This was about a teen (18?) from Colorado who moves to Florida to be the live-in nanny for a young boy with rich parents. The boy is very intelligent and begins killing people using his inventions. Eventually he’s eaten by an alligator while trying to kill the girl in a swamp.
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.
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.
A haughty girl is sent to a farm where she learns modesty and discipline.
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.
From what I remember as a ten year-old: the book was for tweens, probably published in the seventies, mid to late. It is a chapter book, contemporary, about a father and son visiting a quiet (English? New England?) village that has a secret. The people in the town are all secretive and distrustful of outsiders, but the boy strikes up a romantic friendship with a girl from the town. The mystery of the town centers around a Stonehenge-type ruin. The climax of the book involves a cyclical resetting of the people of the town and their memories.
I am looking for a book that was bought at a school book sale in Massachusetts in the mid 60’s by a ninth grader. It’s about a group of men on a desert island with poisonous spiders or crabs. One man has immunity to them and becomes the leader. A black man also develops immunity and splits loyalty in the group. At that point in the story the book was stolen from my friend and he hasn’t read another book since. Thank you for any help.
YA novel. A teenage girl goes to live with her father after her mother has a mental breakdown. She falls for a rich boy who drives a red sports car. His previous girlfriend is missing. Turns out a memeber of the group pushed her over a waterfall and she died. They are all covering it up.
The last scene of the book takes place in the girl’s bedroom. She had not been to school because she was ill. The guy tells her how his ex-girlfriend was killed by being pushed over the waterfall. I believe it was first in a series. It was out of print when I read it years ago. Ideally, I would really like to find all the books in the series.
A young adult (or middle reader?) book published sometime in the 1980’s about a boy who escapes from a New York City field trip and spends the day charmingly conning New Yorkers out of their money. The cover may show the boy dressed in a tuxedo, surrounded by a captivated street-corner audience.
The book I seek is British, probably published in the 1970s. The story is about an abused boy who somehow travels back in time to the Industrial Revolution; his name is “Creep” (given by his abusive mother). In the present day, Creep’s brother searches for him and finds a historical record about him