Category Archives: YA (grades 7-9)

110C, solved: Young Adult book about Jason and the Golden Fleece

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I read this library book in the 1960s but it could have been published earlier. A young girl is chosen to represent her village by becoming a handmaiden to the temple where the Princess Medea serves. This girl is chosen because she has some special mystical power even though she is very shy. She loves Medea and makes friends with others there. And she tells the story of Jason and the Golden Fleece from her point of view. The book ends with Jason leaving Medea and Medea, in her grief, killing their children. There are many references to the Maiden the Mother and the Crone in the book.

110A: Exit Through Wall

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Young adult book about a teenage girl who lives maybe in London/England in a townhouse. She removes the bricks between her house and the adjoining one next door. I don’t recall why. But she does end up using that exit. There is a fire in her house and she helps her parents escape through that wall.

109D: Art aka King Arthur

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This is the 1st in a series (a trilogy) read in school around 1992-1993 (7th grade). The plot is a boy and a girl in the 20th century finding a teen, Art, and discovering that he is actually King Arthur. Art gets hurt toward the end of the book and they have to go Avalon to save him from the bad guy.

108E: Young Adult Mystery Takes Place in Scotland

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I believe I read this book in the late 1980’s or early 1990’s.  I also believe it was part of a series with the two main characters.  This may have been the first or second book in the series.  I do not think subsequent books took place in Scotland.  The two main characters were a guy and girl (possibly a couple, I do not think they were related) in their late teens or early 20’s.  There may have been a romantic aspect of them getting together.  I remember the guy being self-assured and flirty and the girl being more sensible.  In the particular book I’m remembering, they travel to Scotland and stay in a castle near a loch to solve a mystery.

103O: Violet Pendant

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I’m looking for a YA book from the late 60s or early 70s.  It’s about the friendship between a teenaged boy and girl, who over the course of time become closer-boyfriend/girlfriend.  He arranges to have a locket or pendant made for her fashioned like a violet, since she loves violets.  Not much to go on, I’m afraid.

 

101A, solved: Portuguese brooch lost in Cape Cod Cranberry bog

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I read this book one summer in the late 1950’s or early 1960’s?  I believe my grandmother took it out of the Harwichport or Harwich Massachusetts libraries for me, as I was about 10 years old.  It is set on Cape Cod and is about a Portuguese Family.  The grandmother has a brooch she brought from the “old country” which is very dear to her.  And her granddaughter “borrows” the brooch without permission and goes skating on the cranberry bogs, where as I assume you can guess, the brooch is lost.  Grandmother turns this into a teaching moment and there is tremendous remorse, etc., etc. Magically, in the spring when the little girl is walking across the bog (or playing there or working there?), she sees the brooch encased in the ice and brings it home to her grandmother.

I do not know why this book is so memorable to me, except that I stayed on Cape Cod with my grandmother most summers and I guess it hit a chord.

I do not remember the actual title or the author (hey it was 50 years ago!), only that the book was about an inch thick and had a yellow cover with sketches of the Portuguese grandmother.  I do believe the entire book was illustrated throughout , as I remember seeing a sketch of the brooch in the ice.

Anyway, not much to go on I know – any information would be much appreciated!