Category Archives: YA (grades 7-9)

341N: 80s/90s dance book: poor teenage girl (Sal?) at local dance school

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I am looking for a book I read years ago, probably in the mid-nineties. It was about a teenager who went to a dance school and I think her name was Sal. Her family was quite poor so they often worried about money. I think she stayed at home with her parents for a while but they lived quite a long way from the school so she had to move closer, and they had an argument about that. Her parents weren’t keen on her going to the school anyway: maybe they wanted her to get a 'sensible job'.
The dance style was contemporary or ballet. I don't know about the location except that it was the UK or USA.  It was set in the present day when it was written, but that would have been in the 80s or 90s.

I remember very little of the story. At one point she realised she wasn't as supple as some of the other students so she stayed behind to do extra training. At the very end there is a show by the students and she was doing a solo. She got on stage and decided to abandon the dance she'd planned and just improvise with how the music make her feel. At the end she felt it hadn't gone very well but then got loads of applause.

I think there was a romance element as well with another music student, although it wasn't just a romance tale. I've searched through heaps of lists of young adult dance books and on Google Books but I can't seem to find it.

‘Say Goodnight, Gracie’ by Julie Reece Deaver was suggested on another forum, but it’s not that. The dance aspect is central to the story I’m looking for, whereas it’s just a supporting story in ‘Say Goodnight, Gracie’.

Jean Ure as an author was suggested as well, but most of her books seem to be for slightly younger readers.

I don't think this was amazing literary writing or anything, but for some reason I remember this book and would love to find it again.

341C: Spoiled siblings are reformed by fixing up an old house

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Probably written in the 60s or 70s, this is a YA book about a pair of spoiled siblings growing up in the city (I think the opening scene is of them terrorizing a babysitter). Their parents announce quite suddenly that they (the parents) are going away for the summer and that the kids will live with a relative (an aunt or a cousin) in the country. Their aunt has a husband or boyfriend who I think is Native American and the kids are both afraid of him and passionately unhappy, especially since they are expected to help fix up the big old house in which they are all living. Eventually they start working (I remember clearly a scene in which they scrape all the old paint off of tall pillars out front) and gradually are reformed so that their parents hardly recognize them when they return.

340S: Boy meets crows on a chessboard

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Seeking a children's/teen book I read in the 90's, the central character is a boy who went to a pond/lake when he was told not to and developed warts on his hands as a result. These are cured by a magician? in an early scene, a friend of his father maybe? I only remember two more scenes, one in which he remembers trying to pull a wart from his skin, and another in which he dreams? of a giant chessboard. The white pieces are standard king, queen, knights etc, but all of the black pieces are crows. Crows and chess pieces were a recurring image in the book, but I don't remember what purpose they served. Thanks to anyone who helps with this, it's stumped me for years!

340O: Incredible Sunday? (Solved!)

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This is a YA book from, I believe, the 80s. It’s about a preteen (named Sunday or Sundae) whose mother gets her an agent, so she can audition for TV commercials. I remember that her signature look is a French braid or two braids? She has some difficult auditions including one for peanut butter where she has to do a cartwheel,  and the directors loudly discuss how awkward she is in front of all the other girls. She eventually makes a friend who is a young actress who is obsessed with Virginia Woolf’s suicide,  and eventually she finds the friend by the ocean wearing a raincoat stuffed with rocks contemplating suicide. I think the book was called Incredible Sunday, but I haven’t been able to find it under that name.
Thanks so much!

340I: Girl Wakes Up Inside Dollhouse (Solved!)

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I read this book in 1995 from a middle school book fair. It was a children’s/young adult book. The cover had an evil doll with brown hair and looked like the doll was bursting through the cover. I remember the main character was a girl probably 10-12 years old. There was something about a dollhouse and waking up inside the dollhouse. Maybe she and her family had just moved to a new house? There was a part where the main character begins to realize she is inside the dollhouse because she finds a wide tooth comb and describes it as very large like someone would use if they had dreadlocks. Why I specifically remember that, no idea. I managed to lose the book over the years but it was a nostalgic favorite of mine. Hopefully you can help.

