Category Archives: YA (grades 7-9)

225D: Girl experiences loss and self exploration in New England

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Adolescent book from 1980s: Girl and her lovely sister move to New England; the sister gets cancer and dies. They meet and interact with all kinds of characters, including a pregnant couple they think is not really married and a photographer. At the end of the book, she goes to an exhibit called Faces of New England and sees her own face among the portraits submitted by the photographer friend, and sees herself in a new way. Beautifully written, a book that stayed with me a long time as a teenager.

Thanks for your help!

224I: Cross country adventure

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A book that my 6th grade teacher read to my class back in 1978-79. It was about a family – I think they were on vacation – and the kids were separated/lost their parents. The kids began a journey traveling across the country – the thing I remember the most is that they slept in stores/maybe shopping malls…

Thank you for your help – I have been looking for years!

222A: girl who moved to New York City in the summer (Solved)

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I’ve been trying forever to remember a book that I read when I was young. I think I was 10-13. Mid-80s. There was a girl who moved to New York City in the summer. Because she had no friends yet (I think), she spent a lot of time exploring the city by herself. She rode the bus by herself and she went to the movies by herself. She was really into fashion and talked a lot about the outfits she was putting together every day. I think that there was a department store that she loved and maybe fantasized about buying something there? I think she did a lot of window shopping.

I don’t remember her interacting with any other characters, so I have no idea what the plot was. I just remember thinking that it was so cool that she was getting around the city by herself, and that she was so fashionable.

220A: The Mystery of the Missing Diamonds

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Publication: I believe this book was published in about 1969 or 1970.

Genre: Early teen to Pre-teen mystery, possibly bought from Scholastic Books

Plot: A young girl with the last name Duncan solves a mystery of some missing diamond jewelry. She ends up finding the thief, a lady new to town who goes everywhere with her poodle. The diamonds were hidden in the puff on the poodle’s head. Story takes place in the summer. One chapter in the book describes a garden party where the main character’s friend dresses in matching mother-daughter outfit with her mom. Main character appreciates her own mom as dressing in an “unfussy” way.

218F: a wet Cat. Dozer

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Looking for a book I read in the 1950s or early 1960s. As I recall, it was about a teen or a couple teens who recovered a Caterpillar D2 bulldozer from a lake or pond, got it running, and used it for various projects. Could have been a Scholastic book club book. Was hardbound. One of the few non-classic books I remember reading as a youngster.

218E: Separated identical twin boys

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This book was about identical twin boys, one of whom was thought to have drowned as a baby. His brother, however was convinced his brother was still alive, and the book was about his search for him, which was eventually successful. His brother had been snatched by a distraught mother; her own boy had just drowned, and it was this child who was wrongly identified as the lost twin. I had thought the author of this book was James Hilton, but if it was (and I am quite probably wrong about that) I cannot identify the title.

217C: Twin Girls Separated as Babies (Solved)

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I’m looking for the title of a book I read sometime between 1984 and 1991, which had probably not been published very long before that, about twin girls who had been separated and adopted by different couples when they were very young. I think their parents had died, and the twins were split by their grandparents. One twin lived in San Francisco. (I’ll call her Twin 1.) They discovered that they were twins when one of the girls found her original birth certificate which listed her as a twin and confronted her adoptive parents. The girls met, and Twin 2 went to San Francisco to visit Twin 1. There was something spooky going on, and the San Francisco fog was played up for the creepiness factor. I believe it ended up that Twin 1 knew someone or something was trying to kill her, and when she discovered that she had a twin she planned to take over Twin 2’s life and leave Twin 2 to die in her place.

This is not Stranger With My Face by Lois Duncan.

217B: Girl Coping with Parents’ Divorce and Father’s Second Marriage (Solved)

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The book I’m trying to remember is a YA novel about a girl in middle or high school. Her parents were recently divorced, and her father remarried not long after. I think his new wife was a teacher, or maybe a substitute, at the girl’s school. The girl has a new babysitter or nanny or au pair, possibly an older high school or college student. I think they might have held a seance or used a Ouija board together, but I’m not positive. There was a scene with the girl and her mother driving in the rain, and the girl was thinking about her father’s second marriage, with the words “Divorced in (a month, maybe December), married in (another month, possibly May)” running through her head like a chant in time with the windshield wipers. I think the girl’s last name is Beckwith, or something similar, but that’s the only name I remember. I think it was probably published between 1985 and 1991, or sometime close to that.