Category Archives: 1990s-

370E: The Fun Easter Bunny

I’m looking for an Easter book from when my friend was a child (born in 1987 in Canada) from early 90s or before. She remembers a silly/mischievous bunny that says “quack quack” and something like “I flap my ears for fun.” The bunny also supposedly sings about calling out the days of the week. In the end she seems to remember that he turned into chocolate or candy.

369Z: Kid’s Picture Book About Too Many Cats Living in a Grocery Store Until They are Given Away to Customers (Solved!)

I am hoping you can help me. My mom read a book to me as a kid but I cannot remember the name or find it on Google for the life of me. It’s driving me crazy! 
It is a picture book about a man who owns a grocery store and a cat lives there (or comes to live there at the very beginning maybe). More and more cats come to live at the store until they are causing all kinds of trouble for customers, like knocking stuff over. I remember one page was a drawing of a cat popping out of the fish kept in the ice section and scaring a customer. The store owner decides to give away a cat with every bag of groceries purchased. One page is a customer (an older woman I believe) taking home 2 cats with 2 bags. The bags are brown paper bags. It ends with the store owner only keeping the original cat. I think the original cat was an orange tabby but I am not sure about it, sorry.

I remember the pictures take up the page or at least most of it.

It was a softcover book (or at least my copy was).

My brother and I were born in 1993/95 and both remember it so I’m guessing it was read to me in the late 90’s or maybe early 2000s. I think it wasn’t an older book when I read it because of the drawing style- at least it didn’t look old fashioned. It’s a colorful, but not unrealistically colorful picture style. Not overly artistic/beautiful. Just fun, clear, and kid-like pictures. 

The book is in English, but I don’t know where it was published.

I’m guessing it was not a super popular book because I have googled it like crazy and can’t find it.

369W: Illustrated Children’s Book with Child-snatching Witch

It was a large hardback colour illustrated book. The story features a boy, a girl and a dog or cat, I think they have to stay inside because it’s raining. I think the girl is trying to scare the boy by telling a story about this witch that snatches children. The witch rides around on a vacuum cleaner like thing I think. I vividly remember the illustrations being the main focus, some taking up the entire page and I think some pages had special printing like glow in the dark patches. I think the girl was emphasising how she wasn’t scared of all these fantastical things going on and I definitely remember at the end of the book she is scared by a spider or mouse.

I read this book as a child, but I can say for certain when, I think the time frame for when the book was released is 1985-2005 though could be earlier. It was in the UK if that makes any difference.

It’s been bothering me a lot because every time I try to search it I end up getting the same results of Badjelly the Witch, Terry Pratchett’s The Witch’s Vacuum, Winnie the Witch, The Wednesday Witch, The Littlest Witch, etc – it isn’t any of these.

369V: After the Nuclear War

Looking for a paperback book series that I read on base, in Honduras in 2001-2003. It is based after a nuclear war and the protagonist has a group of folks he scavenges with. . . I think he is like a Clint Eastwood type gun slinger. When he gets mad (?) his vision turns red and he enters like a berserker state. In 1 book, they visit Philadelphia(?) a nuke site that was turned to glass. Another book has them visiting a research bunker in Alaska(?), where the scientists are either holed up or coming out of a hibernetic chamber or something. . . any help is much appreciated!!

369S: Dragon Obsessed With “Mutt”

I saw an ebook that had a woman in pigtails at a bar on the cover. She looked alternative and edgy. The book was a paranormal romance or urban fantasy. The woman is a mutt. A mix of different shifters with no special powers. The back cover blurb called her a mutt. She works in a bar. The setting was mentioned on the back cover.  A dragon comes in and becomes obsessed with her. She can’t figure out why she’s nothing special in their world. I can’t remember the author or title. But the tone had a bit of humor and I went to click on it later and couldn’t find the ad and link. I really want to read this book. It sounded fun.

369Q: Bloody paintings and maybe an orphan

So about 10 to 12 years ago there was a book that was very popular in charity shops in the UK that I want to reread again. A summary of what I remember:

– This guy found(?) a load of art that was quite cryptic and had lots of pieces all with a number on (maybe in an old house/ attic)

– All the artwork fit together into one massive piece and this was a key discovery in the book (I think there were thousands of pieces and they all were numbered)

– It involved a children’s home/ orphanage; I think the painter was found to be painting out his childhood trauma

– Some of it was painted in blood (you found this out later)

– A policewoman was involved as the love interest and they slept together after her mum/ dad’s funeral

– I think it jumped between the present day and the past quite a lot with it all tying together in the end; i think the main character was the painter/ murderer’s sibling(?)

