findthatbook | Entries tagged with sub genre: young adult

The book I read app. 1965 featured a cast of maybe ten year-olds and a few teens as protagonists, with naturally supportive adults. The time was about 1850 and the wagon train set out from AFAIK St. Joseph, MO to head west. It sort of seems the group were Mormon, but I am unsure. What I'm sure of is that one little boy grew impatient to see a real prairie dog town and was deeply disappointed to find out the 'dogs' were rodents. He looked forward to teaching one to speak and sit up for treats!

Current Mood: okay
Current Location: downstairs office
Current Music: quiet

jvpiterhxlic

hello,

been trying for years to remember this series I read when I was younger, but I can't remember the title, author or cover.

all I remember about it is random pieces of the plot + smaller details.

- normal, teenage girl (believe she's blonde, could be wrong) is dating her best friend.

- new boy moves to town, believe his name is close to either malachai/malakai, and is later found out to be some demon kind of create (or at least can summon them through a portal he opens up near the end of the book)

- people start to wind up dead and are found in this forest like area in the town

- girl develops magic and at some point (idk if its the first book or later in the series) accidentally zaps her lipstick and melts it in the school bathroom

- crows or ravens pop up a lot, which is later found out to be connected to demons

I believe either shadow or dark/darkness was in the title but I could very well be wrong. I also read this pre 2010 and know there is at least 3 books in the series. Please help :(

inlovewithwords979

Hi everyone, I've forgotten a book i read a long time ago. I read it in Canada in english. It was a romance and fantasy novel that included a girl named Mage and her boyfriend named Adam. Mage had magical abilities. I believe the book was also a trilogy.

A few scenes I remember are:
A scene where she got angry and used her magic to roll a tire.

A scene where she wanted to have sex with him in a hotel but he wanted to wait for a better place to do it

(SPOILERS)
Near the end of the book Adam dies. (I dont really remember whether this happened in it or not but i think she was able to see Adam as a ghost after he died).

If anyone can remember the title that would be so helpful. Thanks!

eulalia_vox

Ok. I need help identifying a book. I'm like 73% (and declining) sure this is a real book and not something I just dreamed up.

Here's what I remember. My google-fu has failed.

I'm pretty sure I read it in the 90s. Young adult/teen. No idea author/publisher/cover/title.

The protagonist is a 16ish year old girl. Her parents are artists. I think her mom is a chidren's book illustrator. Dad gave up art & became a farmer. They may be separated/divorced. Definitely some strife.

Girl & dad move, i think, to his family home. It's a big old Gothic-type house. Weird, supernatural goings-on. Family's a little kooky.

Girl makes friend in school. Boy lives kitty-corner. Boy is cute but has big ears?

Maybe Canada?

Maybe seances, maybe mirror. Definitely evil family ancestor, Scottish, I reckon. Definitely remember them calling bad guy ancestor "laird." Laird Greagor?

Girl is only one who can defeat him. I remember the family and girl and boy have a plan and a final seance. Maybe a black cloak, swirling evil spirits trying to break chain of hands.

Girl prevails, happy ending.

Please, please, please somebody recognize this book with this crazy description. It is driving me up the wallllllllll.

jazzfish

I'm looking for a YA SF anthology that I read in (US) elementary school in the late-eighties, though it felt kind of dated even at the time. (Likely published late-seventies or early-eighties.) Of the stories I can remember:

- One was about a post-apocalyptic city, with the not-too-bright protagonist (a mutant) being chased by a group of normal people. The story ended with the protagonist trapped atop a tower with the chasers coming up after him, so he jumped out of a window, and the last lines were "I can fly! I can fly!"

- One was about a kid whose father had invented a sort of time machine: it shows you what your life will be like if you make certain choices. The kid snuck in to try out the machine to see what his life would be like as a football player, and then a couple of other career options. It ended with him getting a talking-to from his father, and then deciding that he wanted to be a scientist.

- This may have been the book that included a story about an alien who goes to an all-you-can-eat buffet and eats all the food they have, teleporting it back to his starving home planet, and in exchange gives the Earth all kinds of scientific knowledge, but leaving the buffet owner broke.

- The last story in the book was about a teenager whose parents had just died in a car crash, and a kid from the middle ages turns up claiming that they're his parents too... they're time-travellers, who go around having kids who will grow up to be world-changing.

Thanks!

sadiedw

Hey all, I spent hours searching and I have thrown in the towel.

I want to say the book had quail on the cover, or quail or partridge birds were involved somehow, and maybe a girl? Kind of a moodier type of mood to it?

YA novel where the main protagonist is a girl who is kind of an outsider and possibly had magic powers.

In one part of the book a bully at school pushes her and she hits her head, she goes home to take a shower and the back of her head is bleeding.

