’t remember!
The plot involves a teenage girl -a young woman – on the cusp of adulthood anyway, who I believe is sent to live for a summer with an older woman in a rural wooded area, possibly in England, possibly in the US.  She might be an orphan, this might be her aunt or some kind of guardian. Or maybe she is the maid?
I think a traveling caravan full of circus performers and a fortune teller comes to town and she falls for a young man, the leader, who is exciting with an unpredictable whiff of danger about him and this is where the novel becomes a fantasy as I think he may be a fairy prince. I seem to remember the caravan exists in two worlds – the everyday, and then a dark/dream world, which maybe the girl can only access by drinking a tea or some such. She develops a relationship with the fortune teller also. It might be that her lover becomes ill and she nurses him and earns the gratitude of the others, maybe a disapproving mother?
The older woman warns her to be careful, but eventually the caravan moves on and the girls turns up pregnant, but I think this is only hinted at. She pines for her dark (fairy?) prince.  I think he eventually returns, to find she has a child, and maybe there is a happy ending? She doesn’t regret what’s happened and still loves him.
I think there is a ballad that provides a theme for the book, and something about corn. Summer of the corn?  I think the legend of the “Green Man” might be an underlying theme. The book is written in the first person. Maybe called “Corn Summer”?
It’s very possible I’m confusing the plot of two books here. Fantasy romance was right in my wheelhouse back then (still is.)  But I’ve never forgotten the hold this book had on me and would be happy to rediscover it.

Thank you so much.  

370V: Teen boy wakes up and nobody can see him, he thinks he’s dead (Solved!)

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I read this book as a kid in the 1970s. I don’t remember much, except that a teen boy wakes up in the morning and soon realizes that nobody can see him. He thinks he’s dead. He can’t really interact with the world, but he does manage to ride a bus without falling through the floorboards. It might be that he never existed–I seem to remember that people weren’t wondering where he was. It might have the word “disappear” in it.