Category Archives: Teen

296U: Teenage model (Solved)

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I read this book, from my high school library, around 1972. It was contemporary at that time. The main character was a pretty, poised girl who gets a job as a fashion model. This scene might have occurred during the hiring process, which took place at a restaurant. She gets the impression that one of the men is flirting with her, so she asks if he has children. When he says yes, she asks to see pictures of them, which distracts him from the flirting so she feels as though she has rejected him without offending him. The girl has a nerdy younger brother and this scene only stays in my mind because a friend who also read it asked me “what are the runs” when she gets to this part. The main character stays home with her younger brother when he has the runs. Although they typically quarrel like siblings do, she feels bad for him this day and is kind.

296S: Buttermilk skies

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This book was most likely written in the early to mid 1960s. I found it in my junior high school library around 1970.

It might have been written first person.The main character was girl about 15 and I recall three distinct scenes.In one she stands looking out her back door at dusk or night and sees what she describes as “buttermilk skies.” She might say it came from the Hoagy Carmichael song. In another scene she stares at herself in the mirror before going out and thinks “When last seen she was wearing ….” like newscasters do in describing a missing person. The last I recall is that she crossed herself, even though she was not Catholic.

296F: Teen Overeats on Holiday Vacation Due to Parents’ Divorce

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I read this young adult novel in the early 1990s at my local library. It seemed like it was relatively recently published at the time. I believe that it was a first person story, about a teenage girl who is either on Thanksgiving or Christmas break from school. Her parents tell her they are getting divorced, and she starts secretly overeating all of the leftovers from either the Thanksgiving or Christmas meal. She is writing in her journal, feeling isolated, and having some weighty conversations with her parents–particularly her dad, if I remember correctly–all while developing an unhealthy relationship to food. The book ends with her swearing off of the overeating, and taking walks in the snow to lose all of the weight she gained over the holiday vacation.

295V: Trapped in a snow globe as pets (Solved!)

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It was a paperback about two girls on a trip with their family and they stop at some mine or cave. The younger sister runs off into the gift shop and the older follows. The evil gift shop owner ends up trapping both in a giant snow globe as pets for a giant family in the cave system. They really just wanted the little sister so the elder is a freebie. They end up escaping when the older girl melts the snow globe on the fireplace or something and they run out through the tunnels.  Might have been apple paperbacks or similar.

295U: Ring-Around-A-Rosie (Solved)

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I am looking for a book I read in the mid-1960’s, probably young adult.  Tells the story of a girl who moves to Cape Cod? (some seashore region) to train with a famous tole (painting on tin ware, etc.) painter.  At first she just copies his designs, but he insists she should find her own muse.  One day she sees a group of kids playing ring-around-a-rosie and does a design based on that.

295M: Roommates bond (Solved)

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I read a book as a young teenager in the late 1950s entitled Roommates; it was about two girls who bonded as roommates. The book was touching and so poignant that I realized the potency of literature then. I believe the first name of the author may have been Rosemary. I probably borrowed the book from the Brooklyn Public Library.

 

295G: 90s young adult book with a man who has had his tongue cut out

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A couple of kids on a mountain and are either rescued or menaced (possibly both) by a man who has had his tongue cut out. He may have been Native American or it may have been implied that this was done by Native Americans. He might also have had a dog. Probably 1995-2000. May have won awards as this was read aloud in a children’s library where award-winning books were often chosen.

294T: The Six

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This book I read in 1984 and was a collection of six stories of a British youth gang; each story focused on a different member of the gang. One character may have been called Darkie Bates. One of the six stories took place in a disco where the gang member was ‘saved’ by the friend of a girl he had earlier been insulting with terms like “frog-eyes”, when she hit his assailant with a bottle. He ended up going out with her. The author may have been Tony someone but just as likely not. Great book for young adult fiction.