posted
I need the collective experience of Hatrack to help me figure out the name and author of a young adult novel.
Here are the details I remember:
A young adult fantasy novel that was published in the '70s or early '80s. Female author I think. It featured two adolescent boys that are sent to the principal's office and sucked into a different realm with a sort of medieval fantasy setting. Each boy has a small stone shaped like a comma. They also have to steal three cords and weave them together to make a rope. There's a scene with a giant Roc-like bird. At the end of the novel the boys manage to fuse the two commas to make a yin-yang-like stone and it merges them together into one being and then they are able to take the rope and bind a wolf that had been threatening them (and the people of the realm?).
Ring a bell with anyone? I tried a variety of clever google searches and scoured YA fiction lists and came up empty.
Other lost books people have been wondering about?
Oh yeah: And unlike with that lost Kafka novel I dreamed about, I'm positive that this one actually exists.
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that sounds amazingly familiar and I think I enjoyed the heck out of this book. I cannot recall anything else about it, though.
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I don't know what it is, but you have single handedly refilled my shopping cart on Amazon this week. Hope you're happy with yourself.
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Yeah, it was an enjoyable book. I don't know if I'd still find it so, but it's the one 'non-canonical' YA speculative fiction book that has stuck with me and pops up maddeningly in my memory from time to time.
And celia: No, I'm not. But I appreciate the effort even if it did have unintended consequences.
::stage whispers:: Jeez. Some people have no self control.
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It's a classic, I know it, and I will remember it shortly.
*ponders
One of the cords was a bathrobe of a wizard, one of the boys poured water on his wrists to cool himself down (they had and endless refill cup of some sort), and Loki played a role. The boys were enemies who became friends. The cords they needed lit up when they touched (one of the stones?) to them.
I remember this story with an eerie clarity, and it looks like it has stuck out in the memories of others, too. Though the writing occasionally had an unpolished feel to it, at times the imagery was startlingly vivid, and the story was right keen. Well worth a read.
While I was looking for any good non-amazon reviews, I found this compilation of recommended children's books. Although there was scant info on HFO, the site has lots of favorites I'd forgotten. Take a peek for some good memories and a few ideas for the kids in your life.
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quote: Children's classics that I either haven't read or wasn't thrilled with:
Okay - do I have really weird taste because almost all the books in this 'not thrilled with' list were (and still are) my favoite children's books ever?
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Elizabeth, I loved the Mushroom Planet series. The list I linked to above also reminded me of:
The Phantom Tollbooth (a favorite of Noemon's) The House of Stairs (operant conditioning of a group of kids -- very dark) I Am the Cheese The Westing Game The Pushcart War Roller Skates (1936) the Tom Swift, Jr series
I, too, have a fondness for many of the books in the "didn't like" list, S+S.
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CT, I think we have discussed Tyco Bass before, you and I. ha ha. It is such a sign of our 40's Perp-Im Clique!
I teach middle school aged kids,so i have the PERFECT excuse to sit around and read young adult fiction.
Robert Cormier's books are intense. I recently read "We All Fall Down." Eek. And "I Am the Cheese" was just plain good and creepy.
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There were two sibings, I think, a boy and a girl. They are visiting some weird relative who lives atop this hill, in a kind of sweet yet spooky house. The kids go into the woods, into a different world, where they meet a unicorn and have an adventure.
More than that is lost to me, but the first part is so vivid in my memory.
Edit: I was in sixth grade when I read it. I also think I read it in second grade. Anyone?
[ June 16, 2004, 09:54 PM: Message edited by: Elizabeth ]
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Elizabeth... I just finished reading I Am the Cheese with my class too. I really loved it and a good amount of my students did too. You just can't beat a good YA book. I read them even when they're not for class.
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I was going to say I'd pick up We All Fall Down [ha, ha -- actually, pun not intentional ], but when I looked on amazon.com, I realized I'd already read it. Yes, creepy.
Girl, if you like creepy, you have to read The House of Stairs. Literally unforgettable.
posted
OK, this is not a lost book, but a lost movie:
"The Other"
shiver shiver shiver shudder shiver
I was ten or eleven, huddled up on my grandmother's couch watching it, unable to stop no matter how terrified we were.
