Tag Archives: magic

376P: Potion makes you beautiful outside, ugly inside

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I would like to find a children’s picture book checked out from library in the early 90’s (most likely published then but possibly in 80’s), about a woman who was ugly/plain and wanted to be beautiful so the prince would marry her.  A little old man with a raisin looking face peddled her a potion but told her only to take it sparingly and it would make her pretty.  She did and then got vain and took it all, and became beautiful but ugly on the inside.  She was mean to the raisin face man and I think he turned out to be the prince under a curse and she didn’t end up with him after all.   Was a colorful picture book. 
Not the book titled Sleeping Ugly.  

376G: Old Book

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Probably published in the 1950s or even the late ’40s.  Maybe in Britain or Canada.
Children’s fantasy/detective story

Plot: A single (gasp!) mother (probably a war widow) with 2 kids, a boy and a girl.  She is being courted by the neighbourhood beat cop.  The kids want to buy her something special for her birthday and they have saved their allowance so they have enough to buy her a small second-hand radio.  The kids know she loves music and dancing.  Kids find out later that radio is magic and broadcasts crimes in progress, which they , of course, try to stop/solve, and get their bacon saved by the cop character. I know this is a faint, faint hope. But it was such a change from Dick and Jane, which I refused to read aloud, thus grade one ended with me being labelled as mentally deficient. It was astoundingly different from anything else I ever saw until I was in my teens.Best of Luck to you – and for me!

375Y: Magic that costs its user

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I’m looking for a book I had read back between the years of 2007-2011. I believe it was part of a series but I only had found the one book at a used book store. The premise was the main character was a woman who was a private investigator or detective type who worked by herself. There was magic she was able to use but she mentioned many times throughout the book that using magic came at a cost to the user and would take memories or something like that every time it’s used. I believe her father was also rich and or powerful but they had no to little contact.
If it helps at all I vaguely remember the first chapter or so had her getting a call from an older lady who was calling in to ask the detective to help a family member being hurt or missing.
I believe it was an orange cover with a girl doing the turn around pose. I hope you can help me find this!

375Q: Thief can freeze time

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Possibly a short story. I may have read it in the 1980s, and I had the impression that it was already old then. It may have taken place anywhere from the mid 1800s to the 1960s. A man had a stopwatch or pocket watch that could freeze time for everyone but himself. He went to a fancy party, stopped time, and stole everyone’s jewels. At the end, he dropped the watch and it shattered irreparably. About the ending, I should probably add: the watch shatters while time is frozen. So the implication is that he will never be able to un-freeze time again.

375K: Unicorn horn makes figures of speech literal

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I read this children’s book in the 1970s, but the book could have been older than that. A girl gets a unicorn horn from somewhere (possibly an antique store or a relative), and whenever she holds it, figures of speech become literal. I remember being freaked out by a woman whose tongue literally began flapping at both ends. This may have been only one of several magical things that happened to the girl over the course of the book, but it’s the only one I remember.

375G: Darker Harry Potter-Like Novel Series I read in the early 2010s

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I have been racking my brain trying to figure out the name of a young adult fantasy series that I read in the early 2010s. From what I remember, there was a male protagonist (probably teenaged?) who was extraordinarily skilled in some magical system that revolved around basic elements (fire, earth, water, etc). I feel like the series may have begun with some sort of entrance exam, that was repeated at the start of every book/school year. There was always some dark force acting as an antagonist, but the protagonist wasn’t very well liked with classmates (I think they had all had a lot more training than him, some kind of elitist thing). All that’s to say that other students may have been minor antagonists as well. This one is a total shot in the dark but I believe the main bad guy wore a mask of some sort. It wasn’t actually super reminiscent of Harry Potter, besides the basic plot of a super talented kid appears out of nowhere and isn’t well liked. But, I can’t think of a better title so I’m sticking with that. The cover was a dark brown, maybe maroon-leaning, with a simple icon on the front I believe. This is the detail I’m least sure about since, during my search, I found a copy of Swann’s Way that looks a lot like what I’m describing and I may be conflating mental images here. I understand that none of this is super specific, or concrete for that matter, but any help whatsoever would be greatly appreciated!

371B: Girl Trapped By Apocalyptic Sorceress

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The book was a large full-color graphic novel. It probably would’ve been published between 1990 and 2010. It was about this girl who lived in a huge palace with a very strict and secretive ‘mom’. This parental figure is rarely around and the girl is often taken care of by random people the lady employs. She gives the girl run of the place but tells her never to venture over the wall outside the palace. One day she gets mad and does it anyway. To her horror, she sees a desolate almost apocalyptic world and hundreds of slaves her ‘mom’ keeps. At first one of them was going to take her back to the palace but she persisted and found out her ‘mother’ is a very powerful sorceress who keeps the whole world under her control. A woman shows up and sees the girl standing by a man from the palace. She asks him point blank if this girl is her daughter that the sorceress took away from her. He basically says he can’t tell her then says something that strongly implies the answer is yes. The sorceress comes and finds out and drags her to the forest. She encases the girl in a small pod-like home grown into a tree where she lives trapped for years until her late teens when she escapes. She gets help from a boy about her age and goes back to the palace and defeats the sorceress. There was some part where they got help from a man a few years older than her who the sorceress had raised under similar circumstances and kept in the palace. He’d tried to defy her but it hadn’t worked. I don’t remember much else but it was long and had big pages.

Please help.

370R: Teen boy with blue hair (maybe!) flees bad guys and escapes to parallel world with help of mongoose (maybe!) (Solved!)

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I read this book as a teen in the early 1970s. It had a typical teen book dust jacket design from the 70s: pen/watercolor painting of profile of boy with blue hair (I think) and I have a memory that it was called “The Blue Boy” or something similar but all searches have turned up nothing appropriate. 
Anyway, this memory is decades old, but what I recall is that this teen boy (probably orphan? no parents present in the story that I can recall) is somehow involved with a gang of bad people. Perhaps boy has magical abilities that they are taking advantage of for ill-gotten gains? Perhaps boy has blue hair as a gimmick? Maybe there is no blue hair but I swear there was. In any event, boy decides to escape from his situation and is pursued by bad guys who want to recapture? kill? otherwise cause problems for him. Boy is on the lam and has an unexpected mysterious ally who brings him food and perhaps finds him safe spaces to live. In my memory this ally is a talking mongoose, but crikey, how does this narrative even make sense? The boy is astonished to get ripe mangoes when in his world (the world of our narrative), mangoes are still green and unripe; months and months away from ripeness. It turns out this ally is from a parallel world, and the book ends with the ally helping our boy escape his pursuers by moving to the parallel universe. In my memory, book ends with boy on a sunrise-shining beach in this parallel world. 
I read it in English, but nothing about the story seems to be set in North America (mongoose and mangoes, or at least mangoes even if the mongoose is a figment of my imagination or faulty memory). 

369I: Girl summer magic or witchcraft (Solved!)

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I read a book sometime in the late 70s/early 80s that was purchased from my school through a flyer or book fair.  It was a chapter book that may have had an illustration or two.  Best I can remember, a girl is spending her summer break maybe in a new home or at a relative’s home.  It seems like the summer may have been rainy and she was exploring the house.  She found something in a basement or cellar that was either magical or had to do with witchcraft.  She experimented with the magic but it seemed to turn out badly and there was  an explosion or climactic event in the basement.  In the end, all was resolved with a pleasant ending.  I don’t remember the book centering on any other characters so only one main female child.  I don’t remember the title or the cover but I have a vague recollection of orange and purple on it.  Here’s hoping someone remembers.