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openNo Title Literature
I'm looking for a book I read in the 2000's about a girl who gets kidnapped to find herself on a under construction space station that's big enough to have field in it that the kids have to plow. They wear special thermal clothing. It turns out that when they are through, the bad guys plan to just space them/throw them in the Sun. It's probably a ya or children's chapterbook.
openNo Title Literature
Two books, both childrens' books.
The first was part of a series, it may have taken place in the Victorian Era, though I think it took place in modern times (at least the mid 20th century). It was about a girl and her friend who had the nickname "Rubberboy" or something similar, who couldn't feel pain. There was also a part with a tower of pterodactyls or something like that.
The second book was about a girl and a talking rat (and other rodents) it was revealed that there was something special about rodents in general (that may have been the reason for their sentience), and there was a part where a chinchilla was forced to stamp its paw on cookies for some reason. I remember the cover was orange and black, and it was called something like "Rat".
openNo Title Literature
Reading this page has made me think of several books I read or at least skimmed as a kid. I'll try to keep this from becoming a wall of text like last time.
1.A book about a pair of twin sisters who buy an old doll from an antique store. It turns out that the doll is evil(possibly it was possessed or cursed or something)but only one of the twin's realizes it.
2.A book about a girl whose aunt died in an apartment fire as a kid. The aunt is fondly remembered as a hero because she was the first to discover the fire and ran around the building ringing all the bells which alerted the other residents to the fire and ultimately saved their lives. The aunt also had a weird hobby of collecting things in boxes. The main character and her cousin like to play out these events as a game and one day the girl finds one of her aunt's boxes in her granny's closet. However when she and her cousin are seen playing with pretend jewelry inside the box by the cousin's father he gets upset. The girl later discovers that her aunt wasn't a hero at all, the uncle had been the one to ring the bells and her aunt was a brat who refused to leave the apartment without her boxes(which is what lead to her death).
3.A book about a young witch named(I think) Libby. It may have been part of a series and it was not Sabrina The Teenage Witch or The Worst Witch.
I read all of these during Elementary School, which for me would have been the mid-late 90s.
openTwo books Literature
I have two books I'm looking for: The first is about a brother and a sister who find a parallel world where time moves much more slowly than on Earth, and is accessed by crawling through somewhere. The brother ends up staying in the parallel world to save it (with a giant swing), while his sister stays on earth and grows old.
The second is a part of a series, I believe. The cover had a humanoid dragon on it chained up and kneeling. I don't remember much of the plot, except that the main character was a boy raised on an island, was anti-magic in a world full of magic, and befriended a dragon when dragons were persecuted.
openBook about girl from island who goes to school on mainland Literature
I read this book series in Middle school. I cant really remember much, but I know it was written by a woman who had many other books- mostly for tweens, but this was aimed at a slightly older crowd. The main character is a girl who lives on an island, and travels to the mainland to stay with a woman who owns a boarding house, where other kids from the Island also live so they can attend school. I remember a random detail- about a long, twisted staircase that the characters had trouble with, and the woman who they lived trying to make people think that the main character is crazy/ has a weird thing for fire. I've been struggling to find it for years!
openKid's Book about a ghost brother and sister who befriend a girl named... Virginia, I think? Literature
A book I enjoyed when I was about 10 or 11. I read the whole thing in the span of a day.
There was a little brother and a slightly older sister. Both of them lived deep in the woods on their own. Maybe they were preteen age. The sister was a fan of Roy Rogers, an actor from waaaaaaaaay back in the day.
The other main character was a girl who's name started with a V — I think it was "Virginia" — who moved out into an old house in the woods with her father. Her diary entries are scattered throughout the book. My version had them written in italics, just to throw that out there. Pretty sure she was around the age of 12.
The kids befriend Virginia eventually. I remember there was also an evil ghost lady or something that scared the brother and sister away from either going into a house, leaving a house, or leaving the forest. And, of course, towards the end, it's revealed the siblings were ghosts themselves. Neither of them realized it until later, though.
