Category Archives: YA (grades 7-9)

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.

339E: Hordes of Trolls during the End Times

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I read this book in the 90s at the latest so it’s not new. It was an end of time book, at least YA if not adult. Several things happened in the first chapter but I remember it saying a woman was putting laundry on a line outside and gnomes or trolls came running down the mountain in hordes. They were described as being in a color she had never seen before but could only be described as fear? I’m not sure the wording but something to that point.

Sorry that’s all I remember. It drives me insane looking for it. Hope you can help!

338Z: Witches and a Magic Stone

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A young girl spends the summer with her Aunt Margaret (sometimes called Meg). The young girl finds an unusual stone that unknowingly to her, belongs to a forgetful witch named Lanie, who needs the stone in order to be able to fly. The witches come back looking for the stone, but the young girl has hidden it. Most of the book is about their efforts to get the stone back. At the end of the story, the young girl discovers her Aunt is actually the queen of or head of those same witches and in fact, is herself a witch and she has a pet black cat as her familiar. This is a young adult chapter book with pictures that I read in the 70’s.

338Y: Infant alone on an island

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An infant survives a shipwreck and ends up on an island where he lives alone for a few years. Not certain what age he is when some people (grandfather maybe) come searching for him, but not being accustomed to people, he hides from them. The book makes a point of mentioning that the boy’s hair is very blond to almost white. I remember this was a very tiny book size-wise; smaller than the average book at the time.  It was a library book from the young adult/children’s section and I read it in the late 60’s early 70’s.

338R: Young adult, San Francisco, Russian cosmonaut

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I am looking for a young adult (probably actually middle grade) book I read when I was younger. I just remember bits and pieces–it was about a girl who lived in San Francisco, and she was interested in the first female astronaut,. She uses her whole name: Valentina Vladimirovna Nikolaeva Tereshkova (which is why I know it by heart even 20ish years later). The only other thing I really remember is the protagonist wasn’t Asian but would go to a little Chinese cafe or bakery after school to get a snack. The book would sprinkle in a few Spanish and Chinese words (it’s where I learned what shumai were) and would translate them in a footnote.
I remember the cover being bright and busy–orange and pink, with a lot of design on it, and I think the book was fairly thick, probably 200 pages. Does this ring any bells?

337G: Fear of Being Crushed in the Crowd was Unfounded

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Please help me.  This is driving me crazy.  I believe this book was written in the 60’s, possibly.

Around 1980 I read a book in middle school English class about a boy who lived in a large city but no one was allowed to go outside for fear of being crushed.  Everyone had a tv/internet-like machine in their home where they ordered things and they were sent into the home via a chute.

There were warnings from the “government” via tv to stay inside or they would be crushed by the mass of people on the streets outside.

The boy decided to go outside and found there was actually no one on the streets at all.