Tag Archives: New England

363I: Making Red Candles for Winter

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I’m a librarian, and here’s how the patron described the book she remembers:
This would have been in the early to mid 90s. I recall a children’s book that described preparation for winter and the most vivid thing I remember was candle making with red berries. I think it was set in New England and possibly discussed pilgrims??
The candle making method was hand dipping these red candles for winter.
Very vivid pictures, deep saturated colors, simple illustrations, not too much detail, more landscape focused.

(Someone has suggested Tomie DePaola’s An Early American Christmas, but that’s not it.)

360C: A perfect day at the shore

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I’m looking for an old children’s book that my mom used to read to me but I can’t remember the title. It was about a mother and a young daughter who spent the day together getting ice cream and going to the beach. The beach was a New England looking type of beach, the illustrations were pastel in nature, maybe watercolors. I feel like it was called something like The Perfect Day or A Day at the Shore but those titles aren’t turning up results. I would have read it in the 80s and early 90s and it was not brand new then. It is not Beach Day, Day at the Seashore or The Seashore Book

357Y: 1980’s young reader fiction set in Boston

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I am trying to find the name of a book I read in 5th grade in 1983-84. It was a chapter book about a young girl whose family (just her and her parents) had to move, I think, because of one parent’s job change. She tries to prevent the move by demanding her parents find her a bedroom in a tower, and to her chagrin, they succeed. I don’t know that the book actually names Boston as the move destination, but looking back the girl clearly moved to the Back Bay area in Boston. There she befriended a group of loners, oddballs and outcasts. One of them is called Gertrudestein (one word) in the book. She is an older divorced woman who left her husband Lloyd because she could not bear his insistence that his name be pronounced “yoyd.” The young girl and a friend (maybe a similar-aged boy) decide to steal a swan boat in the middle of the night to take their menagerie of friends, who for various reasons are socially unacceptable as riders during the daytime, on a ride. A decent portion of the story is spent planning the heist.
I have a daughter in 5th grade myself now and am so desperate to find and share this book with her!

339W: Woman Discovers Husband’s Ship’s Mast In The Eye Of A Hurricane

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I’m hoping that you can help me find a short story…I’ve been googling keywords but to no avail.
Clues:
This was a short story that I read during middle school. It was in the same textbook or collection of short stories as The Deadliest Game by Richard Connell.
As I recall it, the plot involved an old woman who lived near the beach in New England. There was a hurricane and she went for a walk on the beach during the eye of the storm. During her walk she observed a ship mast (or maybe it was a ship Figurehead) washed up by the storm.
I think her long lost husband or lover, was last seen on that ship and she found some sort of closure by finding this piece of it.
Keywords: Hurricane, eye of the storm, ship, mast, figurehead, New England, beach, old woman
Thanks in advance