Welcome to Lost Classics of Teen Lit’s supplemental blog, devoted to finding your own personal “lost classics.”
I frequently receive comments and e-mails from readers who are looking for a dimly-remembered book. I know this pain! While I had been able to help in a few cases with coming up with a title and author, I wanted to open up the search to classic YA fans. In 2017 I added a casual page to the main blog, and reader response slowly (and then suddenly!) grew, to the point that I wanted to make things a little more self-service for my readers.
How to request help finding a “lost” book title:
From now on I will be taking “lost” book requests via e-mail at mondomolly@gmail.com, and each request will be posted as a separate blog entry here.
Tips for a successful request:
- Provide a short description of what you can remember about the plot, including any dialogue or weird details (“the main character was obsessed with her lime-green notebook paper”) you might remember. If a detail stuck with you, chances are it stuck with someone else!
- Let us know when you read the book: “Around 1987” is better than “when I was in third grade” (we have readers falling into a huge age-range!)
- Surprisingly, anything you can remember about the cover can be really
helpful! We had a successful ID with just “two girls who went to the beach and the cover was blue”! (It was The Long Secret) - The focus is on Young Adult and Middle Reader books published between 1939 and 1989, so books that fall into those categories will be most likely to be solved; however, I will accept requests from any era, genre or reading level. By the same token, most of my readers hail from the United States, the UK and Australia, but feel free to request a book that may have come from any country or originally published in any language- Scholastic republished a number of titles in translation!
Once You Have Submitted Your Request:
It is my intention to publish updates weekly, and to send out a brief form e-mail letting you know when your request is up on the site. I recommend using the search feature and searching either by your name or a keyword from your request.
I know that book! I have a suggestion for that book!
No need to send an e-mail, simply comment on the post!
Constant Readers, thank you for your continued support and readership, and patience in awaiting this new era in Naming That Book!
Additional Resource: Lost Classics reader Daisy kindly suggested the Goodreads group What’s The Name of That Book? as another place to crowdsource an answer to your lost book descriptions.
Molly