Category: SOLVED

Request # 652 from Rebecca

I have another book I’m looking to find.  I read it in the mid-90s. At the time, it seemed fairly new, but it could’ve been a re-issue. However, it did reference VCRs, so I’m guessing early 80s publication at the earliest. Here’s the plot:

A young teenage girl (I’m thinking 13 or 14, give or take a year) and her siblings get swept up by social services when her mom ends up in the hospital. I think Dad was out of town to start a new job, and the family was getting ready to move, but that part is fuzzy. I want to say that they lived in a trailer park, but I could be wrong.  They get handed over to a foster family that already has several foster/adopted kids and one biological daughter around the age of the main character.  The foster family has the kids practice going through an obstacle course without setting off any alarms, I think. The ones with good times get coins as a reward, and the kid with the best time gets to pick the afternoon’s movie (on videotape) to watch. I want to say they called the obstacle course “Sneak,” or something like that to make it sound like a game. Then they take the kids late at night to an empty house where they say they’ve arranged for a bigger version of the game. The kids sneak into the house to get valuable items. It’s not a game. They are using the children to burglarize homes. The main character realizes this. One way or another, she alerts the police, and they eventually get returned home. The other children are also returned to their rightful families, I believe. I thought the author was Willo Davis Roberts, but none of her books seem to fit.  I think I’ve thought it was her book before and then realized it wasn’t when I found it again at the library.  I used to know exactly where the book was located, but my library remodeled, and now everything is in a different place. Plus, I last read it a couple decades ago, at least, so it’s quite possible they don’t have it anymore!  Thanks!

Solved! The Big Smith Snatch by Jane Louise Curry

Request #648 from Jodi

I am trying to locate a short story called “The Visit.” It was published in the 1960s or possibly the early 1970s. My recollection was that it appeared in Co-Ed Magazine. It might have appeared in Seventeen, but I doubt it (I’m sure I read The Visit before I started reading Seventeen. My older sister had old Co-Eds lying around and I would have found the story there). I remember the story received an honourable mention in a short story competition. 

I don’t recall the author’s name; the story is told in first person by a young teenaged girl who is sent to stay with her grandmother. She is made to have lunch with the next door neighbour’s disabled son. 

Solved: “The Visit” by Gretchen Barrow

Request #645 from Stacie

I have three I can’t remember the titles of. Timeline context, I was in my teens in the 80s. I read a lot of Avon Flare but looking at lists of AF titles didn’t ring any bells.

1. A girl gets drunk (accidentally?) and is at a dinner party or some sort of event. There’s melon. Persian melon. She keeps calling it “Pershing Melon.” That’s all I got. Solved: We Interrupt this Semester for an Important Bulletin by Ellen Conford

2. The heroine has a thing about making chocolate pudding from scratch. 

Solved: “Chocolate Pudding” from Norma Fox Mazer’s collection Dear Bill, Remember Me?

3. The heroine’s family owns a pizza shop. At some point she comes to the rescue at a party where there is no food and she makes everyone pizza. 

Solved: Princess Amy By Melinda Pollowitz

Any ideas will be so appreciated!

Request #643 from Chris

Scholastic book about unsolved mysteries – all I remember about it is that it had the word ‘true’ in the titled and had a browny-green cover. It was small format, smaller than a standard paperback, and probably only 100 pages or so. Does that ring any bells? Google isn’t helping me.

Solved! True Great Mysteries By Arnold Rubin, identified by an anonymous Lost Classics reader. 

Request #639 from Val

I’m thinking of a paperback of solve-yourself type mysteries, 1970s or 80s. There was one short story where the solution involved a hot dog with sauerkraut, and the big “Clue” was supposed to be that the perpetrator had put the mustard on top of the sauerkraut instead of underneath it. It baffled me as a child, it baffles me today.

Solved! “Encyclopedia Brown The Case of the Hidden Penny” solved by Ross and an anonymous Lost Classics reader!

Request #236

 I read it in 1997, but I don’t think it was newly published. It was children’s (probably today it would be YA). In any case, it was in my elementary school’s library. I think the author’s last name was near the beginning of the alphabet. I think it had “bride” in the title.

It’s a historical fiction set in the West. The main character is a girl (teenager?) who is an orphan and lives with her aunt and uncle. They’re not abusive, but they’re not nice either. They force her to marry this old man. Their wedding night he dies and she’s left a widow. The book is about her growing up and realizing that she’s actually got power – that she doesn’t have to let her aunt and uncle dictate her life, that she’s wealthy now (the husband was wealthy I think) and that she can do what she wants. There might have been a hint of romance at the end, but I don’t remember.

Two scenes I do remember: the night after the husband’s funeral? or the night after he dies? the aunt and uncle come over and try to force her out of her bed to sleep on the floor and she’s like “no, this is my house, my bed, you’re not forcing me to sleep on the floor while you and your kids who are younger than me sleep in beds.”

The other scene is her buying fabric to make a new dress and she sees this white fabric with ivy on it and wants to buy it and at first I think the shopkeeper is saying that she should still be in mourning, and either it’s been a year and she says so or she says that they weren’t even married a full day so she’s not a mourning widow. In any case, she buys the fabric and feels good about it.  Bargain Bride by Evelyn Sisley Lampman solved by Lost Classics Reader Sashutch! 

Request #214

Looking for a YA book I read in the late 80’s or early 90’s. It was about a girl (preteen or teen) who spent summers with a girl and 1-2 boys. The girl friend is overweight but when they see each other this summer, she lost the weight. I think main character has a crush on one of the guys. There was water involved – I think a lake. The Cheese Stands Alone by Marjory Prince solved by Lost Classics reader Sheesh 

Request #196

Read a YA book in the late 70s / early 80s.  Remember it was about a teenaged girl – maybe named Julie? maybe an orphan?- who had a best friend and was close to the friend’s Italian family.  There was an older brother in this family named Tony – last name Martone, maybe? – who treated her and scolded her like she was a little sister but ultimately the realize feelings for each other.  I remember the girl quoting a rhyme to him including “…really hairy, his secret weapon’s really scary”…”I  soon found out this …..cat had a nose that knocked me flat.” The Voices of Julie by Joan Oppenheimer solved by Lost Classics reader Sheesh

Request #174

My question is about a favorite book I think was published in the 1970s. The main character is around 14, studying dance, I believe set in NYC. She was often practicing “Slaughter on Tenth Avenue” for a recital. She was frequently called “red ruby lips” by a teenage boy who would see her at the subway station after dress rehearsal. Her controlling mother with whom she had somewhat of a strained relationship had cancer and died by the end; she then decides to quit dance, since it was more her mother’s dream. I think I remember her placing her ballet slippers in her mother’s casket. Solved by Lost Classics readers Julie W and Sheesh: A Star for the Latecomer by Bonnie and Paul Zindel