– The cover design was a lot like ‘the interpretation of murder’ (not sure if I can link here but the yellow-ish cover on google images)

– It may be quite a shit book as that is what I enjoyed reading at the time

369M: Small Cloud Escapes Doom

I’m looking for a children’s teaching/therapy type book. It is a paperback with a blue cover. I’m guessing that it was printed in the 2000s, but I’m not sure.
The book is about a small cloud who is happy with his cloud mom until one day he wants to go exploring on his own. (I feel like the cloud was a boy but I’m not sure.) 
His mom says it’s okay so he goes off and soon runs into a group of cloud children. There’s a ringleader and the other clouds follow him/her and do what s/he says. He thinks they’re fun at first until they go higher and higher in the sky. He gets a funny/bad feeling in his tummy that tells him that this is wrong. He tries to break free from the group of clouds, who are being sucked together by the ringleader into one big dark cloud, but he finds that it’s difficult to get free. The other clouds are laughing at him. Then he draws on all of his strength, shouts “no!” (or something similar) at the clouds and he’s free.
He returns to his mom and tells her all about what happened. She responds by saying that she knew he was strong enough to do what was right (or something like that).
I’ve spent several hours entering different phrases into Google to try to find the book. I hope you have better luck that I’ve had.

369L: Series of animal stories

So there were many books in this series
-one was an animal stealing ribbons and the turtles wax for their bike without asking
-one was all the animals calling a little crow a monster because they thought he looked scary and they found out he was nice in the end
-one where two of the animals were trying to find treasure but get lost and stumble onto the old dogs fishing spot ( I think his name might have been old red or old blue) and he shows them that it’s under the plank because it was his old treasure
-one with a broken wagon
-one where they are playing baseball in the rain
-one where an animal thinks their birthday is forgotten but all the animals are throwing a surprise party
-and one where one of the animals is painting and their pet lady bug is stepping in the paint and making tracks

if i remember correctly each book also had a dvd.

369J: Two Sisters share room with secret alcove or passageway

My daughter is looking for a book that she checked out of the library in the early ’90s. This was probably a middle schoolers book. Two Sisters move with their parents a long drive away from where they previously lived. The first night they have to sleep on the floor in sleeping bags. They both want the bedroom that has some sort of alcove or passageway that ( might) lead to the outside. They fight, and one sister climbs out the window (?) and falls and possibly breaks her arm (?) . The story is told from the POV of the younger sister. They possibly have moved to a small town and the house might be a Farmhouse type house or older home.

369H: Murder Mystery in London with clones

I have posted this query on Reddit and on Stack Exchange previously.
This would have been after 1996 – 2005 ish, and I’m pretty sure it was a newly published book.

It starts with a woman who has hallucinations, and runs into an alleyway where she finds a body that looks just like hers that has been murdered. Later on, she finds a beautiful man who says he’s from another parallel universe and seems to think he’s connected with Arthurian legends, i.e. he talks about Merlin, wizards, and so on.

It starts off looking very magical and predictable, with the woman and the handsome man trying to hunt down the murderer. Then it goes somewhere else entirely.

There were seven murders in total at various points around London — they thought that it might be Jack the Ripper based, but it turns out the murders occurred at ritually significant distances around the city, and that Jack the Ripper was actually the last time they tried this, to open a portal between the worlds.

They think that the slimy enemies from another dimension are responsible, and the handsome man calls to Merlyn, his boss, to help out and ensure the slimy enemies don’t get a foothold.

They succeed, but then the woman finds that the slimy enemies are not responsible for the murders.  The handsome stranger turns out to have murdered her clone himself as part of the ritual that would allow his reality to enter hers — she is actually the clone, and the original was murdered. Her confused memories and hallucinations are because she ran off before the stranger could finish creating a convincing replacement and so she still retains some memories of the original.

The handsome stranger is actually a useful idiot that is handsome and dumb precisely because he’s a facade that covers what the traders actually look like (they’re distinctly non-human and not nearly as affable).  He’s a construct.

And there’s the Handsome Stranger’s manager… who appears as a kindly wizard based on Merlin? Again, he turns out to have been orchestrating the entire thing, and the whole “help us save your reality against evil slimy things” turns out to have been a dispute over trading rights to Earth between two equally slimy organizations.

The book ends with humanity establishing trade and goods with the unbound reality and becoming less and less human — strange buildings, humans with gecko like arms and legs living on walls, etc. Very creepy, and very hard to forget.