Category: SOLVED

 I am trying to remember the title and author of a book I read in c. 1986, when I was about 11. It was about a girl who goes to stays with her relative for a period of time. She meets a woman who, it is revealed later in the book, is her recovering alcoholic mother. She befriends an elderly man who has a German Shepherd named MacDuff. MacDuff is swept out to sea when the girl almost drowns, but is later found safe and brought home.  Now Is Not Too Late by Isabelle Holland identified by Lost Classics reader ninyabruja! 

 I’m hoping someone can help out with this one. It probably would have been published sometime in the ’60s, but possibly earlier. It’s about a brother & sister named Mary Jo & James who are accidental stowaways on a ship headed to Germany. They’re caught almost immediately & have to work for their passage – Mary Jo by peeling potatoes & James by shining shoes. The local bad girl – who I think was named Lizzie – was responsible for them being stuck on the ship in the first place. Mary Jo & James have been hanging out with Bad Girl Lizzie because they’ve been temporarily sent to live with a (very unpleasant) neighbor due to their younger sister being sick with something – possibly scarlet fever? – & they will do anything to avoid being in the neighbor’s house. That’s about all I remember except that I think there’s something about one of the sailors from the ship coming to their house for Christmas at the end. The Surprise of Their Lives identified by Lost Classics reader Norma! 

 My memories of it are pretty vague. The paperback cover featured a red-haired girl in a green dress. I believe it was about a teenager who moved to somewhere very green and mysterious, perhaps with castles…maybe Ireland? And there were always white swans on the lawn. I believe the girl’s name was Phillippa. I got it in a box of my older cousin’s stuff…in the late 1980s, so I believe it was published some time in the mid-eighties. Any help would be appreciated!  Solved by Lost Classics reader Kim Dreams and Memories by Lavinia Harris

 I’m piecemeal tracking down the YA romance books I loved reading and rereading in the ’80s and there’s one whose title I can’t remember–it’s really stumping me! It’s about a girl whose family moves from Arizona to Minnesota, and she has a really hard time adapting to the cold and snow. She’s always complaining about how things are so much more perfect back in sunny, warm AZ, which, needless to say, doesn’t go over very well with her new classmates, who basically tell her to GTF away from them if she hates them and their state so much. I think she had a boyfriend back in AZ who she was pining for as well. Ring any bells for anyone? Suggestion: The Year My PArents Ruined My Life by Martha Freeman New Girl by Janet Adele Bloss solved by Lost Classics reader Kristina

 I’ve got another anthology that I’ve been trying  to track down- it was from the very late 1980s or very early 1990s and was short stories and excerpts from novels, and I want to say that it had a title like “A Child’s Treasury of Humor”. The two pieces I specifically remember are Shirley Jackson’s short story “Charles” and the chapter from Lake Wobegon Days about the Boy Scouts. It was a thick (600+ pages) oversize hardcover. Anybody remember this one? SOLVED! The Random House Book of Humor for Children solved by Lost Classics Reader daisyporter

 “I’m pretty sure this one’s from the early 2000s. It’s historical fiction set after the Vietnam war. A boy in middle school learns to play chess from a teacher who was a veteran of the war. The boy had a baby sister called Cassie who died, possibly in a car accident? He remembers she had hair like peach fuzz. I can’t remember if the teacher ends up dating his mother or something, maybe that happened? It was one of those quiet, slice-of-life-y novels that I ate up well after I was supposed to be too old for midgrade novels, and I’d like to reread it.”  A Long Way Home by Nancy Price Graff, at last found by the original requestor, Miss Amy! 

 “I read this paperback book in the 1970-71 school year, when I was eleven. A mother was escaping the Nazis with her three children; I don’t remember where the father was. The mother had a carriage for the baby, and I think had to store other supplies such as food and clothes in the carriage too. At one point they were on a train packed with others attempting to escape. In order to fit more people onto the train, a man tried to throw the carriage off, but the baby was still in it, and the mother had to fight to save the baby. (This scene really scared me, which is why I remember it.) At the end the family somehow made it safely to Switzerland, where they were taken in by some relatives. The book was my introduction to the horror of the Holocaust. I think it was written in the first-person by the mother, but whether it was true or fictional, I don’t know.”  Ordeal by Fire by Anne Wahle and Roul Tunley

“It was a YA or an adult book, a memoir, so I tried to be very secretive when I read this one at age 10 or so. (That would’ve been the late 90s, but the book was probably older.) It was in first person, I think, and it was the story of this girl growing up in the late 60s or 70s, and it was mostly about sex. She eventually gets pregnant, goes to college, gives birth, gives the baby up for adoption, and Begins To Move On.

Things I remember vividly: Boys cornering her at a park or in the woods, getting her blouse open, and writing “SLUT” on her breasts in permanent marker.  The main character marking out when she could and couldn’t have sex in a calendar.  One of her friends writing something like “nothing lezzie but I love you” in her yearbook.  Her getting pregnant, wanting no one to know, and taping her stomach down with duct tape (?).  She gives birth, gets to see the baby girl once (even though she’s not supposed to), and mentions how weird and empty her stomach feels just after it. And then, she joins her college campus newspaper, and one of the stories they’re running when she first goes in to ask about joining is called something like “Incest: One Daughter Speaks.” The cover was maybe a buff colour, and I can sort of picture a silhouette of a woman on it, but I don’t know if I’ve got it correct.” Confirmed: Grown-Up Fast By Betsy Israel 

Then there’s one set in a girls’ school which I remember only by a chapter starting with the headmistress or just a teacher saying that a guest lecturer “will be with us on Chuesday week.” [“a week from this Tuesday”—in an ultra-twee accent.] Suggestion:  Is That You, Miss Blue? By M.E. Kerr 

Updated 3/25/18: Mama’s Bank Account by Kathryn Forbes.

“We read this YA novel as a class assignment in 8th grade (1975) so it was probably a Scholastic publication. Girl has a hobby of raising pet birds (canaries?) and cares for sick birds. She has a glass-enclosed birdcage for this purpose, which is the only detail I really remember. She befriends/dates a “bad boy”. I’m very vague on the plot, but I think he is accused of doing something bad, but is innocent, and she stands by him. In the last scene, at her house, they kiss and she hears a bird singing “or maybe it was my heart”.  The Troublemaker By Robert McKay thanks to reader Sylvia!