I really want to find this book, it’s one of those books you encountered at the library over summer vacation when you were in middle school and stuck with your younger siblings and divorcing parents for weeks, you love it, return it to the library, and even when you go back to get it again a week later it is gone, and you can’t remember the title, and it bothers you forever.

Let me know if you know it!

amandapaige94

Hello! I’m looking for a Young Adult novel, fiction. Not sure how long it is, and I only remember a few plot details. It’s about a peasant-type girl who is sent to work in a “Queendom” where women rule rather than men. There’s a rivalry between either a mother/daughter or older/younger sisters in the royal family and each rival has her own “court” color (the colors of the court ladies’ dresses’, flags hung in the halls, and other details, and the two colors are green and blue). The peasant girl is without her mother because she talks about missing her a lot. The girl is assigned to work as a fabric dyer and always talks about her hands being stained yellow, or possibly green. I remember the end specifically because both of the rival royal women end up poisoning each other and the new royal baby, whose color is purple, has a flag raised in her honor over the Queendom, and the peasant girl watches this take place as she is leaving in a horse-pulled cart, possibly being smuggled out. Literally the last words are close to "and she watched the purple flag as it was raised high over the somber queendom" or something. Sadly, I don't remember what the cover looked like. I might have read the novel during the years 2007-2011 when I was in middle or high school. I do believe the specific word "queendom" is used to describe the place to the peasant girl when she first arrives, because she isn't used to the concept. I also think the book may have been part of a series about this girl because I get the impression from my memory of the end of the book that her story continues. I used to think the novel might be part of the 'Gathering Blue' and 'The Giver' series by Lois Lowry but I haven't had luck with that lead, although I may have read those books around the same time. I remember that the younger of the royal females who are fighting over the throne becomes close to the girl, and eventually invites her to the court and gives her a taste of the nice life. There's a male royal adviser character who is playing both sides of the rivalry as well. If anyone has any questions about what I remember please ask! I would love to read this again as an adult.

Current Mood: hopeful

mattevansc3

My local library had a series of books (possibly a trilogy) that I enjoyed when I was younger in the mid 80’s. I want to track them down to read to my children.

The library never had the first one but the basic plot outline is;
A boy does a weird monster dance to scare his younger sister which accidentally teleports them to a fantasy world. They are separated and the locals treat his sister as a powerful sorceress because of her torch.

I can’t remember the outline for the second book.

In the third book he does the dance but when he’s teleported he’s shrunk to the size of an insect and gains leaf armour made by ants. He eventually meets a wizard from an earlie book that resizes him but he’s a few inches smaller. Him and some adventurers from an earlier book go into a dungeon where they start getting “killed off” with venomous crossbow bolts and nerve gas.

One of the covers is of the boy doing the dance and the back cover summary always discusses the dance/movements in detail.

Any help would be much appreciated.

kitewithfish

Hello, kind friends!

I am looking for a book that I read in hardcopy in my childhood (aka, the early 1990's) which was probably written 1990's or earlier. I have no recollections of the cover or the age of the book at the time.

Setting: American revolutionary war and preceding years, I think in New England.

Genre: historical fiction - probably aimed at older children, I think, but it might have just been from an older style of polite writing that did not mention sex or upsetting things in literature. (I read a lot of things as a child that I was probably not supposed to have read. :)

Main character: a young man who we follow from a poor childhood to adulthood. He's educated in a public (I think) single room schoolhouse with a single teacher. He's a mathematics and accounting genius from an early age, and at one point I believe there's a conflict with his schoolmaster who does not believe a student as dumb as him could be working out complicated mathematical problems without being instructed in how to do it. (He's not particularly un-intelligent, but he's Very Gifted in math and not much interested in other elements of education, and the character might be read as autistic to modern readers.)

Detailed scenes:
- conflict with his school master over math, but the boy's mathematical talents are later recognized and he's trained (apprenticed?) to someone in trade involving sailing ships or a port. The school room uses slate and, I think, lead pencils to write on them rather than chalk?

-at one point, a mentor he admires gives him a book to study on mathematics (Maaaybe Isaac Newton's Principia Mathematica, not sure) and the boy is embarrassed bc he cannot read Latin, but when he confesses the mentor arranges for him to have lessons.

-scene on a ship in a battle where he has to hide in the gunpowder room and calmly reads a book until the battle is over, causing people to exclaim that, of course, he'd be reading completely calmly in the powder room of a ship under fire, of course. The ship might be smuggling goods, not sure.

-There's a scene when he's an adult where, at a dinner party, his host asks him to solve a complicated mathematical question regarding compound interest over time bc the host would like to make sure that he has not been cheated by a bank or business partner. The host lays the details out, but says, Don't worry about solving it now, enjoy your tea, I'll give you some time with it later. But the main character thinks about it and comes back with a detailed answer without using any writing materials in a very short amount of time.

