Category: Name That Book Request

 I am looking for YA book from the 80’s (possibly 70s?) that is a coming–of-age book about a girl who feels like she is in the shadow of a perfect older sister. She takes the sister’s bathing suit, which is way too big on her, to impress a boy who is going to teach her to swim and she tries to dry-shave her armpits and ends up cutting them and bleeding. She almost drowns at the end of the book and the boy saves her. I thought this was Jacob Have I Loved but recently discovered it is not the same book!  

I’m looking for a book about a group of kids in school being bullied by kids older than them. They got the bright idea to use a thesaurus to up their game when speaking to them so that they would sound more intelligent. I don’t remember much more about the book except that I might have read it around 1982.

In 1976-77 our teacher read us a book where a child was traveling with a canoe in the snow and was surrounded by wolves. The boy or girl then had to flip the canoe on top of them for cover while the pack of wolves tried to get at them. Does this ring any bells?

 YA novel published in 80’s or early 90’s and read early 90’s. A poor girl moves with her small family to rural farm house, hippy-ish parents party a lot. I remember the dad being drunk and then having company. She misses their family van, which I think they lived in before. Her name may be Topaz. The striking thing about the story is her sadness and nostalgia.

Looking for a book I read in the 1980s. It was probably YA, though it had some very adult moments. It was about 3 girls. I know one was from Scotland because I distinctly remember the description of the rocks and moss and how sad she was to leave it all. I believe one was from England and the other was from America (maybe). In the beginning, there was a chapter or chapters written from each girl’s perspective. They all were going away to boarding school in Switzerland (I think). None of them understood why they were going, or how it was being paid for. It turned out they were all sisters with a common unknown father who had paid for them to go.

I have been searching for this book off and in for a few years now but I cannot find d it anywhere. I remember it being about a boy protagonist, most likely a teenager who goes to live with a family that seems completely perfect and happy. They have a daughter about the boys age and they go birdwatching together and are on the hunt for a specific bird. The boy realizes that the family is really strict and kind of controlling, and the daughter reveals that all the classic novels she reads are actually just magazines inserted into the bindings. The parents accuse the boy of being a bad influence on the girl but I don’t remember how it ends.

 I’m going crazy trying to remember a book series – I remember six books, each spanning a year, grades 6-12. A female main character chronicling her dating over the years. I think she ended up with a guy named Lenny or Lonny? I think it took place in New York. One book she tutors a blind kid who touched a painting with texture at a museum to “see” it.

I don’t have much to go on. A kid/YA book that I checked out from my grade school’s library. Between 87-92. I remember reading it in earlier years, and I read it more than once. It was about a young girl who was solving some kind of mystery. Not sure if it was a game or a real mystery. And she was cracking some kind of a code in an old house. Like on a lock or safe or something. And the book showed dashed lines for the code like _ _ _ _ etc. And every time she found a letter, the book filled in the letters. ____S____E___
The code ends up being Chrysanthemum. And it’s IMPOSSIBLE to search for this because there is a book called Chrysanthemum.