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Has anyone else read a book about a small troll-like man who paints murals that turn real? It was a children's book, maybe The Mural Master by Adrienne Jones (didn't see a good review online, so I can't tell).
ak and Richard Berg, have you guys read Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions or the short story titled something like The Adventures of Polly Nomial? You'd like them, I'm sure. The first is an short old classic about a two- dimensional character trying to interact in a three-dimensional world (and then visiting the two-dimensional "Lineland" and dimensionless "Pointland") -- kind of a mathematical version of The Phantom Tollbooth. The latter is a silly little fluff of math pun fiction.
[Edit 2: Actually, on a reread, I find myself rather more troubled by Polly's adventure than I remember. It's a rather lighthearted treatment of a brutalization, albeit an imaginary brutalization of the mathematical sort. Stil, it's a squick. Not for the tender-hearted.]
quote:There were two sibings, I think, a boy and a girl. They are visiting some weird relative who lives atop this hill, in a kind of sweet yet spooky house. The kids go into the woods, into a different world, where they meet a unicorn and have an adventure.
Elizabeth, this kind of sounds like the Susan Cooper books? I read most of them recently due to a friend's recommendation. They were cool, but one just bored me to death and I lost interest. I need to finish them soon.
I LOVE YA fiction, though. I can't wait until my daughter is old enough to read that stuff so we can talk about it...I hope. She loves books now and loves to discuss them (she just turned 5) so I hope that continues as she gets older and I, as a parent, become less cool and more stupid.
My favorite YA books came out of reading Pullman's "His Dark Materials" books. While those were a great read, I enjoyed even more his Sally Lockhart trilogy. Those were brilliant pieces of fiction, in my opinion. Can't wait to read them again.
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OK, my lost book = I remember my 4th grade teacher reading us this one, ca. 1980... two boys on a picnic with their family... they're exploring the rocks around them, and discover a passage underneath them, and then a loooong escalator that brings them deep underground to another world...
Actually can't remember much more than the start of it. I liked the start of it -- as a kid, it made me wonder if I could find that kind of underground passage. (Just like, later, I wondered if I could find a passage to Narnia in our attic... )
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I remember a similar story, with less technology. They just went down deep in a cave and there were these mushroom style people. (not Mushroom Planet, though)
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quote:There were two sibings, I think, a boy and a girl. They are visiting some weird relative who lives atop this hill, in a kind of sweet yet spooky house. The kids go into the woods, into a different world, where they meet a unicorn and have an adventure.
Elizabeth - you aren't thinking of "A Wrinkle in Time" by Madeline L'Engle, are you? There are a brother (younger) and sister, plus a schoolmate of the sister, they visit three weird women in a spooky house, they ride a unicorn and have other adventures on other worlds. Was recently shown on TV as a movie.
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It was about these two sisters whose parents were well to do. The parents go on a trip and end up missing, presumed dead. The guardian lady who is supposed to take care of them ships them off to this horrible orphanage so she can get the money and house and things. I remember the detailed descriptions of the girls toys (lots of dolls and this cool sounding toy horse made out of real horse hair) and the fact that children in the orphanage were rewarded with cheese if they snitched.
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I am in the middle of reading all the Madeleine L'Engle books I can get my hands on. There are four other books that involve the Murry and O'Keefe families: The Arm of the Starfish, Dragons in the Waters, A House Like a Lotus, and An Acceptable Time. According to the copies that I read, A Wind in the Door, A Swiftly Tilting Planet, and An Acceptable Time are "companions to A Wrinkle in Time" while Many Waters was "by the author of..." Anyway, I am officially a big fan. It amazes me how seamlessly she mixes suspense, science/science fiction, and fantasy.
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It's funny, the last time I asked for help identifying a "lost book" people here guessed it was A Wrinkle in Time, too. Even though the only similarity in the description I gave was the existence of flying centaurs.
I still haven't figured out what my lost book is, and I'm starting to fear I never will.
