Category Archives: YA (grades 7-9)

171D: Money

I believe the title of the book I am looking to find is called “Money”
It’s about several children who find hidden money in an old man’s house and agree to keep it a secret, so they can not use any of it.
One of the boys is obsessed with getting candy, another wants to invest in stocks and bonds…definitely a girl in this group, however I can’t remember who it was she wanted to buy.
If you can help identify the book I would be delighted. The title always brings up millions of response in search engine and of course, the first few hundred are Martin Amis “Money” — however, that story is very different than the book I seek.

170A: Blond siblings with a Crazy Aunt (Setting may be Europe) (solved)

This series of books was in my intermediate school library, which I attended in 1984-86. The main characters were sisters, maybe twins or just close in age. I believe there were only two or three books in the series and the girls kind of came of age during the series. One plot in the first book involved a mentally ill aunt. When the girls visit her, she tells one of them that her shoes are “shit brown,” and the librarian or administration at my school had very noticeably blacked out the word “shit”. I think in one of the books a death in the family is also dealt with. There were occasional black and white illustrations in the books. They were probably each less than 100 pages. I have a sense that they may have taken place in Germany or Austria. If not, then maybe the characters were immigrants to the USA from one of those countries. I’m picturing a purple or light blue cover/binding. Thanks for any leads!

169D: Modern Fantasy Adventures with a character named Broccoli

I remember a children’s (possibly young adult) modern-set fantasy series about two boys who adventure together. The books were embossed, and each one has a major antagonist’s face on the front (which was the embossing), usually a monster. I remember a werewolf and a zombie (each on a different book). The narration was from the 1st person, and he lived next door to a boy who was named something like Brock Lee. He called him Broccoli for most of the series. The main character had a Game Boy that had mystical powers, and could open doors…supposedly even the gates of Hell. He was also revealed to be The Chronicler, which is basically the Narrator of the Universe, unbeknownst to him. Broccoli was the Key, which gave him an ever-expanding suite of powers, largely mystical. In one book the main character sold his soul to a demon, and found a loophole out of it. I believe in the later books they meet an adventuring group of kids who were investigating a vaguely Lovecraftian monster of some sort. I know the series was at least 4-5 books long. Thank you for reading my ramblings; I’ve been looking for this series for over a decade!

169C: YA Romance Set in Early 20th Century, Lead Characters Play Romeo & Juliet in School Play (solved)

I remember reading this YA book, which I believe had a sequel, in the mid 1970s.  It took place in the early 20th century in the New York area, somewhere slightly north of New York City, possibly Westchester or Tarrytown.
The book(s) tell the story of the budding romance between the female protagonist and a boy who is a fellow student. At one point, the pair is cast to play Romeo & Juliet in a school production.  Another slightly older female character (either a friend, or a sister), has a crisis (an unexpected pregnancy?) and she drinks a bottle of laudanum in response.

168E: Non-fiction book on making wooden toys

I am looking for a non-fiction book that I took out in the 1990s. Last week I contacted my old junior high in hopes that they still might have it, since there were encyclopedias there from the 60s and 70s when I went there…who knows how long old books languish in the stacks.

1. Woodworking book with fun and simple projects

2. All the information I can remember about the book and what I tried is here: This is what I remember:

    • Black and white photographs, line drawings for the patterns

 

    • Cover was blue with black and white photographs

 

    • It seems it would have been published in the 1960s or 1970s

 

    • It was not exclusively aimed at young people

 

  • The projects included a castle, castle residents (I traced these onto balsa wood :-)), a catapult, a siege tower, a modern bungalow dollhouse, wooden boxes with a combination lock, possibly a puzzle or two like a tanagram, an elephant with a mahout. The projects were pretty unique and charming

I started my search on Alibris and ABE, but I fear that the title was something generic like “Making Wooden Toys” (of course!) or “Wooden Toys You Can Make”. I went to World Cat to narrow it by year and got a decent list of titles, but looking them up on Google gives me results that I don’t remember and that don’t sound like the book. Or, sellers have not provided a photo of the book. Woe! I can tell you that the book is:

    • Not part of a series or published by a sponsor (Dover, Time-Life, WOOD etc)

 

    • Not by Richard Blizzard

 

  • Not More Wooden Toys That You Can Make by WG Alton

Unfortunately I can only find out what book it is *not*. The search is made difficult by the generic title it had, which of course, I can’t remember exactly. Is this enough detail? The book was in English, and I read it in Canada, which means that the publisher could have been American or British.

166F: Under the Mulberry Bush (solved)

This is a book I read as a child and borrowed from the school library in the early 1990s. I’m fairly certain it was a fictional book, not an autobiography. I think it was called ‘Under the Mulberry Bush’ but could be wrong, as I can’t seem to find any book that matches that. It was about a girl (possibly with a French grandmother?) who goes to live with another family that’s experiencing some financial troubles, and they have a lot of mulberry bushes, which means that they have a lot of silkworms, which eat mulberry leaves. She comes up with the idea of using the silkworms to make money by harvesting the silk they produce and selling it. It’s a very risky proposition, and it takes a lot of exhausting work because she doesn’t know anything about silkworms and harvesting their silk, but she manages to learn all she needs to and get it to work. In the end, she saves the family and falls in love with one of the family’s sons, even though they didn’t get along at first. (and I want to say they have some sort of private joke about crab apples, and in one of the ending scenes, he throws a crab apple at her and she catches it)

Sorry, I don’t have much more than that! As a child I remember it being a sweetly romantic tale that I would love to buy and reread.

 

163E: Creepiest Book in the World

….And I found it in my high school library. It was newly released I think, so it must be six years old or so? Give or take a year or two on either side
It was this incredibly, indescribably creepy story about a young (pre-pubescent) girl living in a nightmare-version of government sponsored housing, a huge tower with individual apartments. If I’m remembering right, nobody was allowed to leave. The entire story took place indoors, and all of the characters, except a new resident and maybe the protagonist were horrifying, terrible people. The protagonists was the only kid mentioned, she didn’t have any parents or guardians, and survived by trading items/favors/information with the other residence.
There was a murder, and she was looking into it, I believe. There was a sub-plot about cannibalism in there somewhere, and the big climax of the book was this man (who the protagonist knew and did business with) carving a possibly Japanese-inspired design into her chest with knives and saltwater. Prior to that, he’d seemed like one of the nicer/saner characters.
At the very end, there’s a scene with the protagonist showing the new resident (she was a social worker if I remember right) how the business of trading worked in the tower and the new resident gave the  protagonist jelly beans.
I think the protagonist’s name was Jem. But don’t quote me on that.
It was the most disturbing thing I’d ever read at that point in my life, and I’ve never been able to find it again.