Author: mondomolly

Looking for a YA book, written in English and published in the 1960s or 1970s. set in a London school with a gang named “nosotros”. Think they were a female gang. Remembered that was the first time I had heard the word “nosotros”.

 Here’s my book quest…a teen girl seems to have snuck off a bus or sway from a runaway shelter and lives inhills/ mountain near a sandy shore. Shes there for months it gets colder she sleeps in a cave or include in mountain.. She sneaks into a close by farm house to steal food & warm clothes. She meets a boy they have a trist. She eventually gets pregnant. She seems very naive about sex/body/pregnancy. he then leaves her promises to come back but never returns She makes a necklace to hold a pearl he gave her. She uses her long hair, braiding it to hold the pearl on her necklace. She ends up having the baby. I think stillborn, she ends up dying alone and something about the baby’s bones or her bones bleached by the sun on the beach. It was given to my by my English teacher in 1984. Could have been published 1960s – 1983. Thank you. Suggestion: A Wild Thing by Jean Renvoize

 The heroine was a girl in her early to mid teens.  Her father was some kind of wealthy contractor.  Her mother was an ex model or beauty queen.  She had a younger brother who had “issues” that possibly involved mistreating animals. 

Anyway, her grandmother (mother’s mother), no longer lived in the US, lived in Canada where there was no such thing as an “Uncanadian Activities Committee” and the grandmother was estranged from the girl’s parents.  The girl’s mom had started winning beauty contests as a young girl which was why she didn’t turn out progressive like the girl and her grandmother.

The grandmother and the girl had a ruse going where the girl went every summer to what her parents thought was a special camp in Canada, but it really was just going to spend the summer with her grandmother.  The younger brother had been on “the waiting list” for the camp for years, but of course, never got in (the implication was that his issues were more like being evil than having psychological problems).

Anyway, parents were paranoid anti-Communists, and the father had built their house (in Michigan maybe? Wisconsin) with a sort of safe-room area where the family could escape in case of nuclear war/communist invasion.  The girl comes back from summer “camp” and finds there is a handsome boy living in the safe room— maybe a Vietnam era draft dodger?  She has to bring him food etc, and make sure no one figures out he’s there.

I think this was probably published in late 1960s or early 1970s.  Suggestion: The Weedkiller’s Daughter by Harriette Simpson Arnow

Ok this is a weird one.  I don’t remember what the book was about.  I remember one line, and it’s been going through my head.   A chapter opens with a woman entering a room, described thusly: “Her nose leading, like the beak of a large predatory fowl…”

The woman may have been a schoolmistress or a spinster aunt, an antagonist but not necessarily a villain.  And I have a vague feeling there was also a male antagonist, maybe her brother, who was waiting in the room that she entered.

That’s it.  I can’t imagine why I am suddenly remembering this one line but it is driving me crazy. Suggestion #1:  the character described could be Irma Prunesquallor, sister of Dr Prunesquallor in Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast trilogy. Suggestion #2: one of PG Wodehouse’s Jeeve and Wooser stories, possibly in the collection “Jeeves and the Yule-Tide Spirit”

When I was maybe in 5th grade, so at least 20 years ago, I got a book from the school library that I have not seen or heard of since. The only thing I remember is that the main character (I think a boy) is looking for a missing covered wagon from the 1800s. There was maybe a treasure map involved, and I think he found it in the end, possibly concealed in a cave. I’ve searched a lot and can’t find it anywhere!

There’s a novel I read as a teenager around 1977-1978 and I wonder if you could help me gather more info about it.  It was a new book at that time.

I think it was called The Survivors or Survivors.  It was a gripping and poignant novel about an African-American woman (maybe middle-aged) and her caregiving relationship with an African -American boy or teen.  There was some kind of theme of adoption perhaps, or a family secret, or tragedy.  It took place in an urban environment. Suggestion: The Survivors By Kristin Hunter Lattany

I am in search of a book I read in 1979 when I was a high school freshman.  I checked it out of our high school library and read it for a speech we had to do in English that year.  I don’t remember the author’s name  At the time I thought it seemed pretty contemporary, maybe written in the mid to late 70s.

I can’t recall the character’s names, but the story centered around a girl in either 9th or 10th grade.  It may have been written in the first person or in journal style.  It’s about what happens to her at school, what boy she likes, etc.  I remember I quoted a line from book in my speech that either had “shit” or “damn” in it and I talked to my English teacher about it because it was important to my speech and the story, but was nervous about saying it in class.

 I have been trying to think of this book for a while.  It’s a book for teenager from the 1970’s.  The title is very long and it either has the word “zodiac”, “horoscope” or “astrology” in the title.
The cover, if I’m remembering correctly, was kind of a hippy theme – I think it might have been purple with astrology symbols or a sundial.
Please let me know if you know what I’m talking about – it’s been driving me crazy for years. Suggestion: Leo the Lioness by Constance C. GReene. Another suggestion: The Active-Enzyme Lemon-Freshened Junior High School Witch