340B: Younger Brother Acts Possessed, Acts Like An Alien, Returns To Normal

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Looking for a YA horror book (?), possibly British or Australian, 2000s or earlier, about a girl whose younger brother starts acting strangely. It's split into three sections: in the first he is acting similar to a person possessed by a demon (and a priest is called to exorcise him). In the second section he calms down and starts to become obsessed with the stars, implying that he is an alien. In the third section he calms down a little more, and the novel ends with some sort of climax/sacrifice? after which he returns to normal. The cover had a very pale ghostly looking boy on it, and I think the title was a one-word, strange sounding (making starting with a?) name that the boy called himself (I think based off a constellation). I read this book in the early 2010s as a child and was very disturbed but fascinated with it.

339Z: Man v. Nature, Cartoon City, and other Facts

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I have a book I cannot remember the title of that I would hope you may be able to find. It is a book maybe for young adult readers, so sort of a children’s book, but maybe not your typical fare.
I was born in 2001, and there was a book I remember from when I was a child that was a bunch of different discrete sections, all vaguely educational. Each page was different and had a different theme, be it statistics about the usage of power (I think that was a page?) or different conflicts in literature (i.e. Man vs. Nature, Man vs. Society). I remember the latter clearly. That page maybe may have also alluded to the fact that Shakespeare stole many of the plots of his plays from stories people already knew? Something like that. I also remember the cover having lenticular printing on it, perhaps depicting a city and also a dinosaur in a cartoonish fashion. It was a relatively large book (thick and large surface area). I may be mixing it up with another book, but I also vaguely remember the book also having a section on the similarities between the Lincoln and Kennedy assassinations? But I’m not sure about that.

339Y: YA Girl falls in love with military guy

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Genre Teen/YA? Military Romance
Approximate publication year rough guess late 1987-1988.
Read between 1987-1991
Title Guesses: Beyond the Sunset(no clue really. ?????)
Character names-unknown
Plot description: A girl meets a military guy at/or outside of a USO. The guy either leans on a car or out of a car window and they talk, the guy smokes cigarettes, they end up in a relationship… possibly WW2 era themed.
Cover:  Very plain with no graphics or calligraphy, San Serif style font for title/author, deep purplish sunset.
Setting: Mainland US maybe East Coast
Publisher:  I don’t believe it was Sweet Dreams/Wildfire/Crosswinds/Sunfire.  It might have been Point Romance(Scholastic). The book was in a display with these types of paperback books.  A librarian told me once that sometimes these books were purchased in a display set but I do not believe that this book was part of a series and was a stand-alone book.

339W: Woman Discovers Husband’s Ship’s Mast In The Eye Of A Hurricane

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I’m hoping that you can help me find a short story…I’ve been googling keywords but to no avail.
Clues:
This was a short story that I read during middle school. It was in the same textbook or collection of short stories as The Deadliest Game by Richard Connell.
As I recall it, the plot involved an old woman who lived near the beach in New England. There was a hurricane and she went for a walk on the beach during the eye of the storm. During her walk she observed a ship mast (or maybe it was a ship Figurehead) washed up by the storm.
I think her long lost husband or lover, was last seen on that ship and she found some sort of closure by finding this piece of it.
Keywords: Hurricane, eye of the storm, ship, mast, figurehead, New England, beach, old woman
Thanks in advance

339P: A Girl, An English Boy, And Plaits

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Looking for a children's/middle school age book from 1960s about a girl. A boy from England moves in next door. I think the setting is rural/farm community. She likes the way the boy says bath (baahth). For a special occasion she "plaits" her hair more loosely than usual so the plaits will lie flat when she wraps them around her head or pins them up. She leans over kettle/ pot of steam to create tendrils. That's all I can remember. My mom got it for me from the local public library in Chicago.