Category: Name That Book Request

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 ❤

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.

My friend MJ is looking for a book from her childhood.  Here is what she
says about it:

“I loved a book when I read as a preteen/teenager probably between
1992-1995. I remember (hopefully correctly) that it was about siblings
who became homeless orphans. They joined a little group of other
homeless orphans who taught them homeless kid magic. While dumpster
diving they taught the main character, a girl?, to visualize what she
wanted and convince herself it was real, and then she’d find it in a
trash can. The girl visualizes a pair of roller skates, lifts up the can
lid, and finds one. She is disappointed, and thinks she can’t do much
with one skate, until she finds it matching mate in another trash can
further down the street. She learns to trust the homeless orphan magic
and the book continues.

I feel like this book has been hard for me to find because that was
maybe not a pivotal scene in the book? It was particularly meaningful to
me. I was raised a witch, and I’ve continued to practice witchcraft in
my adult life, and this was the first explanation of manifestation magic
I came across in a children’s book.

Whenever I ask a friend about it, not only do they not remember, but
they say it sounds like a really sad book. I don’t remember it as being
so, and I remember it being sweet and one I really enjoyed.

Thanks for any help in advance!”

She adds:

“It wasn’t sad, I promise!”

Thank you and your readers for any help they can provide.

I don’t know if you’ll post this as it’s not a teen book, but your readers are so intrepid I wondered if they could help me solve this mystery! Thank you!

This is not a book but the series we used in kindergarten (1983) to learn how to read. From what I remember we would receive a new “magazine” every week focusing on a different letter. The color tones were beige and peach. The characters running through the series was a group of kids and there was a dog too. The group had a hippy-ish vibe and there was a school bus that they had kind of repurposed, possibly as a club house. The front of the “magazine” would feature the given letter very prominently and possibly a character, like I remember the O and Q had one of the kids or the dog in the letter itself.

I have spent years searching for this unsuccessfully and my kindergarten teacher is no longer living. It wasn’t the Magic School Bus which is what people inevitably think it is when posing this. (Remember, this was 1983!). It’s very possibly that over time I’ve misremembered this & maybe it doesn’t even exist? 

Solved! The Meet The Superkids series