Category Archives: Teen

236E: Boy with special power

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Book I can’t remember details of:
Genre: Fiction/Fantasy (Most likely young adult/teen fiction)
Time Read: 5-7 years ago
May have been a paperback
Plot points: Main character is a boy, found/kidnapped after some tragedy (burning village?).
Kidnappers include a pair of twins? that have some sort of snake/venom/acid power.
They are encountered and defeated by another group of twins, who can control lightning or something like that.
(big time gap missing in memory)
Boy is taken to some sort of fortress/academy/institution and trained to fight, and ride large raptors?/bulls? which he enjoys a lot as he understands/knows a lot about them
He makes a rival out of his roommate or a rival is picked for him from one of the boys at the academy, not sure which. They get in fights (I think?).
There is a spot out in the training field of the academy with two buildings, one of them being a black isolation sort of box where people go in and experience things that terrify them and come out determined not to mess up again.
There is a test at some point where the boy has to travel through a very foggy area with a bunch of dangerous creatures to an old abandoned tower.
To graduate the academy there is a crucible/gauntlet/arena where he has to kill/defeat his teacher.
There is a love interest? who is the princess?(maybe) of a nation of people with beast powers.
In this book world there are people with powers that come from bloodlines and/or animals and/or eye colours and the powers generally stay within the kingdoms they originated from.
There is a character in some part of the book from a royal family that pushed their sibling/infant sibling/ or the heir to some throne from a window causing a severe injury which can be healed by the main character or something like that.
The main character has a power that allows them to view things from long distances, invade people’s minds, see spirits?(maybe), and other things like that.
Main character is maybe/likely an orphan, some part of the book involves a revealing of who exactly his parents (Father specifically) were.

227E: City boy and crusty mountain man thwart horse rustlers, catch and tame wild mustang

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Young adult book; city boy spends the summer in the high country with aunt and uncle who are about to lose their ranch; crusty loner/family friend takes boy into the mountains for a few weeks; they catch and tame wild a mustang and thwart horse rustlers and save aunt and uncle’s ranch.

227D: Girl embarrassed by weird family (Solved)

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A book from the 1970s, I think. I read it in the late 80s or early 90s. It centers on a teenage girl whose name *might* have been Margaret or Marguerite – not quite sure though. Her parents were super weird, and I think her family was kind of weird too. Her dad I think was kind of bald on top but grew out his hair on the back and sides. I think there may have been very brief black and white sketches too. Weird things I can remember that they did: sing opera in the back yard, have mattresses for furniture instead of real furniture, they also did a backwards progressive dinner one night (where they ate desert first and worked backwards to the appetizers) and brought home some kind of shrimp appetizers for the kids to eat, which was great for the kids because they had accidentally burned the pizza they ordered in the oven because the left it in the cardboard box and almost started a fire. I think she eventually learned to accept the quirkiness. Also, I think her siblings were kind of weird too and that she considered herself the only “normal” one. I don’t think it’s “Mom, You’re Fired,” nor do I think it’s “Me and Fat Glenda.” Neither of those descriptions seem to match. Thanks!

225D: Girl experiences loss and self exploration in New England

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Adolescent book from 1980s: Girl and her lovely sister move to New England; the sister gets cancer and dies. They meet and interact with all kinds of characters, including a pregnant couple they think is not really married and a photographer. At the end of the book, she goes to an exhibit called Faces of New England and sees her own face among the portraits submitted by the photographer friend, and sees herself in a new way. Beautifully written, a book that stayed with me a long time as a teenager.

Thanks for your help!