-This was a book I read on my own, from my school or classroom library, not something that was assigned

ragothlham

Hi all,

I saw a horror short today that sparked a memory of a book I read as a kid in the early 90's, but can't place for the life of me. What I remember was that it read as sort of a dark Goosebumps-type book, had a young, maybe teenage, girl as the protagonist, and the plot centered around a Christmas tree. I believe that it perhaps ate one of the family pets, but the climax revolved around it being a portal to another dimension that was accessed by going through its impossibly deep branches, or trying to reach the 'back' of the tree that always retreated? I think the parents, or at least the mom, was eaten and rescued by the end? IIRC, the tree was kind of sentient and could maybe hypnotize people?

If anyone has any ideas, I'd really appreciate it.

Thanks!

mrskoz

Hi there!

What a FANTASTIC community! I've read through a good number of posts here and at the previous domain. I actually recognized a long lost book there, too recently. I am hoping someone will recognize one of these two books I read once upon a time.

The first one I read as a teen in the 80s, so probably from 80s or maybe very late 70s. The story involved a teenage girl who was accepted and went away to a sort of super elite boarding school for artistic prodigy types: art/painting, music, also writing I believe? I think she had been selected over her friend who was perhaps even more gifted and that caused some kind of rift. I seem to remember a student at the school with a violin, possibly also someone who painted? The main girl discovered while she was there that she and her fellow students were being used by spirits who were channeling their own talents through so they could make their own creations live again, so to speak. I believe she saw a fellow student in a trance or unconscious and being "used" by the spirit/ghost to create. I think there was a main adult character in charge of the school - I can't remember, but possibly a headmistress. I've explored the usual titles/authors I could find, but even that search was incomplete...

And, unbelievably, in typing this I have suddenly remembered the strange dystopian second book's title that I've tried to remember for 25 years: House of Stairs.

Thank you for considering!

kxthleen

bear with me here, cause I have very limited info! I read a book when I was a pre-teen (between 2001-2005, probably) with a female protagonist who, from what I can remember, lived with a lot of other girls, who she doesn't get on with. there's a line in the book about her dying her hair 'dandelion fluff/fuzz white/blonde' and leaving her roots brown to give them something to talk about. I believe there's a reference in there to a romantic novel, of some kind, but that's about all I can remember! really hope someone can help me cause this has been bugging me for years...

morivoveso

I remember one christmas in the mid to late 90s asking for Animorphs books and nothing else. I ended up getting books about kids who could turn into things instead of animals. I ended up throwing them out, but recently remembered this event, but not the name of the books. I never read them as I was so disappointed, so I don't havea lot to go on, and google has been no help.

tyxeros

I'm really glad I found this community, I read a looot of books, so hopefully I can contribute in answering questions as well as getting help!

Speaking of which, I just remembered a YA fantasy novel I read around 2008. It has (at least) two main characters, a boy and a girl, whose perspectives are switched between. The girl is a dragon/fairy creature locked away in a tower and has been since she was little, and the person who locks her in stole her wings - ripped/cut them right off her back, I remember them describing the wounds. I think the captor claims she saved the girl from being murdered. The captor wears the wings as a cape, and either uses them to fly or is trying to figure out how to use them to fly. Near the end of the book the girl breaks out of her room and finds her wings up on the wall, at which point her magic calls to them and they reattach. She flies away and meets the boy who was racing to the tower on horseback.

That's as much as I can remember! One or two details might be slightly wrong, but I distinctly remember the scene where her wings flew to her and reattached to the scarred nubs on her back.

Any help appreciated!

fancifuldelights

2010 or earlier-This book takes place in winter and a young woman is hired to babysit a quiet boy and they bond. The boy’s parents (I assume) are dead (under suspicious circumstances) and he lives in an old castle with an old woman and other family members and now the young woman. She isn’t liked by the family (they’re very mysterious) and they try to poison her by giving her a (cherry?) pie slice with poison but she doesn’t eat it. She ends up falling in love with a young man (not sure how they meet but he visits often). The two are chased by an assailant with a gun (possible shootout and they hide behind some stone pillars?) but they get away. There’s also a great pond surrounding the castle, there’s a lot of fear surrounding it (I believe the boy is afraid/there was an incident on the ice/drowning?) and someone falls through/left on the ice as punishment and the boy plays ice hockey on it I think. The young woman warms the boy up after he falls through? Thank you for reading and for any titles you suggest!

nothingwasthesame_26

I have been looking for this book for years! I vaguely remember the title for the book but every search I have made comes up with the wrong book.

