Please jog my memory...
July 21, 2011 8:44 PM   Subscribe

Please help me identify this all but forgotten children's book.

It would have been published prior to 1985 at the latest. It was a historical novel written in "diary" form, and the diarist was a Victorian girl living in a large family. I only clearly remember one incident in the book, in which this girl tried to curl her hair using her older sister's curling tongs, and scorched her hair. Her father found her crying over her ruined hair, and he hugged her and started laughing, and though at first she was put out with him for laughing, she wound up laughing too. I think the girl also writes that when she was little she always thought the wrinkles on an elderly relative's face were full of dirt, and now she has concluded that they really are.

Unfortunately the only other thing I can remember about this book was that it had a hard back cover featuring fuschia pink-striped Victorian wallpaper and cartoon-like drawings of some of the characters. Also that a previous reader had gotten perfume on it, so that it smelled strongly. Unfortunately unless you happen to have read the exact same Stouffville, Ontario, library copy as I did circa the early 1980s, that won't be helpful.;-)
posted by orange swan to Media & Arts (13 answers total) 2 users marked this as a favorite
 
It wouldn't let me access the page here at work but after some Googling the little mini-description of the book really seemed to sound quite similar. Here.
posted by tumid dahlia at 9:24 PM on July 21, 2011


Ouch, no, that's almost definitely not it, never mind. Good luck.
posted by tumid dahlia at 9:28 PM on July 21, 2011


Jo burned up Meg's hair with curling tongs in Chapter 3 of LITTLE WOMEN.
"There, now I'll take off the papers and you'll see a cloud of little ringlets," said Jo, putting down the tongs.

She did take off the papers, but no cloud of ringlets appeared, for the hair came with the papers, and the horrified hairdresser laid a row of little scorched bundles on the bureau before her victim.

"Oh, oh, oh! What have you done? I'm spoiled! I can't go! My hair, oh, my hair!" wailed Meg, looking with despair at the uneven frizzle on her forehead.

"Just my luck! You shouldn't have asked me to do it. I always spoil everything. I'm so sorry, but the tongs were too hot, and so I've made a mess," groaned poor Jo, regarding the little black pancakes with tears of regret.
posted by headspace at 9:51 PM on July 21, 2011


Response by poster: It is not any of the books tumid dahlia linked to and it's not Little Women, which I own and am very familiar with. I'm gathering it was all too easy to burn off one's hair with curling tongs back in the day, though.;-)
posted by orange swan at 5:24 AM on July 22, 2011


Could it be All of a Kind Family?
posted by xenophile at 8:56 AM on July 22, 2011


Response by poster: No, I'm familiar with the All of a Kind Family books, and it is not one of them.
posted by orange swan at 9:48 AM on July 22, 2011


I kept thinking if it wasn't LITTLE WOMEN then it was EIGHT COUSINS. But I can't find it in there. Nor is it in THE FIVE LITTLE PEPPERS AND HOW THEY GREW or ROSE IN BLOOM.

It wasn't in one of the LITTLE HOUSE books was it??
posted by headspace at 9:59 AM on July 22, 2011


Response by poster: It wasn't by Louisa May Alcott nor Laura Ingalls Wilder, nor was it Five Little Peppers (or What Katy Did or Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm, before someone suggests either of those). It was a contemporary historical children's novel that was probably written during the 1970s or early 1980s and not a Victorian-era children's classic. Again, it was written in diary form, which means it was written in first person narrative.
posted by orange swan at 10:17 AM on July 22, 2011


First-person diary form sounds like some American Girls thing, but I feel like those came along a little later (?).
posted by jessicapierce at 11:15 AM on July 22, 2011


How about A Gathering of Days (linking to random library rather than Amazon because I think this is the version I remember from middle school). The scene you describe doesn't ring any bells, but it does meet the criteria of diary format, published in 1980, and wallpaper-y looking cover (though not stripey). And it's not quiiiiite Victorian era (but close).
posted by naoko at 9:35 AM on July 24, 2011


P.S. American Girls are not first-person diary form, IIRC.
posted by naoko at 1:11 PM on July 24, 2011


Response by poster: It was not an American Girls book. I'd never even heard of American Girls until a few years ago.

I've read A Gathering of Days (which is a lovely book), and it's not the one I'm looking for.
posted by orange swan at 1:56 PM on July 24, 2011


Response by poster: Well, thanks for playing, everyone. I guess between my not remembering very much about the book and it not being a widely known volume, it was a long shot question. Maybe I'll stumble across this book someday.
posted by orange swan at 8:10 AM on August 2, 2011


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