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A book of short stories. I think it was titled "Strange Stories" or something similar, but I can't seem to find it. I remember two of its stories very well. One was basically the snow queen without the snow queen—a little girl got a shard of mirror stuck in her eye, and couldn't get warm unless she slept in snowbanks and the like. Another had to do with a phoenix and a girl named Phoebe—she was named after some bird because her parents loved them—maybe they were ornithologists? Any suggestions appreciated!
openNo Title Literature
I vaguely remember this novel that I skimmed over on some site. It was either published in the 1970s-80s or set during the period. IIRC portions of the book focused on Persian Gulf political maneuvering and it featured a large cast of characters. It may or may not be part of a series.
openNo Title Literature
In about 2001 I remember reading about some story (I think it was a book but not sure) where God himself dies. Searching for "book where God dies" turns up the book God Is Dead, however that can't be it because it was wroten in 2007.
openNo Title Literature
I'm trying to remember a book I borrowed from the library when I was a child. I think it was a children's book, in English, and I think it had a few illustrations, perhaps by Quentin Blake? I did look at a list of children's books he's illustrated, but none of the title/covers rang a bell and google turns up nothing. I read it in England, probably around about the late 90s.
I think the protagonist was a girl who had to get glasses. However her glasses kept going missing and so her parent (probably a mother?) had to keep buying new ones. Her parent was very annoyed and thought the girl was carelessly losing the glasses, but I think it was actually that there was some monster/creature stealing her glasses for some reason, along with other things from the house - I'm pretty sure it also stole some chocolate bars. I think maybe the girl found out about the monster and befriended it (it wasn't an evil creature) and there was a happy ending where it stopped stealing and she brought it things instead (not 100% sure of that though). Also, she got a pair of glasses with a chain so she could keep them round her neck instead of putting them down and losing them.
openNo Title Literature
Kid's picture book my teacher read at school in The '90s. The storyline was about some lady who accidentally frees this imprisoned monster. The monster has the ability to shape change into anything and turns into all these monsters to scare her but she says the only thing she's scared of are mice. So the monster turns into one and then gets eaten by her cat.
Edited by BootlebatopenNo Title Literature
Old Fairy Tale or maybe folk lore story I read online some time, but I can't remember the details.
An old couple is living by the ocean. One day they free a fish or a bird from a trap. Soon a girl comes to their house and says she has nowhere to stay, so they take her in and treat her like a daughter.
They are living happily, but one day something happens. The old couple do something, not malicious or evil, but something wrong. I can't remember what, but I think they betray her trust in some way.
And it results in the girl remorsefully saying that she must now return to the sea. And thus she turns back into a fish/bird and disappears back to the ocean.
openNo Title Literature
Novel for older children. Main character is a modern day boy actor who is involved in a Shakespeare production, possibly A Midsummer Night's Dream. Something happens - a bop on the head perhaps - and he gets switched in time with a boy actor in Shakespeare's time. The 16th century boy has scarlet fever, or some other 16th century disease which was fatal then but can be cured now. He gets cured while the modern boy is back in time. Back-in-time boy makes some friends with various kids his age, including a couple of pickpockets, who get caught and hanged one afternoon. The Artistic Director of the play may be Really 700 Years Old and the instigator of the time switch. It is ambiguous.
openNo Title Literature
I lost a story I was reading online. I'm pretty sure it was on fiction press, but I am not hundred percent.
