Request #538 From Kelgrow

I’d like to give this a shot – I’m sure I once read a book that had surreal dog-themed stories. I remember it being a compilation of short stories without illustrations. My brain is telling me that one of the stories involved a boy who swaps bodies with his dog, and another one was about a dog getting cryogenically frozen. I think there were more stories besides those two, and I think they all involved dogs in some way, but I can’t be sure since those are the only two stories that come to mind. I don’t know when the book came out, but I would’ve read it around 2003-2005. I don’t think it was new at the time, so it would’ve been published before then. And I think the author was a man, but I’m not entirely sure of that either.

Request #536 From Ryan

So the book I’m looking for was a fantasy book meant for younger/teen children. It was half novel/ half comic book. The little girl and brother share a love for a fantasy movie/world/game (I don’t remember) so her and her brother go to the local carnival and they go through the tunnel of love except he goes missing on the ride and she has to go to this fantasy world to find him (there was multiple books in the series but I only ever read book one)

Request #535 From Melanie

Hi, I’m looking for a book I bought at a used book store in the early 90s. I think it was published in the late 80s. It was about a girl whose family moved to a beach town in California in the summer. When told to get out of the house to explore the town, she met a group of kids her age (12-15, I think). The other kids didn’t want anything to do with her at first, but she eventually befriended them. They spoke differently from everyone else, replacing words with their own alternate words (like ordering burgers with “cries” instead of onions); she translated the altered phrases for her friends when they were speaking to people outside their circle. When she started speaking like her friends, she started to lose herself and realized that something was wrong. In the end, she was able to save herself and her friends from whatever was taking away their senses of self. I thought the name of the book was “Starchild” or something like that, but “Starchild” is a different book. TIA for any help you all can provide.

Request #534 From Sana

I read a book between 2004-2007 in junior high. It definitely had an extraterritial aspect where a child loses body mass due to the climate of the “planet” he/she is on. It’s the first book where I learned how long the human body can survive without food ans water. I also think the terrain was red/red sand. I’m fairly certain the author is male.

Request #532 From Robby

I am looking for the name of a book I read years ago 2004 or later so it was probably published near that year and I can not remember the name of it. The story line was fictional, spiritual in ways of the turning, fantasy in the ways of particular people having special type power from inside and the guidance the little girl had of the voice/drawing her but was along the lines of a world war/end of times, I remember the girl was walking/strolling along/through corn fields and seeing them open up and rockets shooting out and seeing incoming missiles running and I remember someone was saved by jumping into or falling into a storm drain and being partially covered with water and it boiling off her and burning her but surviving (Might also be the voice/person the little girl is guided to by the story end, the people that survived went through dramatic changes and if I am not mistaken everyone turned. Turning them it was said showing their inner self as it really is, on the outside. Like if you were a good person inside very little happened perhaps bones were mended and scares lifted away deformity’s perfected and if you were evil and did horrid things your body was turned basically inside out showing all the ugliness of your inner self.. which didn’t kill them but made them realize what they were on the inside. I remember parts in the story, like near the end it getting so very cold ground being covered in snow and the little girl that was being guided made it to a house/farm/place and finding some garden seeds, she went out into the cold blowing snow (I think there was snow) winds with those seeds and seen where another little girl had frozen in place in a garden where she to had been trying to plant the seeds also.. this little girl over comes the fear, the cold and warms the ground with her fingers before planting each seed.. when she and are amazed/blessed that they find the seeds are growing because of the goodness she had inside of her. In subsequent to her travels there were other groups/couples and kids being ushered into the Cheyenne Mountain (Military underground base for the President and others the name they used actually exists).  In the beginning the Presidents plane was knocked out of the sky by a school bus while he was watching out the window witnessing the destruction by all the missiles/explosions hitting below. he did survive but don’t remember what happened to him. One of the younger people I took as being a kid made a bad mistake in making a choice (I think it was something about when he was entering Cheyenne Mountain with others or while they were inside but he ends up outside and aligning with some other evils and when he turns its in agony and pain and becomes hideous to look at driving him into doing even worse things and maybe insane. The good didn’t experience the pain/agony the same as the bad ones did but not exactly sure how that went its been nagging me awhile now. I am pretty sure I gave the book away years ago and don’t remember to whom and am 256 miles away from home and will be for some time so I can’t look for it to be certain.. Hopefully it jogs yours or someones elses mind. I have posted on my facebook page in hopes a friend might recognize it also. Thank you for your time. I found it to be a good story and would like to read it again anyway. If it rings a bell please let me know.

Request #531 From Jamie

I’m trying to find a book about a biological mom who finds her daughter she gave up for adoption. The daughter is now with a well off family, the mother dies in a fire and the dad takes his 2 adopted daughters and the bio mom but I’m not sure why she goes I think as a nanny or something. Her daughter struggles with sleep I think. They go away to a country house and the bio mom has a hurt leg. The dad is having an affair with the oldest adopted daughter. 

Request #530 From Becky

It’s a beautifully illustrated kids book about an Italian man who wants to be an artist (I think his name is Mr. Lemonjello or Lemoncello) but he has a family to support so he makes a living painting signs instead. When he dies at the end God rewards him by putting him to work painting sunsets. (It makes me tear up because I think of my artist mom painting sunsets now too.)

Request #529 From Emily

Published in the late 90s or early 2000s, it’s a children’s picture book about a secret jungle temple in which the reader has to uncover a secret language symbol by symbol to choose different doors to get through the temple. If you chose the wrong passage ways, you’d meet different gruesome but mild ends. At the very end of the book is the complete symbol language alphabet. I was obsessed with this book in fifth grade (1999-2000) and tried to unsuccessfully get one of my best fiends to write notes at school using the symbol language. It’s extremely well-illustrated. I think the temple is a pyramid? There are a lot of monkeys, possibly lemurs. This was during the whole Mummy series release era and Nickelodeon’s Legend of the Hidden Temple rerun peak era, so I’m hoping this book was more popular than I think it was, even though I was the only one in my family and friends obsessed with it.