ID this book, 1970s YA edition.

August 17, 2012 11:20 AM

Help, mefites! Y'all're amazingly great at tracking down obscure music and books with little info, so I hope you can help me. Two YA books, both read in the late 1970s: 1 - urban kid gets involved with a gang called the Scorpions. Also, his family was so poor he had to eat cereal with water. 2 - fantasy novel - there were goblins who were destroyed/harmed by butter. Any ideas?
posted by Bourbonesque to Writing & Language (6 answers total)

1. Is it "Scorpions"?
2. Goblins in the Castle?
posted by inturnaround at 11:28 AM on August 17, 2012

Response by poster: Wow, thanks for the quick response. "Scorpions" in particular sounds very much like the story I remember, except that I'm POSITIVE that I read both these books no later than 1979, and the publication dates on both appears to indicate that they are newer than that. (Goblins in the Castle -1992, Scorpions -1988).
posted by Bourbonesque at 11:46 AM on August 17, 2012

In the Enchanted Forest series by Patricia C. Wrede, the evil wizards are melted by throwing soapy water with lemon on them. In the Oz series by L. Frank Baum, the wicked Nome King and his underground nomes are helpless against fresh eggs.
posted by nicebookrack at 1:29 PM on August 17, 2012

Not a book, but the monsters in Ernest Scared Stupid were destroyed by milk, and possibly milk products.
posted by windykites at 4:57 PM on August 17, 2012

Maybe something by S.E. Hinton?
posted by LauraJ at 10:41 AM on August 20, 2012

Response by poster: No, definitely not SE Hinton! The Scorpions book was set in NYC (or similar) - in fact, it's so maddeningly similar to inturnaround's suggestion that if it weren't for the publication date I'd mark that as correct. The goblins book definitely involved butter as the WMD for the evil-doers. The search continues!
posted by Bourbonesque at 10:50 AM on August 22, 2012