Category: Name That Book Request

Okay, these ones have been haunting me for years:

1. Read in the early 1980s,  a YA novel about a very shy, socially introverted teenage girl. She has brown eyes and very poor eyesight. In one scene, she visits an optometrist who tells her that people with eyes as beautiful as hers often have weak vision. The main plot follows her after she somehow acquires a red setter, which she trains herself. Through walking the dog, she meets a boy. During their first meeting, he asks for the dog’s name, but she mistakenly thinks he’s asking for her own name and becomes embarrassed. Either the girl or the dog is named Robin.

2. Read in the early-mid 1980s, a YA novel set in the U.K. The main character is a girl from a wealthy family who lives on a horse farm and loves riding. As part of a some kind of charity/social outreach program, her parents agree to host an underprivileged girl from a rough London neighbourhood, possibly named Marlene, so she can spend some time away from negative influences in the city.

Marlene is described as “tough as old boots,” and the main character initially dislikes her because she’s so different from her usual circle of friends. At one point, Marlene saves up enough money to buy a piece of horse equipment, a martingale, used for training. Despite her background, Marlene shows a natural talent with horses and may even become a better rider than the main character, jealously abounds! The story is bittersweet: when Marlene’s stay ends, she must return to her difficult life in the city, while the main character continues her comfortable, privileged existence.

’m so excited to have found your page! Here’s as much as I can remember about the story I’m searching for. The main character is a teenage girl who is a bit overweight, she has a best friend who is ambitious and pretty and often pretends to be more than she is. They go on a vacation together near the water. One day, on their way to take the friend’s small skiff out for a boat ride, they encounter a good looking boy. He asks if they have a boat and the friend who is pretending to be more than she is, points to a larger more impressive boat and says that’s hers. The main character is mortified. It turns out later the boat belongs to the boy’s family. The friend pursues the boy aggressively but he ends up fancying the main character. The main character, from walking the beach mist every day finds at the end of the vacation that she has lost weight. I also remember she describes her friend as having toenails painted a clear orange red.

I’ve searched in so many places for this story. I really want to share it with one of my granddaughters.

Thanks for any help you can provide!

I can’t remember the name of this book. Here’s what I remember:
Set in Budapest during WW2
A girl protagonist
She had to eat a horse so as to not starve. Or there was threat of eating horse.

Thanks for any help!

Book is set in the 70s. Possibly early 80s. I would have read it in the around 93 or 94 I think.

MC’s dad got divorced and moved them from NYC to LA. The dad gets a perm and start wearing his shirts unbuttoned and doing EST – he’s basically having a post divorce identity crisis. They live in an apartment complex.

There is a woman who lives there who is way older than the son (who is a high school senior) and hits on him which makes him very uncomfortable. At one point she joins him in the hot tub in their apartment complex and says something in reference to her long fingernails like “wouldn’t you like to feel these in the hairs on your chest” and he is both grossed out/a little turned on/ and thinking her doesn’t have any chest hair. He then wonders what happens in that hot tub and doesn’t want to use it anymore.

His best friend is a movie star’s son who’s dad is never named. The best friend has a very California name like Kip or something. I think.  Kip straight up buys him a muscle car and he loves the car. He has to learn to drive because he is from NYC.

He meets this girl who turns him on to feminism and blows his mind. At one point they are lying on the beach together and he is admiring his car and she is looking at the ocean. He says something like “ohhhh those curves! Those headlights!” And she says “hey I thought we agreed it wasn’t ok to objectify women’s bodies like that” and then realizes he is absolutely talking about his car.

There is a scene where his dad meets his girlfriend’s mom (who is also a NYC transplant) and they hit it off and he asks to call her and for some reason he mentions leaving them a message and the mother and daughter say in unison “we don’t believe in answering machines”

There is another moment when the girlfriend is talking about letting her leg hair grow out and she mentions she loves feeling these wind in it.

The book ends with him deciding to go to Berkeley in the fall and to live with her there.

Any ideas? It’s been bouncing in my head for years. Help me banish this memory demon!

I recall reading this book in the mid 70s. It was a chapter book about an eccentric family who moves the entire contents of their house out to the lawn in the first chapter, just because it was a nice day and why not. More things happened in subsequent chapters, but this is all I can recall. I think the whole gist was they were lovable iconoclasts. I was enrolled in a book series where they’d send a new book to read every week in the early to mid 70s. I think it was one  of those. I’m not sure I can recall the cover art accurately but I remember it giving comforting pastoral vibes so probably pastel dominant.

I would have read these in the mid to late 80’s but the books might be older

Book 1 is a story about an adolescent boy whose parents own a bakery, I believe called the Sunshine Bakery, because at some point in the story there is a fire and the sign melts to read “Unshine Bakery”.  The mom, a little hysterically points out how funny that is to the protagonist’s best friend who replies that he doesn’t think it is very funny at all.  The best friend also plays the piano and sings a song at some point with the lyrics that I can remember being “There’s a curse on your family and it fell on you, you’re one ugly duckling you’re my honey chile”.  The boys might play ice hockey but I could be confusing that with other books as I read a lot of books about hockey at that time.

Book 2 is a weird one and I only have a vague memory of it.  A group of teens are at a boarding school and go on a camping trip.   They get lost or stranded or something and I feel like someone is after them.  The weirdest part is that one of the students starts a relationship with one of the teachers and they go skinny dipping.  I remember this part of the the book being from the teachers POV and describing scrubbing the girls’ body and how it made him happy to know it belonged to him.  It was not a smutty book otherwise, a typical teen thriller from what I remember and I know this section weirded me out as a kid as it seemed very out of place.  I feel like there was also a part of the book where they had to get weapons to defend themself and a bow and arrow was mentioned.  

Solved! The Grounding of Group 6 by Julian Thompson.

This book centers around a young female protagonist (I think middle-school age) who learns to bake bread and struggles in science class. At one memorable point, she uses mayonnaise in her hair because she heard it’s a good conditioner. She has both an older sister and younger brother. Near the end of the book, she is able to do a bread making demonstration for a science fair/science assignment. 

I believe I read it somewhere between 2005-2009, but the cultural references in the book make me think it was from the 90’s or early 2000’s?

Note from Molly: this one is on the tip of tongue, I definitely recognize the mayo-conditioner plot! 

I have been looking for this book for so many years I’m starting to believe I made it up, lol. So the following is what I remember:

It had to be published before or around1990 and I would have read it at about the same time, but I definitely read it before 1994/1995 (the time I moved after a house fire and lost track of it.) It was a part of a three pack of books sold in Kmart or some other store, but not a bookstore,  and included in the package were Light a Single Candle- by Beverly Butler and The Legend of Daisy Flowerdew- By Patricia Pendergraft (but it is not by either of these authors as far as I have been able to find). I believe the first line is something along the lines of “the first thing I noticed were his eyes…” and it was in the first-person perspective of a teen girl. She was talking about the new boy in class, who was a French exchange student, I believe,  that drove an MG or other convertible car. I also think his last name was Rocher or Rochet. Anyway, the plot follows this girl and boy’s relationship until he tragically dies in a car crash and then about how she deals with his death. It was a kind of sad coming of age story, which is why I think it was packaged with those other two. I hope you can help me solve this mystery! 

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 ❤