A young women is an attendant to the queen. Her family is in disgrace and her marriage prospects are poor. The neighboring kingdom peoples have the ability to shape shift. About ten years or so ago her cousin was the mistress to their king. She got made at the king and threw is wolf pelt into the fire killing him. They are more like selkies than werewolves. The cousin was executed and her family fell on hard times. The young women is selected to go along with the queen as part of the retinue for a treaty. As part of the treaty the king wants a bride from her kingdom. She is terrified of what they might do to her if they find out that she is related to her cousin. She tries to the out of the matchmaking sessions, but she has caught the eye of the king. The final session is when the king gives the final candidates each a ring and surprise- the young woman's ring is the real engagement ring. I'm prety sure this is when all hell breaks loose, because they find out she is related to the cousin and once the ring is given it can't be revoked. The king goes from nice to mean and verbally abusive. He is convinced she is evil as her cousin and she gets called a whore among other things even after a wizard/mage says she is a virgin. One of the queen's women who is engaged to a relative of hers manages to sleep with the king during the matchmaking process. The big surprise at the end of the last chapter I read is that she shows up at the king's castle pregnant. I know it is a long shot trying to find this story, but it can't hurt to try.
openNo Title Literature
I only saw the cover and read the back. I regret not checking it out now. It had an interesting cover—the art was vaguely reminiscent of Sakimichan's style, and depicted three kids. They were done in mostly black and white. The tallest was a boy, I think he had white hair, and had a scarf over his mouth. According to the back, he was mute. The middle was a kid with neat, black hair and he was dressed kinda like a male Wednesday. The youngest was a girl, but I don't really remember what she looked like. The back cover said they're weird orphaned siblings who live in a weird town, and even though the town's weird, they're looked down on as the weirdest. It also said that the narrator won't come forward and say who they are, but that they're one of the kids, and that they were chosen because they read the most novels. It looked dumb and gothy, but in a kinda nostalgic, fun way. Sound familiar to anyone?
openNo Title Literature
My math teacher is trying to figure out which Dr. Seuss book a certain character is from. She said he is grey, and not a discernible species. He doesn't have arms or legs. He is fluffy with a long trucker-style mustache. (He basically looked like The Lorax, but grey and without arms and legs.) He was a wise character who told the other characters not to do things, but they did them anyway. He definitely wasn't the main character. He might have only been on one page. Any help would be very appreciated!
openNo Title Literature
It was a series of graphic novels in the style of the Choose Your Own Adventure books. I remember reading two. In one, you travel through time, and in the other, you are a vampire, and vampire hunters come to your castle.
Any ideas on what this series might be called?
openNo Title Literature
Hey, I was looking for a for a book that was a collection of young adult fantasy short stories. Probably published in the 90's (I'm guessing mid to late) or the early 2000's. The cover features a witch, sitting at a computer, looking over her shoulder at the reader. I remember two stories from it.
The first was the eponymous short story about a boy trying to get back at his now ex-girlfriend. He comes across a website of a witch that can cast spells to bring bad luck to people. He starts with small, cheaper spells, but builds up to more expensive ones until he runs out of money. I think he also communicates with the witch via a chat room.
The second one is about a young man that is betrothed but falls in love with what turns out to be a malicious river spirit (I think). I remember at the end, the man runs away from his bride and to the river spirit, who then drowns/ traps him in the river. This one had a more standard fantasy setting, iirc.
Any help is appreciated!
openNo Title Literature
I may be remembering this very incorrectly, but I have a fuzzy memory of a children's book (preschool-level language) about preparing a cannon, illustrated with photographs of toy soldiers; it ends abruptly when they fire it, a final photo suggesting it killed them all.
openNo Title Literature
I read some scary story in a children's book in the US, probably published in the late 90s. I think it may have been a collection of scary stories. Anyway, the book, or at least this particular story, had a lot of large illustrations—I think each page was a full-page illustration of the current scene, with the text placed over the picture.
The only story I remember was about the narrator (a child, I suppose) being told a story by his grandma about a dream she had in which she visited someone's mansion as a ghost. One illustration shows a lavish dining room from (I guess) the grandma's point of view in her dream, and I think a woman is looking at her, startled.
The story ends with the narrator wondering if it was a dream, and the last line is something like, "Or was Grandma a ghost...for a real person in a real house?"
