This one has been driving me nuts for years, and I'm going to turn to the hive mind. When I was a kid, around 10 or 11 (making it around 1992-1993), I got a book that was something akin to the Babysitters' Club books: targeted at young girls, about a group of young girls all doing something together. The first of a potential series, although I don't know if I read any more. I remember very few details of this book other than the fact that it was mentioned that the main character/narrator's mother had had A LOBOTOMY. She had been depressed or had some other mental problem before, so she had a voluntary lobotomy and was now fun and freewheeling and wore cowboy hats in the kitchen. This wasn't an important plot point, just a throwaway character detail. If anyone has any memory or clue to what this book or book series could have been, I'd be thrilled. I'd just like to know that I'm not just making it up, for one thing.
posted by whitneyarner
on May 11, 2013 -
8 answers
Identify-a-book-filter: I'm trying to remember a children's/young adult book that I likely read 15-20 years ago in Australia. It was about a ~13 year old girl who went to a Greek island with her archaelogist parents (for a year/the summer?) and something magicky happened.
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posted by jacalata
on Jan 4, 2013 -
12 answers
Name that YA book or story! Young boy/teen is in a cabin or hut in the Arctic. There is also a murderer. It may be the kind of thing where there are a few people in the cabin, and one of them is a murderer, and people are being killed one by one. Very sketchy details follow.
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posted by Alaska Jack
on Dec 18, 2012 -
6 answers
A familiar story: I read a young adult novel when I was a kid. I can't remember the title or most of the plot, but I remember enough details that it drives me CRAZY.
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posted by Coatlicue
on Jan 24, 2012 -
13 answers
Forgotten-YA-Novel-Filter: Help me remember a book I read when I was in middle school. It involved a teenage girl, a church, and grave rubbings!
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posted by WidgetAlley
on Dec 1, 2011 -
11 answers
Can you recommend current popular young adult fiction for teen boys that is more thoughtful rather than action oriented (e.g. Harry Potter)?
posted by roaring beast
on May 10, 2011 -
26 answers
Please help me remember the title of a young adult novel I read in the late 1980s, involving a young American man who drives a Fiat, goes to college, joins a fraternity, and ends up getting expelled and working in a fast food restaurant.
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posted by jgfoot
on May 9, 2011 -
2 answers
Looking for a young adult reader that focused on the history of racism/oppression in America published in the 1990's.
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posted by dinty_moore
on Feb 4, 2011 -
7 answers
Identify this Y.A. Sci-fi book from the 1980's - a boy learns how to meditate his way to flying.
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posted by dadici
on Jan 19, 2011 -
4 answers
Can you identify this book? I read it in the mid-1980s. It may or may not have been a YA (Young Adult) title. The protagonist was a young girl, and her society lived peacefully up in the trees. She was interested in seeing the world down on the surface. There may have been another society down there. At one point she lost her temper with someone (a pet?) and blurted out something like "I would like to
dead you!" at which her family was shocked and horrified at her violent thoughts. I particularly remember being struck by that part, that she understood the concept of killing but didn't know the verb.
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posted by tomboko
on Dec 27, 2010 -
2 answers
Help me identify this book from my childhood, please. It's set in a fictional (?) city with a canal system.
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posted by joyeuxamelie
on Sep 13, 2010 -
2 answers
Help me figure out this young-adult book from my childhood. It's about a boy and girl communicating telepathically.
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posted by hazyspring
on Jul 10, 2010 -
20 answers
[Bookfinder filter] Trying to find a book I read at school, in the UK, in about 1987. It was a book for teenagers, with two interweaving stories across different times: one thread involved a teenage couple in modern times, and the other thread was about some Norse warriors, including a berserker, in ancient England. The two threads were tied together by an ancient axe head. The final section of the book was written in a cipher.
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posted by memebake
on Nov 20, 2009 -
7 answers
Is this a real book? All I remember is that 1 or more characters could activate some kind of special powers or transformational abilities by imagining the shape of a particular object in their mouth.
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posted by vytae
on Oct 3, 2009 -
4 answers
Trying to remember the name of a Young Adult or children's series about guardian angels.
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posted by acidic
on Jan 31, 2009 -
1 answer
Please-help-me-identify-a-book-filter. Trying to track down a young adults hardish sci-fi book from the mid 80s in the UK about a space medic in trouble.
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posted by ArkhanJG
on Jul 1, 2008 -
3 answers
What's this book from my childhood (early 80s)? I believe it came from one of the book clubs (Arrow?), it was a Young Adult book about a boy who is friends with a scientist/inventor who has invented a death ray which he then has some opportunity to use...
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posted by Caviar
on Nov 26, 2007 -
17 answers
Another "What book was it?!" question. Inside: Alternate futures, "gargoyles", skyscrapers and a reversion to feudal living.
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posted by GilloD
on Sep 13, 2007 -
22 answers
Bookfilter: When I was a kid, I read a book or series of books about a lost tribe of children who lived in sewers, were at war with the adult world (or parts thereof) and made effective use of slingshots. There was one scene in particular I recall in which someone - a baddie presumably - was killed with a shovel that had been slowly sharpened through digging in silt for something. There might have been something odd about the children's ears as well. I know it's vague, but if I could remember more I probably would have found it without having to ask the hive mind!
posted by tim_in_oz
on Mar 16, 2007 -
8 answers
Historical fiction children's book ID filter: scholars and bandits in 1930s China and bull-jumping children in Rome.
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posted by nonane
on Jul 26, 2006 -
7 answers
Help me remember this novel where all the adults die, leaving children to run the world.
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posted by acoutu
on Jun 30, 2006 -
19 answers
I'm looking for a particularly grim (young adult?) book that was published sometime in the 70s, I believe.
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posted by sun-el
on Jun 23, 2005 -
9 answers