The front of the book has a house with a tower room and I remember leaves and trees being apart of the scenery. Possibly fall but could have been spring. The window is a main focus of the tower and I'm not sure if a light was on.

The title from what I can remember is something a long the lines of the ghost in the tower or the secret tower room. Maybe even the girl in the tower? It is not a part of a series and is more of a young adult short read.

I read this book back in 2002-2003, but I'm pretty sure it's from the 80s or 90s. It had an older feel to it and the illustration on the front was not from a recent time.

The plot for the book is about a girl and her father who move into a new house with his girlfriend and her son I believe. The daughter and son do not get a long very well and I don't think the girl likes her fathers new love interest. They let her have a room with a door in it that leads to a tower. It has a special key that locks it. She loves painting or drawing and that is where they believe she can have her own little art studio to feel more at home in this new house. Later weird things start happening and she discovers theres an evil presence that lives in the tower and so she tries to keep the door locked. I believe she also tries to tell her dad & new stepmom, but no one will believe her. They blame her for all the weird stuff happening as they think she hates it there and her new family. In the end the ghost in the tower tries pushing her out of the window or maybe pushes the little boy out? Something crazy and bad happens and she finally figures out why the ghost was trapped up there and "releases" it. At the very end they have a nice picnic in the backyard and everything is back to normal again.

I really hope someone knows what this book is because it was such a good book I'm sad I can't remember it or even find it anywhere.

Current Mood: frustrated

nayaranightroo

EDIT: Found! It's Cry of the Icemark, by Stuart Hill.

I've been trying and failing to find this book for years, so I might as well try here! \o/
I read this YA Fantasy book in 2012 at the latest, but I doubt it was published earlier than 2000. What I remember:

1) The protagonist was a princess of some kind(?), or possibly the daughter of the leader of some kind of warrior tribe. Possibly red-haired.
2) The mother of the protagonist is dead pre-book. I think the father dies at the beginning of the first book.
3) The protagonist goes to a land with ice/snow and makes peace with a race of giant talking beasts that her people fear. I'm pretty sure the beasts are snow leopards. The protagonist rides at least one of them at some point, I think.
4) The protagonist has a guy love interest. When she meets him, he's trying to help heal someone, I think? He's some kind of wizard / has magic. He might be called Oscar.
5) At some point, near the end of the book, the love interest bursts into flames (due to magic gone wrong, maybe?) and he's horribly burnt. I seem to recall him running around a courtyard of some kind while naked?
6) The cover might be the red-haired protagonist accompained by a snow leopard / white beast, but I might be confused here.
7) There's a second book, in which the protagonist and her love interest are not teens anymore, but adults with several children, and those children are the main focus. I think the book starts with one of their children betraying the rest.

reniechan

I remember only a few things:

1) the protagonist was female

2) she was in a cult that was literally under ground.

3) when she got out she marveled at the fact that women's dresses no longer had large poofy sections at the wrist and instead had poofy sections at the shoulder.

4) she was shocked at how much time had passed.

5) she was nobility of some kind

Current Mood: awake

klwill1192

I'm trying to track down a book I read as a kid. It was a 1970s era YA mystery. Here are the few details I remember:
The main character had a friend who was a genius inventor. One of his inventions was a retractable staircase.
The main character had a newspaper route and was in a contest to sell subscriptions.
One of the mysteries involved what turned out to be a (friendly) family of circus performers.
At the end, the circus family purchased a number of newspaper subscriptions that resulted in the main character winning (I think) the subscription contest.

I really don't remember much more about the book, but I'm hoping these details will ring a bell with somebody.

Thank you.

Kevin

Current Mood: calm

sapphic_devine6969

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Find That Book

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Entries tagged with sub genre: young adult

Heading West On The Oregon or Mormon Trail YA Book

YA novel : magic, demon, ravens or crows, death

forgotten Y/A novel

Seeking YA novel from 90s(?) haunted/paranormal

YA SF anthology

YA Book

Need help finding YA fiction, topic: Queendom!

YA Series. Fantasy. Boy does a silly dance for his sister and teleports to a fantasy world

Children's historical fiction - American Revolutionary war, mathematics, savant

YA Christmas horror book

2 books that continue to hang in my memories

YA novel about a girl in a group home

Sci-fi, YA, Animorphs knock-off, 90s

Dragon girl in a tower gets her wings back

YA Woman babysits quiet boy, mysterious family, frozen pond is key

YA-Horror/Thriller, possibly from 80s or 90s, short paperback type

YA Fantasy - Princess(?) makes peace with giant talking snow leopards

I'm looking for a fantasy book from my younger days

Looking for 1970s Children's/YA Mystery

Young adult book incest, POV of daughter on one side of the book and father on the other side

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