Author: mondomolly

I read a book in the late 80s, early 90s, but I’m pretty sure it was published 20 or 30 years earlier.. It was definitely set in the 60s (or maybe 70s?) It was set in Scotland. Main character is a teen named Moira. She dates a guy with a motorcycle, much to the disdain of her strict father. I think she leaves home because of that. She has a younger sister. I want to say the cover is a photo that shows the guy with his motorcycle and the girl in  a very short skirt.

Thanks for any help!

I love your blog and am trying to find some lost short stories. I
assume they’re all in the same anthology but I’ve dug through all the
Donald Gallo collections I could find. I would have read these ca.
1988-1992, and I am very sure they were mass market/pulp Sweet Valley
High sized paperbacks.

1. A male teen can’t get over the death of the kooky high school
English teacher and clashes with the strict male substitute who
insists on teaching grammar, and eventually goes to a state college
and becomes an English teacher himself. there’s a detail where his
girlfriend is melting butterscotch chips but no one eats the
cookies/brownies because they taste funny.

2. Two teens are junior high sweethearts but eventually morph into
being the kind of couple that looks alike and don’t have identities
outside their couplehood. This one is less interesting but now that
I’m an old it’s an interesting perspective.

3. A chubby, unathletic teen gets really invested in supporting a
local track star’s effort of running a race while pushing another
classmate (??) who uses a wheelchair. The track star is successful but
in the process sacrifices a scholarship (??) or something significant
in order to do this race; the narrator realizes she could have run
with the classmate, too.

I have no idea if the authors of these were big cheeses like Cormier,
Mazer, etc. but was kind of disappointed that none of these were with
the other Life Lessons for Young Teens type anthologies that I did
actually remember.

THANK YOU ❤

It’s a young adult book that I read in 2017 or 2018. I’m looking for a book that starts with a break in a family’s house with sketchy people and the parents go and get drugs for these people. It’s about a girl who has to get her little brother ready for daycare. She put on a diaper and tried to find more baby powder in her parent’s room. At the end of the closet, she finds a baby powder container that is a different color but uses it anyway. She accidentally pores baby powder on her baby brother and he plays in it. She laughs and stops him when he starts to eat it. She goes to school and gets called that her brother went to the hospital. While he was at his daycare, he was acting very unusual. when he was at the hospital the doctors said that he had injected cocaine.  Which was the baby powder, and the police get involved and find all types of drugs in the house like in a teddy bear and in the floorboards too. The kids were sent to foster care and were almost separated. At the foster home, the girl falls in love with her foster brother and they get bullied for liking one another.

It is a “romance” but barely. It’s incredibly chaste, and about a young girl, 14 tops I think.
She has a crush on her friend’s brother’s friend. He’s a little older. He likes photography. She’s having such a hard time getting this boy to give her the time of day, and she finally tells her dad the problem when he asks. He tells her to show interest in the boy’s activities. What does he like? Ask him questions about himself and stop focusing on you. This works, she finds out he loves photography and he takes her out one day to take pictures. I think the last photo he took of her was at the “magic” hour of the day, when the light is perfect. She is sitting on a tree branch and he takes her picture and starts to fall for her. I think the cover depicts this moment. I feel like it was winter in parts. I remember more books like this, and they always talked about their school like PS 136 etc, so it must be set in NY.
I could have sworn it was called “The Golden Hour” or “The Magic Hour” but those don’t come up as this book when Googling.

If you know this book I would be eternally grateful! I feel so silly, looking for it so hard but it’s SO WEIRD that I remember so much of it yet can’t find it in my searching!

This is kind of a weird request – I remember the title and most of the plot,I just need the author name and confirmation that this was either part of a series,based on something,or both. Here’s what I can remember:

1. The name of the book was Caitlin,which was also the name of its protagonist,Caitlin Ryan (like in Francine Pascal’s Caitlin series,maybe the author got the name from there?)

2. I read this one around 2008,when I was a middle schooler,but from the references I remember in it it was published between about 1985 and 1995.

3. Caitlin herself is a high school student somewhere,very committed to her various pet causes. Her latest cause is anti-nuclear proliferation. She makes a friend named Robert,introduced to her by a mutual friend of theirs named Lucy Baynes. I think there’s a character called Melanie or Melody.

4. Robert convinces Caitlin to attend a protest regarding the building of a nuclear power plant wherever it is they live,I think in either the northeast US or Canada. They get arrested for “disrupting the peace” or some such. There’s a long bit where Caitlin is worried about what this will do to her future (she’s about 14 or 15 as I recall).

5. Caitlin has a court date near the end of the book and I believe the judge lets her off with some community service,given that what she did wasn’t very serious. I think Robert gets the same?

6. The reason I’m convinced this was based off of something is owing to the cover having an actual model instead of artwork. The girl on the cover (probably meant to portray Caitlin) has a lion’s mane of brown hair with a blond streak. She’s holding a reporter’s notebook and I think her portrait is surrounded by some others. Based on this I think this book may have been an adaptation of either an after-school special or a TV episode.