Category Archives: YA (grades 7-9)

352I: Boy Performs Appendectomy in the Deep Woods

I’m looking for a book I read in the late 70’s or early 80’s, about a boy who was deep in the woods with a man, maybe a relative, for an extended period of time. It may be a Canadian book. The man develops appendicitis, and instructs the boy how to cut out his appendix, to save his life. The boy does it, and it works. The boy must be at least 10 years old, he may have been a young teen, I’m not sure.

352G: The Symbol in the Magical Wall

I read this book in 2009 or 2010. I believe it was considered a young adult book but it was a good reading level for me in 6th grade. The book seems so scattered and has gotten worse in my memory over the years so excuse me if I seem to jump around in the story.

The cover I believe had a sort of symbol that is important in the book. I remember the cover being mostly red and black but couldn’t say for sure.
The main character is a boy around 12 who is in the foster system (?) and comes to live with this old woman who is introduced as talking to the TV (I believe Jeopardy) and talks to the TV as if the person on the show Is talking directly to her (indicating schizophrenia), but the TV actually changes from the show to sending her secret code within the show (?).
Somehow they end up in her house deep in the woods, the child service worker leaves and the boys weird gets weird (in like a magical seance) and he likes to walk around the woods surrounding the property and find a magical wall of some kind that the symbol then becomes important in. The story gets so back and forth from there it would be impossible to explain. This book somehow helped me a lot in the part of life I was in and I really just need to read the series again.

351W: 11 Year Old Girl Rehabilitates Horse Named Black Baldwin (Solved!)

I am looking for a children’s/YA horse story from the late fifties or early sixties.  It features a somewhat broken down horse named Black Baldwin, who was bought/adopted by an eleven year old girl desperate to have a horse.  She rehabilitates him and eventually wins second prize in some kind of horse show event.  The book had small pen and ink drawings throughout.  I don’t remember the book jacket though, I believe it had one.

I searched for a long time thinking the horse’s name was the title of the book.  Either it is and every copy is long gone, or there is some other title.

351M: Family Relocates to Alaska

The book I am searching for is a young adult novel I read in the 1980's about a family relocating to Alaska.  They lived in an isolated cabin, walked to a lone general store to get supplies and place an order for clothing and household items through a Sears Catalog.  They ordered in summer for a delivery of winter items, items didn't arrive until Spring.  A teenage girl with at least one sibling, mom gets depressed, and either dad or brother or both get lost and possibly killed. One chapter talks about them laying in supplies for winter and the girl sleeps on pallets of canned food.  It was a paperback book, white cover, the title had something to do with Alaska without saying Alaska, referencing the 24 hours of sun / dark I think.

350R: Daughter of Lord Leads Resistance to Keep Father in Power (Solved!)

I’m searching for a book that I can only remember the plot of. When I was around 13 I read a book about a girl who was the daughter of a lord. (I’m 35 now, so it would have been written 1998 or earlier). She was poor and was the leader of a small resistance trying to keep her father in his lordship. Eventually she got hurt and captured. She was brought to the capital. To the people she had spent over a year fighting. Once she got there she found that there was far more going on than she realized and the people she had been fighting were their own quiet resistance.
I don’t remember the picture on the front. It was YA, fantasy.
There was one scene that stood out. She received a gift from a “secret admirer”; it was a ring. Which finger you wore the ring on meant different things. She didn’t know that so she wore it on the one that fit.
I borrowed the book from the library and to this day I think about that book. I want to read it again but I can’t remember the title or author.

350E: Supposedly Heroic Girl Dies in Apartment House Fire (Solved!)

Looking for a 1970s ya fiction book about a girl who died in an apartment house fire. Everyone thought that she was a hero because she alerted the other tenants to the fire so they could get out. Actually, it was her brother who had done the alerting while she went back to her apartment to get her shoe box of paper doll families. This was a much darker sequel to a book about a brother, a sister and another girl. Think the title may have been something like “The truth about (girl’s name)”, but not positive. Don’t remember author but know I read it right after it came out somewhere between 1969 and 1980.

349Q: The Four Elementals and the Earth Children Raised in World with Magic

The book was a children’s/YA book published sometime between 2005 and 2012. It was meant to be a quartet. I know 2 came out and I was curious if it was ever finished.
It had two main characters, a boy on earth who was disabled because he born on a world with magic. And a girl who is from earth but was raised in the world with magic, she’s the only one who can’t use magic and is immune to it.
There are evil magicians who can travel between the worlds, but doing so damages the worlds. The two main characters can move back and forth together but it damages the worlds. They’re told the only solution is to seek help from each of four elementals, societies of magic creatures that, if all four can be convinced to help, can make a bridge between the worlds in a safe way. Both of the main characters have to go to their birth worlds or it’s bad for the fabric of the universe or something, and this can only be accomplished with their help. The bad guys use dark magic and want to hunt them down. The boy struggles to learn the magic of his birth world. The first book dealt with the water elementals and the second with the earth elementals, I think. I think the name of the magic world started with an F
There’s a scene where the girl is on earth for the first time while they’re on the run and they go to a McDonald’s and she experiences a soda for the first time. I think her name starts with a K (Kira?)and the boy’s might be Marcus.

349P: Forest Girl Falls in Love with City Boy

I read this as a young adult (I was born in 1976). It was a beautiful novel about a girl who grew up in the forest with little / no interaction with the outside world. I remember she had a vivid imagination and maybe had a magical lake or bog she would visit. She meets someone from the “city” and they fall in love. I seem to remember he gave her gloves and she didn’t know what gloves were. I now have teenage daughters and would love to share this novel with them.
I’ve done a lot of searching with the words girl, lost, forest, tree but can’t seem to figure it out.