Category: Name That Book Request

I am trying to find an American book that I read probably in the early 1980s but I think the book is older than that, probably from the 1970s. The book is about a young white girl (I want so say she is poor/), who is training to be a dancer (maybe a ballerina).  

The girl gets impatient with her trainer’s methods, and he shows her that it is necessary to learn the fundamentals before she spreads her wings.  He demonstrates by doing some sort of comic dance routine (or possibly mime), and then (I think) he does some sort of impressive, more traditional dance routine.  

I think the girl develops a crush on some guy, and toward the end of the book, there is a dance, and she is feeling more confident.  She has managed to find/make a candy green apple dress (possible matching purse and/or shoes).

Do you know a series of books about 3 little girls, sisters, that was about different things they did together.  They had names that kind of rhymed maybe.  Mitzy comes to mind but I don’t know.  I remember books where they made cookies or went ice skating.  I read them in the early
1980s but they probably were written earlier. Suggestion from Lost Classics reader Laura: the “Flicka, Ricka, Dicka” series by Maj Lindman https://www.albertwhitman.com/series/other-series/flicka-ricka-dicka/

I’ve been trying for a while now to find a book I read when I was around 12yo back in 1992. I’m hoping you might be able to help me out. I remember the book seeming rather new at the time. Maybe a pink(ish) cover. Probably a picture of the front of a house on the cover but I’m not sure. I believe I got it from a Scholastic Book Club order.

The story was about a girl around my same age at the time grieving her dog who was found dead under their front porch. I think it was written from the girl’s perspective. 

 I remember reading a book that I didn’t really understand at the time. I must have read it between 1993-1998 and it was about a girl who was always tired / chronically tired and at some point she has a surgery and gets better. I never understood (then or now) how the surgery helped/why she was so tired. The cover had the girl and she had brown hair and the background was purple / pink and I remember something about a rabbit / toys that she would imagine to be real? Like she lived in her mind a lot?

I read as a kid I think in the late 90’s. I could have sworn it was called on bear mountain or black bear mountain but everything I searched for didn’t match what I remember of it. I recall it being a village where a coming of age ceremony involved sacrificing your childhood to a bear the village would catch. I’m not sure if it was girl restricted or just all children of a certain age would have to do this.

 It this was about a girl who tried, failed and was scarred by it and I think she ran away from her village to a mountain where she met a blind man I believe who either painted or weaved. While on the mountain at some point she encounters a bear, all I remember is the bear was not normal but she was able to ‘sacrifice’ her childhood and embrace being a woman with this bear. And because it was a strange bear in the wild she wasn’t accepted by her village because in return for giving up your childhood to the bear you accepted the adult spirit of it? And I think she went back and lived with the man on the mountain. 

a girl moves to the country and is lonely. She meets a boy and falls in love, only to discover that the boy is a ghost. It may have had a greeny woodland cover with a girl’s face – or not. This would have been early 70s. Loved the story – so annoying not to remember any more details. Does this ring any bells?

I’m trying to find a book, a teen novel from 1984-1986 most likely. Maybe published earlier, who knows. It involved a mother and daughter, a pair of shoes. The daughter wanted these silver high heeled (uncomfortable) sandals. The mother wanted her to wear a pair of pumps dyed to match her dress. I want to share this with my daughter. I can’t remember the name or author or character names. It may have been Apple Books, Fawcett and Juniper, scholastic, or something similar

YA mystery – A girl’s annoying younger cousin comes to visit for the summer, goes missing and is found dead in a body of water (river, lake? not sure) with fishing wire tied around him. She then notices a fishing pole in her boyfriends room and realizes he’s the killer. Published 2010 or earlier, told from first person perspective. Perhaps has a stripey cover?