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.
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.
I read this book in 7th grade language arts in 1994/95 in Astoria, OR. Might have been by a regional author. The plot felt a little dystopian, maybe, and involved a young girl who was a member of a close-knit, sort of secluded community. Key plot points included a ritual that involved melting a piece of gold into a small shape and wearing a specific outfit (probably red) to a ceremony/festival after getting her first period. I don’t think the word “period” was ever mentioned. Sewing was involved, maybe by the whole community. It’s possible it took place in the distant past. I believe the title started with an S and was a single word like Stitchers, Spindles, or Spinners.
I am searching for a young adult adventure series I read in the 70's, although I think the series was several decades old at the time. It was based on the adventures of young adults on the frontier of colonial, American Revolution and Post American Revolution America. Debby Boone was the main character of one book, and she leaves the message "D Boone cilled a bar" carved into a tree after dispatching a bear. Another book had the heir to the French throne being brought up in a cabin in the remote mountains of frontier America. The title of the series was something like "The Young Rifles" or the "Young Frontiersmen". I've never run across the series, but would love to find them.
I recall a young adult chapter book from my youth (late 1970s-early 1980s) about a boy with a magic pencil. It is used like a regular pencil, but it might have been blue lead. Like a regular pencil, it needs to be sharpened, and gets slightly smaller each time. I can’t recall the things he made or did with it. Some dramatic emergency with the last bit of pencil. Apologies but that’s all I remember.