The only details I remember are that it was about a brother and sister and it was someone’s birthday. They baked a cake for the birthday which I believe was a train cake.
For context, I was born in 1985 and I think the book was probably published in the 70s/80s.
I want to say this book was set in the 1950s – I read it as a child in the 1970s – part of the collection of young adult books at the Jonesboro Library in Jonesboro, AR.
It was about a young teen girl who was plump and had some skin problems. She had an older sister who was slender. I remember one specific scene – the younger girl was eating a tuna salad sandwich for lunch and her sister told her she shouldn’t eat that because it was bad for her skin. She was going to do her usual sneering retort, but instead she asked her sister what she should eat instead – what she was having? The younger sister started paying more attention to her appearance. She met a boy who was new in town – her parents invited his parents over for dinner (I think they worked together). She put on too much of her sister’s makeup and borrowed heels and made a grand entrance to the dinner. Her parents were horrified and sent her back upstairs to change, so she was humiliated. The boy actually did like her already, but she didn’t have any self-confidence. Over the summer she started eating better and slimmed up. She eventually ended up with the boy who said he’d liked her all along.
This is a book I read in 2006 or 2007, there are two little boys that at some point walk through a bunch of fog and end up at some kind of magic mansion where there’s a bunch of other kids. The mansion is maintained by a number of caretakers who can give the kids whatever they want and let them do whatever they want. There is also an old woman who tells the boys she’s lived there for ages and when she was a young girl the caretakers gave her as many cats as she wanted. At one point in the story it mentions one of her cats that has a tail curved like a question mark and it some how gets boiling water splashed on it and it runs in circles then drops dead. She also tells the boys about one of the caretakers who sits on the roof of the mansion and watches all of the kids to make sure they don’t try to leave. He kills any that do. He has big bat wings, his neck is made out of the tongues of the kids he killed, and his mouth is filled with their teeth. I vaguely recall him being referred to as some kind of brother and possibly being nicknamed the tongue thief. Eventually the boys want to go home, so the women tells them how to get past the beast on the roof and how to get through the fog. The boys make it out into the real world after being at the mansion maybe a week but realize that decades have past in the real world and their families are all old. The boys go back to the mansion to try and find a way back into their own timeline. That’s all I remember. I’m sorry about how scatter brained this sounds, but I wanted to get out as many details as possible because I really want to find this book.
This was a book for littler kids, ages 8 and under, more or less. This book was read between 1972-1980. I vaguely remember it being a thin but large paperback.
The main characters were rain-forest animals and the book took place in a rain forest and at least part of it was set at night. There were peccaries as characters. Something was happening in the jungle, at night, that the animals were preparing for. The peccaries were really funny characters.
Parents go out for the evening to opera (Madame Butterfly?). The child(ren) cope(s) with a babysitter. I think the babysitter is referred to as the onion lady and she wears many layers of clothes?? circa 1970’s.
I am searching for a book that I read between 1969 and 1975. By the time my mom bought it for me, I was already reading fairly well (I was born in 1968). It was a challenging book for me as it forced me to think about pronunciation, and below my level plotwise. The really remarkable thing about the text, though, was it was written phonetically. For instance, there was a plot line about seeing a bee, but the text was, “C D B?”
There were pictures on the same pages as the text. The pictures could have been a watercolor-style with soft edges, a bit like the PBS TV show Caillou. However, I don’t recall perfectly the illustrations/pictures.
The cover was yellow, it was a fairly thin volume, it might be considered a trade paperback measuring maybe 7″ x 7″ or 8″ x 8″. I don’t remember the title or the author.
I’m interested in finding this book because it helps demonstrate that abbreviation, like that used when texting, is not new.
I’m looking for a book I read in the ’80s when I was probably 12. Pretty sure it was set in North America. Small chance it was Britain, as I grew up in Canada and read a lot of British literature. A girl goes to live with her aunt and cousins for the summer. In a bunker/cave/room they find in a nearby hillside they find some books about magic and the room is filled with magical/witch stuff. The girl becomes very interested and tries some magic. In one scene they discover there are repercussions for the magic they’re trying and when they get back to the house after a spell they discover the pet canary is missing. At some point they may have also accidentally made the aunt disappear too. ?? I feel like there was a lot of yellow on the cover, but that could be 100% wrong. I’m a librarian and I’ve been searching for this for YEARS and I just cannot find it. I’m really hoping you can find it for me! 🙂
I used to read this as a kid so I’m assuming was published pre-1980. At the beginning the setting is of a boy and a man in the wilderness (in a cave?)(set in 1700s-1800s). Either as part of the initial story or as an event that already occurred the man is attacked by 2(?) other men and left to die. The boy makes it out alive to a town and initially recuperates in a feather bed (there was a lengthy description of the bed). He then returns to the house where he lives (step child or orphan?) and after going upstairs hears his mean stepfather(?) talking with the very men that were the attackers. They describe returning to the scene to recover some loot (maybe to finish the job or kill someone else?). The boy escapes to try to beat the men to the destination and provide a warning, cannot remember how it ends.
Children’s picture book written in the 60s,70s or early 80s…I read it in the early 80s. A young African American girl has an imaginary lion. She is teased by her siblings and somehow in the end of the book the lion eats up her siblings.
I read this book in the mid ’80’s. The book was entitled something like, “The Long Road Home,” or “On the Road Home.” It opened with a boy becoming self aware and he was given the task of going on a journey. He befriends a bear and he and the bear undertake the journey together. The antagonist in the story is an evil that feeds off the fear of the boy. This evil, at one time in the book, took the form of a frog or toad. At the climax of the battle between the boy and this evil, the boy finally fought back his fears, the evil shrunk and was picked up by a large stork and dropped in a lake. The dust jacket was plain white, the title of the book was in the lower right hand corner, next to a pencil drawing of the boy and the bear.
Any help would be great. Thank you!