Category Archives: YA (grades 7-9)

350E: Supposedly Heroic Girl Dies in Apartment House Fire (Solved!)

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Looking for a 1970s ya fiction book about a girl who died in an apartment house fire. Everyone thought that she was a hero because she alerted the other tenants to the fire so they could get out. Actually, it was her brother who had done the alerting while she went back to her apartment to get her shoe box of paper doll families. This was a much darker sequel to a book about a brother, a sister and another girl. Think the title may have been something like “The truth about (girl’s name)”, but not positive. Don’t remember author but know I read it right after it came out somewhere between 1969 and 1980.

349Q: The Four Elementals and the Earth Children Raised in World with Magic

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The book was a children’s/YA book published sometime between 2005 and 2012. It was meant to be a quartet. I know 2 came out and I was curious if it was ever finished.
It had two main characters, a boy on earth who was disabled because he born on a world with magic. And a girl who is from earth but was raised in the world with magic, she’s the only one who can’t use magic and is immune to it.
There are evil magicians who can travel between the worlds, but doing so damages the worlds. The two main characters can move back and forth together but it damages the worlds. They’re told the only solution is to seek help from each of four elementals, societies of magic creatures that, if all four can be convinced to help, can make a bridge between the worlds in a safe way. Both of the main characters have to go to their birth worlds or it’s bad for the fabric of the universe or something, and this can only be accomplished with their help. The bad guys use dark magic and want to hunt them down. The boy struggles to learn the magic of his birth world. The first book dealt with the water elementals and the second with the earth elementals, I think. I think the name of the magic world started with an F
There’s a scene where the girl is on earth for the first time while they’re on the run and they go to a McDonald’s and she experiences a soda for the first time. I think her name starts with a K (Kira?)and the boy’s might be Marcus.

349P: Forest Girl Falls in Love with City Boy

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I read this as a young adult (I was born in 1976). It was a beautiful novel about a girl who grew up in the forest with little / no interaction with the outside world. I remember she had a vivid imagination and maybe had a magical lake or bog she would visit. She meets someone from the “city” and they fall in love. I seem to remember he gave her gloves and she didn’t know what gloves were. I now have teenage daughters and would love to share this novel with them.
I’ve done a lot of searching with the words girl, lost, forest, tree but can’t seem to figure it out.

347Z: YA/Juvenile nonfiction book about world issues, spiral bound, came with a bag of real rice!

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I’m looking for a YA/Juvenile nonfiction book about world issues that I read in the 1990s. It was spiral bound, full colour, maybe 5×8, and came with two zippered pouches of real rice at the back. The rice was part of a world-hunger learning activity in the book, where the reader spun a spinner…

I think there were other activities in the book, but the story I remember most was about the 1854 Broad Street cholera outbreak.

347G: Children’s novels about Ancient Egypt – Akhenaten

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There are two or three novels (more like junior high/high school novels - called YA today) in a series.  All about Akhenaten and his decision to worship the one god, Aten.  He and Nefertiti had several daughters, one named Merriaten?  Tutankhamen, who began life as Tutankhaten, was also in the later novels.  Very romanticized.  No plural marriage mentioned.

346N: Old TV’s with many antennae that float!

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I’m looking for a children’s/preteen’s chapter(?) book which was some in a similar black and white, hand drawn art style to Shel Silverstein. It had the same white pages with black words and drawings, but more detailed. And more words. It was not by him though, I checked. I was reminded of this book by a picture I will include below. In the book, however, I believe they were older thick TVs with antennas sticking out in a similar way to the picture. They floated and I believe they were some sort of antagonist or tools used by them. I think I remember little creatures (goblins?) and/or children in the book as well. There was also a lot of junk and trash and piles of books on some pages. Maybe also some strange wildlife scenes like they were in an alien/fantasy planet? I know it definitely did not take place in the real word. Fear was a large element in the book, I believe it was mildly dark/adventure focused, not for very small children. I hope this is enough information, I have a burning desire to know what this book is because it seems so interesting!

345U: Virgin Islands young adult mystery (Solved!)

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I am searching for a young adult mystery that was set in the Virgin Islands.  The protagonist, a young woman, receives a message from her father on an alphabet shell.  I think it was her father, who is a doctor, and who has been abandoned on an island.
Please help me.  This book was a seminal influence on my desire to live on islands. I now live in Manhattan.

345P: YA book where kids get gills cut in their necks and go underwater

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A group of kids, maybe a girl and her younger siblings, are surviving on their own. They meet a boy on the beach, who cuts gills into their necks somehow, and they go swim in the ocean and visit a deep and dangerous chasm at one point. Mermaids may or may not be involved. They leave the water in the end. The cover is blue with a picture of them swimming; the art wraps around the front and back, though it was probably a paperback. YA Pre-2000. Eerie feel.