Category Archives: Teen

308W: Time travel is a wheel within a wheel

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I think the title was “Ghosts” or at least had that word in the title. I read it in the late 70s from my junior high school library.

The story was about a brother & sister who managed to travel back in time to know the children who lived in the same house. (I think they turned out to be related.)  Their Uncle was involved, and he explained time travel as some sort of wheel within a wheel (I never grasped the concept).  The selfish immature girl who lived in the house couldn’t see them, but could hear them when they spoke. When she proudly modeled a new dress and asked her mother for an opinion, she only heard the voice of one of the children say “I think she looks like a stuffed sausage!”  When they accidentally broke a vase, I believe it altered their time, and disappeared.

It was made into a movie at some point, because I found it on TV once, but I believe it had a different name.

I wish I knew more, but it is all I can remember. I’d love to read it again and share it with my children.

Thanks so much for trying to help!

308V: Haunted Houses in New England

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These were several books by the same author, but not a series.  My 7th grade school librarian introduced me to the author.  This would have been around 1985-86.  The books all dealt with old, haunted houses in New England.  One had a creepy basement with a dirt floor, and bodies buried under it.  Another had a person look out a third story window to see a face looking back, and knew it was a ghost.  These books felt very grown up to me at the time, but were definitely Young Adult.  They were eerie and moody, but not Stephen King scary.  It was a woman author, and the covers usually had an old house in silhouette. I’d love to revisit this author, as I read all of the books in our school library over and over.  Some faint memory says the authors name might have been Barbara something……

308U: Boys who would sail

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Series or collection of books about boys who would sail on boats from 1700s or 1800s.  The boys were lower level people on boats.  Remember one part told about learning to use stars to navigate by.  Several books think by same author. Targeted junior high or high school readers.  Read them in 1970’s.  Loved them.  Would love to read again.

Thanks.

307Z: She visited a field of flowers

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I believe its a YA novel. Its a about a teen girl who’s mom is sick. Her mom has a hospital bed in their home. The girl and her dad take care of the mother while none of their neighbors really know that the mother is sick. Her dad continues his coaching job and acts as if everything is good. It flashes back to before the mom got sick. The girl is almost resentful of her sick mom. Her mom eventually dies towards the end. The girl visits a field of flowers that her and her mom visited before while shes driving her moms car.

This all I can remember. Hope you can get down to the mystery of what this book’s title is!

Thank you!

307M: There may or may not have been a brother

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I’m trying to help my daughter find a book (part of a series actually) that had a family, possibly from the Victorian era ( the sisters had poofy dresses) . There may or may not have been a brother. There was one scene where two of the sisters, or a sister and a friend, are talking and the conversation paraphrases 1 Corinthians 13:12 about ” through a glass darkly”. There is also a  different scene where one girl is on a balcony looking down on people. She read this book in middle school in the early 90s, but thinks the book was printed in the 70s or 80s. She read above her grade level, so it was not necessarily a middle school book. Also she remembers that where it was placed on the shelf in the library meant the authors last name was not at the beginning or end of the alphabet.

Thanks!

 

307F: Half-Dragon General

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In the 80’s (at around 10-13yrs old) I read a YA fantasy trilogy about a warring general who was half human half (lizard/reptile/dragon?) who’s skin is covered in (tiny blue) scales. He was looked down on for this deformity but his difference was part of his driving force. The trilogy follows a young girl who was captured or sold into the war party/entourage and follows her journey as the general conquers lands etc. I can’t remember much more but she eventually becomes his mistress or concubine type of slave maybe?

Paperback trilogy, Young adult section, fantasy fiction. It seemed new at the time but it could have been written in the mid to late seventies or early eighties? It seemed to be set in a slightly game of thrones non-era era? All three books were of average novel length. I partially remember the covers being full colour, maybe a central picture in a darker arched border?

305U: Diary of a girl who died (Solved)

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The book in question is a ghost story that I read in the late 80s and I believe it to be a Young Adult book or possibly geared towards preteens. My impression is that it was written or published in the 70s, but that is only a guess. I cannot remember the title, but it was an off white hardcover library book with some sort of random small scene on the front relating to the story. It was a fairly thin book, maybe only 50-75 pages?

The story was about a teenage girl who had to go live with her uncle (I think) for some reason, and while she was there she found an old diary from a girl who had died many years before. The book makes many references to the ‘bogs” near the house (I didn’t know what a bog was before reading this book) and the girl who wrote the diary died after running into one of the bogs in the middle of the night and sinking. Not sure if it was accident or a suicide due to grief. I believe that there was a reference to a missing necklace or locket and the girl (who wrote the diary) had a boyfriend/lover/fiance that may have been a soldier named Ian who died.

 

One of the chapters in the book was titled “Letters To Ian.”  The main character becomes obsessed with the story as she reads the diary and starts having dreams/hallucinations about this girl and Ian and their deaths. Near the end of the book she finds herself either sleepwalking or hallucinating and ends up caught in one of the bogs in the middle of the night, possibly trying to find the locket/necklace.

I read this books dozens of times when I was young but never owned it and one day when I went to check it out again ( I lived next door to a library as a child) I found that the library had discarded it in a mass auction to make room for new books. I was heartbroken, and none of the librarians could provide me with the title to search for it elsewhere. We only had paper catalogs in our small town library and no computer system back then to look at what books a customer had checked out. I’ve tried for 30 years to remember the name of this book so that I can look for a used copy somewhere, with no luck.

Hopefully the little that I can still remember will jog someone’s memory.

 

305G: …turns out, he shouldn’t have

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I read a YA fantasy or sci fi book in the mid to late 70s. I was 10 to 13 years old. I checked the book out at the same time as Enchantress of the Stars. The protagonist was a young boy or teen who thought his world was unfair. One of the rules was that no one was to drink stream water. The world was ruled by judges. The protagonist thought this was an unfair system. He drank the water, turns out he shouldn’t have. Also, because he questioned authority (spoiler alert) he became a judge. Thanks!

I believe the authors last name began with an A or B. I reread it a few times as a kid and seem to remember finding it before Baum (I read all of his Oz books), alphabetically.

303S: A 90s or earlier young adult book about a teen girl in poverty

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A young adult (YA) book I read in the late 90s:

The main character is a teenage girl. She lives with her mother and younger sibling. She lives in poverty/school outcast.

Three events from the book:

Something about the younger sibling having a pee accident and the vivid description from the teen

Something about eating cereal for dinner

At one point, her family gets a bag of free clothes, which she is really excited to wear to school even though it’s stained. Might be leather skirt and white sweater?

302X: A crazy quilt in various shades of red

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Looking for a YA novel written in the 60’s or early (I read it in the mid-70’s) but it was set in the early 20th century in a rural area. A group of girls need to make a crazy quilt in various shades of red—I can’t remember why—so they had to beg, borrow and steal fabric to make it. One of the girls goes to the general store with her father who is color blind and convinces him to buy a bolt of a particularly lurid shade of scarlet for a dress for her mother who was far from pleased when she received it.