We find out they died hugging each other after being locked in a cellar, and they confront the ghost lady. After seeing glowing apparitions of their parents, they ascend to heaven. I think the ghost lady (who may have accidentally killed them) is allowed to ascend, too. Lovely stuff, really.
One detail I remember was how the ghost girl was musing how the bottoms of her feet were completely black from years of roughing it in the wilderness.
What the heck was this book called?
Edited by JadenRopenSci-fi story with no grasp of science... Literature
Literature
There's a science fiction short story, based on the trope that people can be shrunk to incredibly small sizes, which posits that an arch-criminal has evaded justice by shrinking himself and is lurking in a hide-out on the surface of a single atom. A crack team is shrunk to sub-molecular level and sent into the molecule in question to arrest him. On arrival they discover the system is a perfect macrocosm of a planetary system, with electron "moons" and "stars" in the "sky". Even more bizarrely, they discover that seeds and plant-life from the real world have grown into forests and a whole ecology - on the srface of an atomic nucleus.
this is so wrong on every conceivable level and betrays no awareness of relative dimensions that it deserves a place in No Sense of Mass. And maybe others! But I can't remember the author or the story title.....
openIsraeli children novel Literature
Okay so there's this israeli chidlren's book, about a girl who moves to a kibbutz, and might have magical powers or maybe just an overactive imagination that keeps blending into the narrativre. And it's mostly about her not fitting in, and the book shifts mostly between Bittersweet to just plain grim
openNo Title Literature
This was a book I read part of at school age, possibly in the school library. Been wondering about it on and off. Children are kept in a large building covered in mirrored glass, playing a simple computer game in which they have to direct a constantly-moving submarine away from rocks. No-one can beat it until the main character (I think female) finds a pattern and progresses through. Don't think I read further than that. I believe they were being tested for some reason. For some reason the image of an octopus flashes in my mind's eye when I think of it, if that helps. Any thoughts?
openBook from40+ years ago Literature
Any ideas which book this is? Its from 40 years ago When I was at primary school the teacher read us a book, which I realised was quite challenging for 10 and 11 year olds, outlining as it did a rebellion in a dystopian urban future. She must have read it to us between 1978 and 1980 (given when I was at that school), probably 79-80 . The government used Gas Bombs and Copters (possibly Choppers) to put down the rebellion. Cars were electric, drawing power from under road cables. Some people removed the speed limiter. T Vs came with smell, the advert of a ?roast dinner? made the central character hungry. Any ideas?
openDetective series Literature
A series of detective novels featuring a pair of amateur detectives I'm fairly certain were set in pre-WWII America (but after Prohibition). They're not married, since a Running Gag across the series is the man's efforts to get a marriage licence are constantly foiled. The woman Drives Like Crazy (at one point she's taken hostage and goes from highway speed to reverse in a secodn to escape) is extremely rich, but the man's sense of chivalry forbids him to live off his wife no matter how much easier it'd make his life. There's also a bumbling cop whose every appearance features him talking about his lastest get-rich-quick scheme and dream job.
I think the author's name was Rice, and I'm fairly sure it's not The Thin Man.
Edited by Chabal2openPrison World Literature
It was a '70s science fiction novel, the characters were the descendents of prisoners who had forgotten they were on a prison planet, and the starport and other facilities were protected by laser fences.
openBook about boy and humanoid sea animals? Literature
I remember a book, probably a book series, about this kid who moved into a beachside/boardwalk town with his relative, possibly uncle or something, and he liked eating cold pizza, then he met this jellyfish girl and two other guys. Does anyone know it?
openKid's book about aliens Literature
There was this picture book about this kid who finds out some people are secretly aliens. Only part I remember clearly is he thought someone was an alien because his lunchbox smelled like tuna fish. Also at one point the protagonist tells an alien "only cowards point guns at people" I remember I thought it was really dumb even as a kid but I am still curious for some reason.
