Category Archives: YA (grades 7-9)

314N: Magic Siblings Avoid Abduction

This book was found in the children's section at my library around 1985, although it was likely older than that. A group of three or four (or more?) siblings have magic or psychic powers. I believe they can all move things without touching them and maybe fly? I think I remember two scenes: 1) the children were flying in the living room and broke a vase. They used their powers to clean up before mother saw. 2) Villians have followed the children to a movie theater. They escape by crawling under the seats.

Thanks for your efforts!

314I: Kids’ Club Series of Books

I read a series of books in the late 1970s or early 1980s at my local public library. There could have also been a second or related series. They were hard cover, young adult books. At my small town library, they could have been published quite a long time before that.

The series involved a number of children that formed a club and solved mysteries. Both boys and girls were in the group. The series was set in the west or in the mountains. The words “Treasure” and “Indian” come to mind when I think about these books, one of them could have been part of the name of the club.

314A: “Second Sight” Saves the Prince

I’m looking for a children’s/ young adult novel I found in a school library in 1977. I thought of it then as an “older book,” so I’m guessing the publication date to be between 1945 and 1965. It’s historical fiction that takes place during Scotland in the Jacobite period. The main character is a teen girl who sometimes has visions via the “second sight,” a gift that allows her to help save the prince at the end. It’s not a Sally Watson book.

313H: Monkey Brain Time Travel (Solved)

I’m haunted by a (probably YA) time travel book I read in the mid 70s. I believe it takes place in England, where relatives are visiting (maybe from America?) their professor/scientist Uncle (?) who has produced a time travel potion. I think one of its main ingredients is monkey brains, but I’m not 100% sure. The serum allows the imbiber to travel back to Middle Age Britain, not sure if it’s as an active participant or as a fly-on-the-wall. Whichever character it is that starts taking trips, soon gets caught up in the people and events of that past. He becomes addicted to it. The danger is that his body stays more-or-less in present day geographically, so when he comes out of the trip he may be standing in the middle of a super highway or some such that wasn’t there hundreds of years ago. I don’t remember the resolution. I just remember loving the imagery and concept. Anybody?

311Z:Octopus For Dinner

I read a book when I was a kid 1993, the book felt modern) that was about a girl who was invited to sleepover at her friends house for the first time. Main girl is white and the friend is black. She’s very anxious, one thing she worries about is they will serve something weird for dinner like an octopus. She goes and they have a good time, in one part they run through cornfields at the friends house. It’s definitely geared towards 7-12 age group, some illustrations. I’ve been searching for years!!

311G: Jacobites and Second Sight

Hello.  I’m looking for a children’s/ young adult novel I found in a school library in 1977.  I thought of it then as an “older book,” so I’m guessing the publication date to be between 1945 and 1965.  It’s historical fiction that takes place during Scotland in the Jacobite period.  The main character is a teen girl who sometimes has visions via the “second sight,” a gift that allows her to help save the prince at the end.  It’s not a Sally Watson book.

309X: Cereal Box Mansion

Mom sends young boy to buy cereal. Instead of the supermarket, he goes to run-down neighborhood store. The cereal is not good, but the back of the cereal box is part of a set that combines to build a model of a Victorian mansion. Boy returns to store to buy more of the cereal, builds mansion. Ghost of sad young woman appears. She was the daughter of the cereal manufacturer. The mansion had been torn down, the rest of the cereal boxes had been discarded, and this is the last model of the house existing. She had been in love, forbidden to marry, and died in grief. Meanwhile, the boy befriends a sad old man. Eventually, he realizes that the man and ghost had been in love, many years earlier. He races home to get the house, and finds that his mother has cleaned his room, and burned the house in the incinerator. Pre-1970s.

309M: White sheep in a green field

I do not know the author or the name of the book but it was published about 1947or 1948 It was the same time I read Elizabeth Enright's "Four Story Mistake."


It was about a girl who had very little in common with the kids in her school and had few friends and believes it will be worse now that she has moved. She is standing on a bridge in the new town and down at a field when a boy joins her and says "white sheep in a green field, doesn't that remind you of "Kim". That was just what she was thinking and she makes her first of many friends in a school that shares her interests.

309H: She’s obsessed with fashion (Solved)

The description of the book I am looking for is a young adult book, which I read in the 70’s (I was born in 1967).
The plot is a young girl living with her family in New York City who is obsessed with fashion. When her parents leave her in New York City alone when they go on vacation (which she is thrilled about) she stumbles into a Woody Allen set and believes she is going to be in the movie.