Category Archives: YA (grades 7-9)

294A: Boy’s adventure in the Northwest

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This was a hardcover chapter book I read in the ’60s. Don’t know when it was published, but it felt like contemporary writing, though the story was set in the early 20th century. No illustrations. A very young man lives with his mother in a small town- the nearest city is Spokane, I think. Possibly his older brother is missing. He goes to the ice cream parlor and has a pineapple ice cream soda. There is some sort of quest, some railroad tracks. He fights a cougar or puma, and is wounded, and emerges scarred but triumphant. He gets the girl.

293S: Children’s march/walk to Washington (Solved)

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This was a young adult novel about a group of children who are compelled to walk from New England to D. C. as a form of protest (maybe echoes of nuclear war?). One of the kids is, I think, the granddaughter of the president but keeps that a secret. As the march continues, more children join in. There’s some sort of mystical element. I read the book in the mid-1980s.

293L: Teenager Horror Anthology Containing Invisible, Evil, Witch-Succubus (Solved)

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Young Adult Horror Anthology

Paperback about 5 in. x 7 in. x .25 to .50 in. thick

Read between 1989-1993

The book included multiple legends, such as a traditional re-telling of the Warsaw Golem and the Wendigo.  I would guess it was written in the 80’s because it already had creases and tape on the spine when I read the book.  The cover contained a boy sitting in a chair, whose hair was standing up on end, with a monster behind him; reading a book with the exact same cover, which had the exact cover, etc.  I remember it being similar to Bruce Coville and Beverly Cleary and R.L. Stine books, though I think this book was written prior to Stine.  It is not any of the “Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark” series.

The main story I remember is set in a western town, possibly a cowboy/farmer town.  It centers around a young boy who is mistreated by his older brother.  They both work as farmhands and the older brother fall asleep under a tree.  The young boy sees this baboon-looking creature with long hair sneak up behind the brother and attack the brother.

This baboon creature, who I remember as a witch with long hair and red skin for some reason, rides on the brother’s back and sucks his life force out. When the younger brother tries to help, the witch sinks her claws deeper into the brother’s back.  No one notices this creature but the young boy I think.

Eventually, the brother gives up and commits suicide by throwing himself over a cliff.  The boy looks down as the witch lets go of the brother.  She looks up at the younger brother and starts to climb up the cliff’s side as she tells him to wait because she is coming for him.

Any ideas?

292N: The Happy Mountain (Solved)

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The book I am looking for should have perhaps been called “The Happy Mountain” or the “The Jade Mountain” but nothing seems to match the google search of that.
I think it was a tween book from the 70s maybe earlier, but a young girl is staying with a much older aunt or grandmother. The older woman had, I think, lived for some time in her own youth in China, but was forced to leave with her family quite quickly. When leaving the country the older woman’s father gave her an ugly home-idol to carry with her to safety, an item she had always hated, but kept for years anyway as a memento of her father. Towards the end of the book, she discovers with the help of a out-of-favor nephew (I think) that inside the ugly idol was a jade village or jade mountain that she had loved as a young girl, obviously hidden in the hopes that she would find it sooner.

290Q: YA historical novel about the Biblical matriarchs ca. 1980

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The book was divided into several sections, most or all narrated in first person and each about one of the Biblical matriarchs: Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel, Leah, etc. Along the lines of “The Red Tent” but young adult and published somewhere around 1980, give or take a couple of years. The author was female, and I think it was published in US (though possibly UK or other British Commonwealth, since I got it out of a Canadian library).

290L: The Girl With the Disappointing (Mustard-Colored) Walls

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Thanks to the Sunday NY Times, I now know who to ask the question that has been nagging at me for years: what O what was the book for teens (they didn’t call them YA novels yet) that I read in the 1960s (might’ve been published then, but also could’ve been published in the late 1950s) in which a daydreamy teenage girl envisioned painting her room gold, then painted it, then was bitterly disappointed that the walls were in fact “mustard yellow.” I remember nothing else about the girl, the story (or the walls) but the book must have had some kind of profound effect on me, because I’m over 60 now, a novelist and an English professor, and have read many, many novels since–and I’ve never forgotten it.

290C: A shy girl at summer camp

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I am looking for a book I read somewhere around 5th grade.  The year was 1977-78ish.  Everyone was reading Judy Blume.  The book I’m looking for was about a girl who went to summer camp.  I think the girl was overweight.  My recollection is that the girl was shy for some reason, or maybe that’s how I saw myself.  Maybe the girl just wasn’t happy with the way she looked.  Perhaps Judy Blume or another author popular at the same time?

290A: A young lady travels to Carmel-by-the-sea (Solved)

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I’ve been looking for the following for years with no luck. YA novel from possibly 1980-1990’s about a young lady (18ish). I cannot remember the title or main heroine name but distinctly recall her traveling to Carmel-by-the-sea and the white wicker furniture that she decorated with. Possibly summer time or just after graduation. Seems she ended up going to work for a lady in interior design. And of course there was a boy…

Possibly part of the just for girls series or similar to that. 

289J: Spaceship disaster thriller (Solved)

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[/private role="author"]Brandy Hartnett, bhartnett808@gmail.com[/private]

I read this in elementary school in the 90s. It’s more of a young adult book not a children’s book. There was a spaceship that people lived on and something happened, I think the ship got torn in half by an asteroid or a meteor or something like that. I think an asteroid/meteor field was coming their way, so everyone on the ship was supposed to evacuate to one side of the ship so they could seal off the middle in case of damage from the asteroid and a couple of kids or people got stuck on the side that everyone had evacuated from. They thought they were going to die but the side with all the people on it ended up being breached and everyone was exposed to space and died. So now the group of people or kids on the other side were alone. And all the controls for the ship had been on the side that got destroyed. So they try to figure out how to get rescued or land somewhere. I remember the end being very depressing. Their last hope of survival was to get their floating ruined spaceship close enough to the last planet that there were any people on, which I believe was Pluto, so that someone could essentially snag their spaceship. But they were too far away and the book ended with them floating off into space with the impression that they would starve to death. I always remember the book title having something to do with butterflies but I could be wrong. I remember the cover having a purple/ red magenta space swirl incorporated on it.

287D: Dark YA book about a girl who befriends fairies

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I read this book in the early 1990s, but have no idea when it was published. The details I remember are that there is a girl who is for some reason befriended by fairies. She shrinks down and goes to visit them. Maybe she’s going to become their queen or something? For some reason she ends up with this necklace made of thorns that she can’t take off. The only other thing I remember is that the fairies would feed her nectar from a flower.