Category Archives: YA (grades 7-9)

305U: Diary of a girl who died (Solved)

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The book in question is a ghost story that I read in the late 80s and I believe it to be a Young Adult book or possibly geared towards preteens. My impression is that it was written or published in the 70s, but that is only a guess. I cannot remember the title, but it was an off white hardcover library book with some sort of random small scene on the front relating to the story. It was a fairly thin book, maybe only 50-75 pages?

The story was about a teenage girl who had to go live with her uncle (I think) for some reason, and while she was there she found an old diary from a girl who had died many years before. The book makes many references to the ‘bogs” near the house (I didn’t know what a bog was before reading this book) and the girl who wrote the diary died after running into one of the bogs in the middle of the night and sinking. Not sure if it was accident or a suicide due to grief. I believe that there was a reference to a missing necklace or locket and the girl (who wrote the diary) had a boyfriend/lover/fiance that may have been a soldier named Ian who died.

 

One of the chapters in the book was titled “Letters To Ian.”  The main character becomes obsessed with the story as she reads the diary and starts having dreams/hallucinations about this girl and Ian and their deaths. Near the end of the book she finds herself either sleepwalking or hallucinating and ends up caught in one of the bogs in the middle of the night, possibly trying to find the locket/necklace.

I read this books dozens of times when I was young but never owned it and one day when I went to check it out again ( I lived next door to a library as a child) I found that the library had discarded it in a mass auction to make room for new books. I was heartbroken, and none of the librarians could provide me with the title to search for it elsewhere. We only had paper catalogs in our small town library and no computer system back then to look at what books a customer had checked out. I’ve tried for 30 years to remember the name of this book so that I can look for a used copy somewhere, with no luck.

Hopefully the little that I can still remember will jog someone’s memory.

 

305L: Magician and girl fight spiritualism together (Solved)

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Children or young adult historical fiction book, set during late 1800s or early 1900s. Girl is on cruise ship with silly female relative who believes in spiritualism, meets stage magician (Anton?) who smokes something distinctive (briar root? cheroot?) and teaches her how to do magic tricks. Author emphasizes logic over belief. Mystery involved? Published between 1950 and 2000, probably late 20th century.

305G: …turns out, he shouldn’t have

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I read a YA fantasy or sci fi book in the mid to late 70s. I was 10 to 13 years old. I checked the book out at the same time as Enchantress of the Stars. The protagonist was a young boy or teen who thought his world was unfair. One of the rules was that no one was to drink stream water. The world was ruled by judges. The protagonist thought this was an unfair system. He drank the water, turns out he shouldn’t have. Also, because he questioned authority (spoiler alert) he became a judge. Thanks!

I believe the authors last name began with an A or B. I reread it a few times as a kid and seem to remember finding it before Baum (I read all of his Oz books), alphabetically.

305F: A little bit Flipper and a little bit Frank

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In the early 80s, I read almost every book in a juvenile fiction series of adventure stories. Covers we’re likely library hardbacks so probably not helpful but were green with line drawings of multiple kinds of adventures. Books includes some line illustrations. I think the series may have had multiple authors, possibly different kinds of adventures, but I most remember the diving ones. Young adults learning how to dive, learning about the bends, exploring, mostly ocean research, I think, but maybe combating poachers or sea criminals?!? I think of a combination of “Flipper” and the Frank Crisp books. Series seems like it was probably from 60s or 70s.

304T: Making things weigh less

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I’m looking for a juvenile science fiction book I read in the early 1970s. I must have been about 11 or 12 years old. I borrowed it from the public library. It was about a teenager (or youngster) who discovered a mysterious method of making things weigh less, have less mass. In the process of making things weigh less he was able to harness the seemingly limitless energy to power things like an automobile. Pretty vague, but that’s all I can remember.

303S: A 90s or earlier young adult book about a teen girl in poverty

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A young adult (YA) book I read in the late 90s:

The main character is a teenage girl. She lives with her mother and younger sibling. She lives in poverty/school outcast.

Three events from the book:

Something about the younger sibling having a pee accident and the vivid description from the teen

Something about eating cereal for dinner

At one point, her family gets a bag of free clothes, which she is really excited to wear to school even though it’s stained. Might be leather skirt and white sweater?

303I: Eye of the Needle

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I am looking for a childrens/YA book I would have read in the early 1980s (probably not written before 1950) in which there was a rock formation known as the Needle, because it was needle-shaped, with a hollow at the top, in which was a haystack – so at some point the hero or heroine was looking for something in a haystack in the Needle.  That is the one detail I remember.

302X: A crazy quilt in various shades of red

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Looking for a YA novel written in the 60’s or early (I read it in the mid-70’s) but it was set in the early 20th century in a rural area. A group of girls need to make a crazy quilt in various shades of red—I can’t remember why—so they had to beg, borrow and steal fabric to make it. One of the girls goes to the general store with her father who is color blind and convinces him to buy a bolt of a particularly lurid shade of scarlet for a dress for her mother who was far from pleased when she received it.

302V: Travels through alternate universes and baseball

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Possibly a book, possibly a series – listened to as an audio book on a car trip in the early 2000’s. The book was from Cracker Barrel (which is apparently Ingram Entertainment titles, if that helps). The book followed three protagonists, a girl and two boys. They traveled to other worlds or alternate universes through tunnels. The other worlds usually had some sort of baseball theme. At least one had a society of gnomes who used it as their court procedures. The girl protagonist was a pitcher. The had a map that helped them find the way – depending on how it was folded, it could show a neighborhood, a city or even be a star map. The antagonists had eyes you could see through, all the way to what was on the other side of their heads – photographs of Manhattan Project scientists showed that many of them were bad guys due to this effect.

302O: Chapter Book about Young Man and a Bicycle Race (Solved)

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My memory is of a chapter book that I checked out from an elementary school library in the late 60’s. It was about a young man participating in a bicycle race, perhaps the Tour de France, or modeled after that race. It was more advanced than a simple picture book, and my recollections are that the style of writing and illustrations could have been from the 50’s to early 60’s. The grueling race was seen through this young participant’s eyes, and I recall the descriptions being quite vivid. Again, my memory is that it was an upper-elementary or perhaps middle grade reading level. It was a realistic account of a long, multi-day bicycle race but was definitely a novel. Thanks for any help you can give.