Category Archives: YA (grades 7-9)

147C: Kids’ Island Nation

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I was very happy to find your website. I am currently stumped by a book I read as a child (lets say, during the 70s). Generally speaking, the plot is that a group of kids/teenagers take over an island in between Canada and US and create a nation.  The book opens (I think …) with the sister arguing with her brother who is in a band (I think …) and she has red hair (I think … ).  I believe (I think …) the ending does not work out that well for the newly formed nation / the kids, and that there is some “father knows best” sentiment, ultimately.  In any case the bit I am most confident about is the nation / island / US-Canada waters. 

Thank you for any help!

 

145Y: Nonfiction book on racism for preteens

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This could easily be post-1990, but not post-2006. It’s a thin hardcover – maybe no more than 60 pages – presumably meant for school libraries. One striking anecdote I remember was about how racism doesn’t have to be taught through words. In it, a white Southern woman, probably born in the 1950s, told how her mother was an impeccable lady and also “quite a racist.” However, the mother never said an unkind word about any person based on that person’s skin color, because “she was too much of a lady for that.” Even so, every time the mother and her daughter went shopping and had to talk to a black cashier or sales employee, the mother used a tone of voice as if she were talking to a silly preschooler. So, wrote the daughter, (not verbatim) “she passed on her racist views to me without a single word being exchanged between us on the subject!”

 

145G: 90’s horror anthology (solved)

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A horror anthology read in the early 90s, found at a school book fair.

-A girl has the power to shrink people who she feels betray her and keeps them in a dollhouse or birdcage.
-Two siblings befriend the new neighbor only to find that she’s a vampire
-A girl keeps hearing something in the cellar begging her for help. It turns out to be some mummified creature that drags her under the floor and that it had meant “help” as in “I’m hungry”
-SHADOWS COME TO LIFE AND KILL PEOPLE. There’s this big scene at the end where the latest victim family is desperately trying to light matches to keep the shadows away.

145F: Alien cube steals knowledge (Solved)

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I read this in the late 80’s / early 90’s.  A girl discovers that her friends are using a cube like device that when activated sends them on adventures. The only adventure I remember is all of them being shrunk and swimming in a pool of spilled soda.   But with each use, they lose more of their knowledge and start using other words because they can’t remember the actual one-in one case saying “Hitchcock” instead of ketchup.   The girl finds out through her dreams(?) that the device has been sent from another world by a queen who’s already drained all of her subjects of all their knowledge.   I remember the cover was mainly black with the girl looking into a light. 

145C: Horror story Collection (solved)

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This was a collection of short horror stories I read in the early 90s. The version I read was hardcover with an illustration of leaves swirling down a hallway. Here’s what else I remember: 

1. A boy who hates raking leaves is attacked by them

2. A depressed girl meets a giant talking rabbit who also plays the fiddle

3. A girl babysits twins with a complicated ritual that they say keeps monsters from eating them. The babysitter is saved from an intruder by these monsters because he didn’t know the ritual and she did. 

4. A boy writes a screenplay about defeating brain-eating alien mosquitoes.  Later it turns out that the studio executive he gave the screenplay to is a brain-eating alien mosquito!

 5. A young boy who’s desperately trying to lose weight keeps fantasizing about his favorite junk cereal. Then there’s a scene where I think a Thanksgiving turkey comes to life? But mainly he just really wants that cereal.

144I: Cabbage air freshener and a magical world?

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YA or kids’ book, fantasy or magical realism.  Protagonist is a young girl.  She gets sent to the store to buy something with a wick — either an air freshener or a candle?  The one she buys is the last on the shelf, it’s in a dented can, and it smells like something you wouldn’t want air freshener to smell like.  I think it’s either cabbages or broccoli.  It’s also magical, and either gives her access to a magical world or brings her a friend/companion from a magical world.  That’s all in the book’s set-up, like in the first chapter.  No idea what happens from there.

 

142C: Scholastic Short Story Contest Winner – Gargoyles come to life! (solved)

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I am looking for a book I bought at school thru the Scholastic Book Club, 1982-1986.
The author was 18 and had written a short story that won a contest. The book I bought was the longer version of that story written after the contest, althou it was only around 120 pages I believe.
The story was about a misfit high school boy who made models of gargoyle-like creatures that were about 3 feet tall and for some reason they came to life. The cover was of the boy in his living room and in the background on the stairs was a set of gargoyle legs coming to get him.
I called Scholastic a few years ago to ask about contest winners as I thought it would be the
easiest way to find a name but they referred me to their Canadian office and they never got back to me.