Edited by BootlebatopenMurder Mystery Literature
I read this book a while ago, in like, Junior High or High School. Some old guy died, and there is like, a completion to get his money. All the contestants have to live in his house, and there are clues hidden in his will. In the end, it's revealed he's not even dead!
openNo Title Literature
Two books either by Judy Blume or of the Judy Blume "type."
First book has a male protagonist who is a high school senior (I think) and gets involved romantically with a female teacher. She breaks up with him towards the end of the book. There's a scene where he is having a picnic with her and they're drinking wine; within the context of the scene it's not treated as a big deal but I remember thinking at the time that he's underage and drinking! Or maybe, he goes out alone in a picnic-for-one after she breaks up with him.
[FOUND] Second book has a younger female protagonist. Two incidents I remember are: (1) the boys in her class are all tit-crazy, and at one point at a public pool they untie the back of this one girl's bikini top while chanting "boobies, boobies, boobies." She's wearing the kind that has a strap across the back and also around her neck so she doesn't get exposed but she is (a little) traumatized. (2) There is an old saying to the effect of if you get shat upon by a bird it's good luck. When it is first discussed the proper verb is discussed at a little length; the protagonist suggests "plops" but is rejected by her mother for still being disgusting. At one point the protagonist does get "plopped" on the arm by a bird, which she displays to her mother and points out the good luck. (All of that may have been the same scene.) [EDIT: Found.]
Edited by randomsurferopenFish detectives? Literature
Hi,
Back in the mid-90s when I was a kid, I remember taking a series of books out from the library. They were set in the sea, and the main character was a fish who was a private detective. I can't remember what species he was, but possibly a salmon. Some of the bad guys were barracudas.
It's not the Fish Police comic or cartoon.
Any help would be appreciated, thanks.
openTeen/tween lit book Literature
This is a teen or tween lit book. It was about a girl who is part of a play at school that is putting on "The Tempest". I think she plays Miranda. The "outcast boy" of the school is playing Caliban, suitably. The main character girl has a crush on this "bad boy", who has a lot of siblings and his family is known for being troublesome. His older brother stole a ton of goldfish out of some community pond and put them in a table filled with resin as a present for their mom. There are also twin boy siblings. I am pretty sure the book takes place in England and there might be a "straight edge" boy vying for main character girl's attention and telling her what scum the bad boy is, predictably. It is not the Georgia Nichols books by Louise Rennison.
openChildren's book, WWII dark fantasy Literature
Looking for a children's book I read in the UK in the early 90s. It's a fairly dark fantasy story set in Britain during WWII. The heroine is a young girl who's been evacuated to a country house. She gradually realizes there's something very strange about the place, especially the grounds at night. Turns out she's one of a long string of evacuees to have been sent there, but all the others have disappeared. Some kind of dark force traps them in the gardens (possibly specifically in a hedge maze?). She keeps hearing a peacock screaming, which has something to do with how the whole thing works. In the end, she manages to rescue them by taking a register; the act of counting them saves them from being 'lost' and brings them back into the real world. The title might have had the word 'Night' or 'Midnight' in it.
So I remember reading this books a couple years ago. I don't remember much about it but I do remember that the main character was a boy who was left at an aunt's house while his parents went somewhere. He saw a picture of some ancestor and the boy in the picture looked just like him. Something happened and he got sent back in time and switched places with the ancestor boy who had some fatal illness that could be cured in the present. Everyone thought the modern boy was ill since the ancestor boy looked just like the modern one and the parents came home. If I remember correctly, there was something about a storm. There was a scene where the two boys played marbles in the attic. They were both good at marbles and the modern boy was trying to win so that he could switch places with the ancestor boy and go back to his own time. The modern boy won just as his dad was coming up in the attic to get the ancestor boy to put him back in bed. I remember there being a sister of the modern boy who though something along the lines of her brother going crazy from the illness. The modern boy was thought to be the ancestor boy when he was back in time and he had to play along. I know this is confusing, but does anyone have any ideas?