Help me recall the title of this kids' book

November 9, 2005 6:01 AM

Help me find this children's book I read maybe 25 years ago. (more)

I only remember a few elements. It is about two kids (brother and sister?) who are traveling for some reason (runaways?). Near the beginning, there is a mention in the text about how they will buy bread to live on because it is relatively cheap. The kids meet an adult who is friendly toward them but arouses their suspicions, so they evade him in a forest. They hear him disappointedly and pathetically calling for them as they hide behind trees, and as he realizes that he has lost them he begins blubbering to himself and discloses (talking to himself) that he has been ordered to find them and that he will be punished in a psychologically very painful way if he does not bring them back with him. The psychologically painful way is only partially revealed in the text at that point, but it seems to have something to do with him being connected to a machine that causes headaches or some other kind of psychic pain. Eventually, the kids find and destroy the machine and/or the complex in which it is located and/or the enterprise at which it is the center of, which, I dimly recall, has something to do with multi-person hypnotism or brainwashing.

posted by Mr. Justice to media & arts (9 comments total)

You might try the BookSleuth forum at AbeBooks. They helped me find a book I thought I'd lost forever, in about four minutes.
posted by rebirtha at 6:36 AM on November 9, 2005

Man, childrens' books used to be awesome.
posted by odinsdream at 6:57 AM on November 9, 2005

This is The Silver Crown by Robert C. O'Brien. A wonderful book.
posted by Emera Gratia at 7:07 AM on November 9, 2005

Or, it could be The White Mountains.
posted by ewkpates at 8:25 AM on November 9, 2005

This almost sounds to me like one of the books in His Dark Materials Trilogy, specifically the first book, The Golden Compass.
posted by sarahnade at 8:42 AM on November 9, 2005

But now that I've thought a little bit more, I'm obviously wrong as that book wasn't around 25 years ago (only came out about 1- years ago). Still, the plots sound very similar.
posted by sarahnade at 8:44 AM on November 9, 2005

er, actually The Golden Compass, came out about 9 1/2 years ago. And the plot is only tangentially similar. Kids (not brother and sister), running away (kind of), people looking for them... that's about it in similarities.
posted by edgeways at 10:50 AM on November 9, 2005

(you where looking at the "boxed edition", not the actually date of the first edition, easy mistake to make)
posted by edgeways at 10:51 AM on November 9, 2005

Definitely the Silver Crown.
posted by web-goddess at 11:39 AM on November 9, 2005