Edited by LiuMeowopenNo Title Literature
avatar: Durtal Okay, this might be a long shot, but: does anyone remember a series of science fiction guidebooks from sometime before the early 90s (possibly from the 70s or 80s) that were written as in-universe scholarly books about near future space wars and space ships? There were at least two of them, both hardcover. They had a lot of old-fashioned science fiction pictures, some of which featured spaceships in bright colors like pink and blue.
I used to take them out of the library when I was a kid in the early 90s but never knew why they were written as if they were true, because they didn't seem to be based on any preexisting franchise. I remember I liked the one that seemed to detail the war ships used in a recently ended war among factions in our solar system more than the one that focused on trade routes in a time of peace. I think the universe of the books focused more on our solar system and lacked any aliens or interstellar travel, but I could be wrong.
I'm going nuts. Maybe they really were reference books from the future.
openNo Title Literature
Looking for a children's short story. It was in a book of short stories collected by Bruce Coville but I don't think the story was written by him. In the story the main character was a girl who was a total bitch but nonetheless gets this guy to befriend her, and together they discover this time machine. However the time machine only changes your position in time but not space so when she uses it she gets trapped in outer space and dies. I checked the Time and Relative Dimensions in Space page but didn't find it.
openNo Title Literature
It was a short story either written by Bruce Coville or in an anthology compiled by him, I don't remember which... It was about a pair of kids who build a forward-only time machine that they test with a teddy bear, and one kid realizes that it didn't account for Earth's motion through space just after the other kid decides to personally test it. Anybody remember what it was called, or the name of the anthology it was published in?
openNo Title Literature
Alright, guess this is the place for this ^^. This one is really bugging me, I looked through the entire list of Young Adult Literature but couldn't find it, might not be there but I think it was most definitely Young Adult.
The books were basically "paranormal fantasy" and I believe were about a group of teens who get trained by some kind of lizard/reptile thing in order to fight a guy I thought was called "The Collector" or maybe "The Poacher"; either way, I think he went around to different dimensions or worlds and collected interesting or valuable species, something pretty close to that if not exact.
I think in the first book they're trained by the reptilian leader thing in an abandoned house. Just trying to remember all the details I can :P
I think the group of teens is capable of shapeshifting into animals but possibly only 1 kind of animal per teen.. but they definitely have some kind of powers given to them by their reptilian coach/trainer/leader lizard thing. I particularly remember him because I think he was maybe on the cover of one or maybe some of the books. He converses normally with the human teens and as their leader is obviously intelligent and trying to stop the villain from doing his thing.
What I also remember is that they get transported (pretty sure it was a dimensional thing, I remember no pure sci-fi elements in this, pretty much all paranormal fantasy stuff with modern day human technology I think) to some other kind of swampy, jungle land to fight the poacher/collector bad guy or something. I remember at one point they have to go through a temple and pass some challenges with their respective abilities, and they're all on separate paths in the temple.
Really would love it if something knew what these books were. If I remember details I'll post them.
Someone suggested animorphs and it's definitely not that. I think these books were coming out around the time of the 1-30 Goosebumps books were coming out, sometime probably in the early to mid 90s.
Thanks!!
Edited by Metr0polisopenNo Title Literature
Once again, this is a book - a novella, short story, or perhaps a storybook story - that title has escaped me, even though I remember the plot vividly.
There was a boy who admired a great whittler, and takes up whittling himself. He carves a swan from wood, and he apparently carved its head facing the wrong way, but he insists that the swan is merely looking backward. He puts it in an art show, and people laugh at it because they think it's cute, but he misinterprets their laughter as making fun of his creation. He feels humiliated, grabs it, runs away, and prepares to throw it in the river, but is stopped by one of the spectators at the art show who turned out to be the whittler whose work he admired.
My teacher metioned a old book were a girl was locked into her smart home by the home who was tring to protect her. She said that is was an older book and that it was creepy. It was a scince fiction novel, and i think there was something about murder. Thats all I know. What the heck was it? If anyone has any idea what this could be, i need to know.
Edited by smileshugsdeath