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openNo Title Literature
A story I read when I was little so 1998 or older. It may have been from a compilation of stories. There was a boy and a girl sitting by a river. The girl starts singing the word "Arroyo" in Spanish so the boy calls her a wetback and she gets furious at him and yells at him. A pet lizard may have also been involved in the scene.
Anyone? I asked for this one a few times with no luck.
openNo Title Literature
I'm trying to find a book I read when I was younger. It was about a chicken that got recruited or decided to go rescue a farm of battery hens. I can't remember much else, but I know she parachuted into the farm, and in the end the rescued chickens had difficulty dealing with the outside world. Oh, and at one point she has to go into a fox's den. If anyone could help that would be great, it's been bugging me for ages.
openNo Title Literature
OK here goes, I an trying to find the name of a YA book from the 70s or 80s? not sure if part of an series or single novel.
a teenage/boy brat, who is royalty and also is a sorcerer/magician (Witch Species) and his magic less bodyguard Mind-Swap to some how escape from pursuers. (spoiler? it turns out that the mind is not really fully overwritten, as they, or at lest the bodyguard later start to have access to both minds memories)
The boy with the bodyguard's mind, slowly becomes a better person while on-the-run, survives some sort of test by the pursuers, because of his ignorance of his magic and makes friends (with a family? travelers) with some magic people - the only thing I specifically remember was a older cook (an uncle?), who learns to use his magic near iron, because of his working around iron stove, teaches the boy to use magic,
- while the bodyguard, with the he boy's mind becomes an evil mercenary or something.
Edited by PcjopenNo Title Literature
When I was a child in the 90s, I read a book about South Africa. I believe the protags were children. I remember anti apartheid meetings and one of the friends of a protag's older sibling was hiding since he didn't have his pass book. also, oddly enough, I remember vividly that black people weren't allowed to play on the tennis courts.
openNo Title Literature
I'm looking for a book that I read years ago. It was an anthology of short-stories for young adults. One of them (the first, if I recall correctly) was about a girl who secretly raised rabbits in a secret room under her parents' bookstore, and began with the "Sex was not talked about in our place." There was also a story about a girl with a bed-wetting problem who foiled a burglary.
openNo Title Literature
A book or short story involving aliens (possibly Human Aliens) traveling to earth - I think it was aimed at young adults. I'm not sure if they actually interacted with humans, but there were a lot of Humans Through Alien Eyes bits - they found it "quaint" that the streets had names, and were confused and somewhat disgusted by pools (described as being tubs full of chemicals that humans would routinely jump into).
Edited by MikeKopenNo Title Literature
OK YA novel and spoilers ahoy.
Read book in the 80s, it was probably from the 70s. Characters were a bunch of kids and a counselor. I think they were specifically hikers maybe mountain climbers, but I can't remember if they were associated with a camp otherwise.
At some point they are hiking and run into some criminals or something, and basically spend the rest of the book, either kidnapped or running away. A recurring motif is some song they keep singing: "Nobody's gonna _______ it for you, you've got to ______ it for yourself.
Long story short, and here's the spoilers...
They kill the bad guys. Violently
What is this book?
Edited by karnickelopenNo Title Literature
I remember reading this one series of books about a summer camp for people with magical talents. One of the camp counselors wore skirts that went past the bottom of her feet and she floated so the skirt fell just to the ground and she looked taller, and there was this scene in probably the first book where the characters chose these honking great things of amethyst for some magic purpose, possibly amplifiers or focusing tools or something. I think one of the books had the word 'bone' or 'bones' in the title, maybe something about a gate too. I found it in the children's section of the library, possibly under D or R or P for the last name of the author because I remember I noticed them when I was looking for books by another author and noticed these and picked them up. I think the protagonist's Dad was Disappeared and he lived with his mom, and he got into the summer camp because of some sort of creative writing contest.
openNo Title Literature
I vaguely remember this young adult horror anthology whose name now escapes me. The only story title I can remember is "Here There Be Tygers" by Stephen King, but it also contained a story in which two kids bake a carrot cake during day-light savings time, then lose the cake when they "fall back" an hour; and a story with an unsettling vampire child who did not speak his first word until age five.
openNo Title Literature
There's a short story I heard about second hand that no one can remember the title of. The main character was a dog who was a lieutenant in the US army and part of a project for uplifting dogs and pairing them with a human partner psychically.
The dog was Loyal as hell, and a fairly awesome fighter. The two get sent over into what may have been the gulf war, and the human partner dies... leaving the dog to defend some refugees. The dog spends the next 2 years providing and caring for the people, training them as a small armed force so that they could defend themselves (one of the refugees was a kid with budding psychic powers). One day US military come across and mistaking them for insurgents, kill one of the dog's refugees... Which prompts him to stealth his way into their base, and leave a warning on their console. A direct death threat to the commanding officer of the entire force, and a little history of just what he's up against.
openNo Title Literature
I read this book in middle school about twins, a boy and a girl, with psychic powers who were separated in foster care, but kept an eye on each other with their powers. The girl was telepathic and the guy could astral-project. In the course of the story the girl teaches a guy she likes some telepathic tricks and the guy has to learn a new method of astral travel because his current foster-family is so messed up that the astral plane around their house is all clogged up and impossible to slog through. He meets someone who gives him a book on traveling "as Soul". While practicing he sees the girl he likes get assaulted and testifies at court for her. In the end, he gives her the book so she can travel as Soul too. I don't remember anything about the title or author, but the cover had a purple-ish background with the twins facing each other and some sort of spiny, glowing, lightning-ball thing floating between them.
openNo Title Literature
There was a book I had when I was little, called, I think, "Who's Hiding In The Park", but Google has turned up literally nothing. It was one of those big hardcover picture books and had big beautiful oil-paint-looking illustrations. Basically the premise was like a spot-and-find book with... lots and lots of kids hiding in a park. Does this ring any bells to anyone?
