Category Archives: YA (grades 7-9)

168E: Non-fiction book on making wooden toys

1 Reply

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)

5 Replies

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

1 Reply

….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.

162A: Lissa was found alone as a baby or toddler after the Great San Francisco earthquake (solved)

2 Replies

I used to read a book when I was a teenager in the 1970s called either Lissa (or perhaps Lisa). I am not sure if that was the actual title, but she was the main character in the book.  Lissa was found alone as a baby or toddler after the Great San Francisco earthquake, her parents were never found.  She is now in her late teens and living alone in San Francisco and working at a large department store. The owner’s son or a relative ends up falling in love with her.  They end up I believe by accident finding her real Grandmother and it turns out that Lissa is from a wealthy and influential family.  I am trying to find the title of this book and the author.  It was probably written in the 1950s or 1960s

 

160I: Old YA sci fi book

2 Replies

\

I’m looking for a YA sci fi book, maybe from the 70s or 80s, about a girl who lives in an orphanage/juvy work camp type place. She has the ability to move thru (time/space/another dimension?). There is a scary, mysterious maintenance man that works at the orphanage who turns out to be a boy shares her same ability, but tried it with his pet dog and somehow they merged beings. She befriends him and tries to help him and ultimately is able to un-merge them, and they have an romantic attraction. There is also an old lady that lives in a mansion near the orphanage who all the orphans go to meet. In the end it turns out the old lady is actually the girl’s grandmother who has been looking for her for years.

 

160H: boy who discovers he has a gift to read minds

1 Reply

I am looking for a 7th grade level book, published before 1987.  The story is about a boy who discovers he has a gift to read minds.  He confides in his sister about this gift as they were laying in a field, and uses his gift to help his family escape a dangerous man stalking them at their house.

If you would like more detail about the scenes of this book, happy to go into more detail.