Category Archives: YA (grades 7-9)

202B: Teen Love Triangle

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Teen book from the late 80s to mid 90’s about two best friends. One of them falls in love with the others boyfriend. I believe the boyfriend works on planes or owns one. I remember there was a scene with two on a couch in an airport hangar. I think there were also several scenes on a porch swing. I think the ending was the friend finally realizing her boyfriend and her best friend should end up together. Any help identifying the title and author would be greatly appreciated!

199E: 3 Siblings worship magic dough/bread man (Solved)

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I read this book in middle school, 1995. so book is late 80s-90s. Three siblings, 2 girls and a boy, with the boy as the middle child. the youngest sister is ill/sick/crippled in some way. home life is not awesome, and they may or may not have moved to a new house- a huge tree in the backyard, they each find different items in the “new” backyard and decide to bake all of them into bread that mom or grandma was making. i think one of the items was a wire in shape of a crown, and another thing for the heart and something in the dough mans hand. this became some kind of magical talisman that made the little sister stronger and or able to perform magic. i also distinctly remember (i may be wrong) them having an entity i thought was rowan or something with an “R” that they worshipped for giving them this magic, and it became mad for some reason, resulting in the little sister climbing the tree to give back the dough man, and her falling…

196B: P.S. I Hate You (?) (SOLVED)

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I read a young adult fiction book when I was about 13, probably published in the 70s. I was certain it was called PS I Hate You, but can’t find anything on Google with that title. It was about a teen girl, possibly named Marley, who leaves a note on the kitchen table, closing with P.S. I hate you and runs away to her father in the city. While living there, she falls in love with her English teacher when he introduces her to the poem Nothing Gold Can Stay (the same poem used in The Outsiders). She is also insulted by another teacher, who calls her “plain, plump and pimply.”

190B: Schizophrenic Teen

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I’m looking for a book that was probably from the mid to late-1970s. It was about a high school girl, and I believe she was schizophrenic. There was a pond involved, and at one point she had her face down in the pond and was only saved when her older brother’s friend saw her and intervened. It was probably a Scholastic Books offering.

189B: Children Abandoned on farm (solved)

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Oldest sister (story is her perspective) of I think 3 siblings keeps up appearances – keeps everything running so they can stay together. Careful not to let neighbors know they are alone, they make excuses why their mom has not been seen. They stretch the money they have, sell what they can, order clothes from Sears Catalog. The Story ends when the mom comes back. And although oldest is angry, she is relieved she is back in the end.
Young adult / teen coming of age fiction book, I read in the mid 70s.

188G: Children’s book about a boy who learns about different secret codes from a mentor

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I believe I read this book in the sixth grade (which would have been late 1970s). I got it from the school library. I would guess it was written prior to the late 1970s because we never had any new books at the school library. In the book, the boy meets a man who teaches him about different kinds of codes and how to break them. It included info about how people used to wrap paper around a cylinder and then write messages on the spiraled paper (so the reader would need a cylinder of the same radius to read the message correctly). It also had a tic-tac-toe type code (Different squares of the tic tac toe shape would represent different letters so an A would look like a backwards L and a B would look like a U). It also talked about E, T, A, and O being the most common letters (in English) so when you are trying to decode a message, the more commonly used symbols probably stand for one of those letters.

188F: Kids on spaceship schoolbus accidentally knock it off course and end up on strange planet

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A kid/teenager’s book about three kids that are on a spaceship school bus that is taking them home (the last three kids furthest away from school) who mess with the autopilot and end up loosing control of the spaceship. It ends up at another planet altogether where there are people dressed in fur.
It might have been published in the 80s. It had images for each chapter.

188C: searching for remembered anthology

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I am looking for a favorite children’s book. Here is all I remember about it:

1) I think it was a Reader’s Digest anthology, but since I have not been able to find it, perhaps it was another common name from the time that sponsored the collection.

2) I believe the cover was blue–but I could be completely wrong about that.

3) I am quite sure that it was at least 9×12, possibly 10×14. It was large enough that I recall the depth of the book (spine width) being only an inch and looking thin in comparison with the rest of the book.

4) I read it between the ages of 6-12 (1960-1966).
5) The stories had enough words that they were either directed toward young adult readers (high school) or junior high.

6) My most compelling memories are of two stories in the anthology:

The first was about a family crossing the desert in the American southwest. Their car broke down and they had to survive by collecting condensation on parts of their car, which they dismantled. They also created signage so that a plane could see them.

The other story was about a pony or colt with a broken leg. The family suspended the colt in a hammock while its leg healed. The vet had told them it would never work, but it did.

187C: Shinkin, Shinkin, I am granny Shinkin

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I’ m looking for a young adult novel set in Wales (or possibly Cornwall), published in the 1940s or early to mid 1950s (based on my age when reading it). I recall a Customs (Revenue) Officer who was trying to stop smuggling, some accusations of witchcraft involving an old woman who was named Granny Shinkin (or something like that) and, at one point, a massive civil disobedience action where many women all dressed up the same and chanted the words in the stumper title to keep the Customs Officer from arresting the old woman.

187A: “Ghost”

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This was a paperback book that I read in the late 1970’s. I believe the story took place in the 1960’s or 1970’s. The cover of the paperback was white and a teenage girl’s face was looking out a window that had lacy curtains and I believe the curtains had daisies or flowers on the bottom of them. The picture on the cover had a sort of lacy dream look to it. The title of the book was “Ghost” or “Ghosts”, I do not know who the author was. Despite the title of the book, it had nothing to do with ghosts, the supernatural, or hauntings. It was a story of a teenage girl’s coming of age with her first high school boyfriend. The girl’s mother does die of pneumonia in the story, but again that is not the main storyline. In one part of the book the girl and her father go put to eat at a diner and the father kills a cockroach that crawls across the table with his thumb (Yuck!). Towards the end of the book the girl decides to stay overnight with her boyfriend and he gives her what is described as a “shy new bridegroom smile”.