Edited by KeeylaopenNo Title Literature
There was a book I read years ago. I don't remember a lot of the plot, unfortunately, but some of the characters really stick out, like an acid spitting snake-thing named You. Anyway, Plot I do remember is that a boy gets zapped off to another world by a z-shaped lightning bolt, and ends up being the hero that overthrows the Empire. He ends up getting magic powers that let him talk to the local animals, like the aforementioned snake-thing. Does any of this ring any bells for anybody? It's been driving me crazy for years...
openNo Title Literature
Okay, I'm looking for a novel that I read in 2008 or 2009. It's YA, written diary-style, about a really smart, nerdy girl who doesn't have a lot of friends and dies in the end (she's killed). The title is is something like, "The Short Life of [first-name last-name]" or "The Early Ending of [first-name last-name]". It's from the US. One more detail that I remember is that the girl daydreams a lot, and then she just writes REVERIE in big squares in her diary. She may or may not have been named Alice or Meredith (wait... I think it was something with an M).
openNo Title Literature
So there was this book I read a while ago. At first, the main character was a woman trying to get pregnant, I think, and this pudgy fairy accidentally knocked into her, and she could be seen. (I think she was playing tag or something, the fairy) They ended up as friends, and then the fairy gave her a baby, and she kept asking something about blue hair.
The child was born, and had a streak of blue hair that turned out to be magical, and then an evil fairy queen made her steal candy and stuff.
openNo Title Literature
There was this book I saw at a book fair at my school when I was in the fifth grade. The cover showed a picture of this family, who all had dark hair, and the art looked like it could have been drawn by Brett Helquist (the illustrator for A Series of Unfortunate Events). I read the back and the book was about this family who were all very peculiar, including one relative who was stuck inside either a computer or the internet. It looked really interesting, only I didn't buy it, but I would just love to find that book again, if only I could remember the title.
openNo Title Literature
I read this book several years ago, and after a few months forgot all about it until recently. Now I'm wracking my brains, trying to figure out what the book was called. It was youth fiction, and I think it wasn't published before the 90s. It wasn't very long - it was probably under 200 pages.
The setting was a Past Right Now community in the United States that had been deliberately re-created by a group of people - I'm not sure who, but I believe it was the government, though it may have been some large company. The time period in which the community was living was somewhere around the late 18th century or early-to-mid 19th century, while the real time period was in the 90s or 2000s. I also seem to recall that the creation of this community may have had something to do with health or medical reasons, although the community was fairly small. For some reason that I can't remember, there were also cameras and viewing windows hidden in different places all over the town, such as in the shops. I think that while the children in this community didn't know that it was a re-creation, their parents did, but intentionally kept it a secret from them. The main character was a girl in her early teens. She might have had a brother, or a friend who was a boy. I don't recall what her parents did for a living, but at some point in the book, the girl's mother tells her about the outside world.
Around the same time that she learns about this from her mother - or maybe some time before - the town in which the girl lives begins to experience unrest and disagreements related to the fact that they're being kept in this community and aren't supposed to let the younger generation know that it's a re-creation of life several hundred years ago. The girl ends up running away from the community and escapes from it. During her escape, I think she runs through a forest at night, and somehow winds up looking through the aforementioned viewing windows at someone she knows working in their shop. After she escapes from the general area of the community, I distinctly recall that she uses a telephone (I believe it's a pay telephone) to call someone. Near the end of the book, citizens of a town near the community hold a protest on the steps of the town hall and the girl is interviewed by a reporter.
It would be great if someone could find out what this book is called - it's been bothering me for a while now. I'd really like to locate it and re-read it, and also add an example for it under Past Right Now, since that page was what sparked my memory of the book in the first place.
openNo Title Literature
A children's novel about a boy and his imaginary friend. The imaginary friend is real and just can't be seen by anyone else, or at least the book is written as though that's true. The imaginary friend is humanoid, and I kind of remember the cover depicting him as bright orange, and the other illustrations also showing him as being roughly child-sized. He's named Oddity, and there was a scene where the imaginary friend made a mess, and when the kid explains that his imaginary friend did it all, his mother's reaction is "oh, did he?" - this either caused a Who's on First? moment or actually was the basis for the imaginary friend's name; I just remember thinking "oddity" was pronounced "oh diddy" because of this book.
Edited by MikeKopenNo Title Literature
I remember reading a book about a girl from nobility who has to masquerade as a peasant boy to evade the group that had her family killed. The main plot device of the book is a set of rings which store knowledge of "weapon skill" in them, which can then be used by the wearer, but if you use your own skill while wearing a ring, your knowledge gets drained into it, so you lose your skill when you remove the ring.
I think it was called "Lenxrider" or something similar, but I can't find it in TV Tropes.
Edited by Fearmonger

Okay, I'm looking for a novel that I read in 2008 or 2009. It's YA, written diary-style, about a really smart, nerdy girl who doesn't have a lot of friends and dies in the end (she's killed). The title is is something like, "The Short Life of [first-name last-name]" or "The Early Ending of [first-name last-name]". It's from the US. One more detail that I remember is that the girl daydreams a lot, and then she just writes REVERIE in big squares in her diary. She may or may not have been named Alice or Meredith (wait... I think it was something with an M).