I'll repeat it here anyway: It is a fantasy trilogy, probably for young adults. The world might be described as pseudo-medieval. The main character is a young woman. Religion figures prominently, especially dogmatic religious tyranny. The "deities" are winged centaurs, sometimes accompanied by pegasi, and it later turns out they really exist, though they are not deities at all, but extra-dimensional beings. The only other things that really stand out to me are that there is at least one scene involving magical time-travel, and there is some kind of magic stone(s) or gems, of a brilliant green color, that figure prominently.
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I tried to read Flatland once, but didn't get very far. I was inspired to give it a shot after reading a more modern two-dimensional-world story, Planiverse. While not exactly a YA story, it is really quite good.
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Maybe I shouldn't give up all hope of finding my lost book yet. After all, just this year I finally found a "lost movie" that I had been looking for since the mid-80's. I saw it on a UHF TV station as a kid, in their weekly sci-fi movie hour. I remembered a single scene at the climax of the movie, and the music and graphics from the opening credits, and that was it. Turns out it was the Dunwich Horror, based on the story by Lovecraft.
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as an aside, I adore the way l'Engle intermingles her family trees. One of my books even has a listing of which books each of her characters are in (I think it's in the beginning of Many Waters). Sometimes it's very subtle, like the adult version of a child in one book has paintings in another book.
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CT: You are a treasure and you rock! Thanks.
I'm afraid that none of the other lost books sound familiar to me. Although I did get the faintest glimmer of recognition with U-guy's extra-dimensional winged beings.
Sorry to be a tease, dude, but it was a very, very faint glimmer.
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Another thing I seem to remember about my lost book is where it was in the library at my junior high school. I was going through the library in alphabetical order, and around that time I was in the M's. I remember, for example, reading Patricia McKillip about that time, as well as giving McCaffrey a try and hating it. So for the longest time I've thought the book I'm looking for was written by someone whose name starts with M. Now, I'm not so sure, and I'm afraid I was limiting myself focussing on that part of the alphabet.
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I can't figure out if I've read The House of Stairs or not! I certainly read a book about using food and operant conditioning of teens in the near-future. Not sure about stairs . . .
Can anyone who read it tell me whether meat and flashing lights are significant? If not, what book did I read?
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Ok, so that is the book I read. It's a VERY powerful book. I still think of it on occasion when I see a flashing "DON'T WALK" sign, and it's been at least 15 years since I read it.
I think I need to read it again.
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Please help ! I think the book I'm looking for might be OSC, but I can't really remember.
There is a young girl who is trained by birth to be an assasian by her teacher and father(grandfather?) and is actually the next Heptarch , but goes around as a servant. What is this book?
When I find out, I know I'm going to slap myself for how easy, but I just can't remember!
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Thank You, Thank You !...Now I can see the picture on front and everything. Grr, now, I must slap myself.
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I have one. There was this book about a young man who adopted a baby cougar that I read when I was a kid, but when I looked up the title it was always a similar book about a deer. But I always remembered the cougar one. God that was a long time ago, no one's going to get this...
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quote:It was about these two sisters whose parents were well to do. The parents go on a trip and end up missing, presumed dead. The guardian lady who is supposed to take care of them ships them off to this horrible orphanage so she can get the money and house and things. I remember the detailed descriptions of the girls toys (lots of dolls and this cool sounding toy horse made out of real horse hair) and the fact that children in the orphanage were rewarded with cheese if they snitched.
Long shot, but I'll propose Joan Aiken. She's written a lot of neat stories, and at least one has an oppressive orphanage. Your description sounds a bit like her stuff. If it's not, read her anyway, she's spiffy.
It is indeed Many Waters that has the cool diagram of all the L'Engle connections. I was thrilled a little bit ago to find my old copy in my sister's bookshelf, so I have the diagram back--I don't think it's in the current editions.
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Most of the editions I've been reading (L'Engle books) have the diagram, but a lot of them have been hardback. I don't know if that makes a difference. I'm now on the last of the O'Keefe books and am starting in on the Austins. Unfortunately, my library system doesn't seem to have a copy of Meet the Austins. Go figure.
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], but when I looked on amazon.com, I realized I'd already read it. Yes, creepy.![[Big Grin]](biggrin.gif)
"That smooth operator, Curly Pi ..."]![[Frown]](frown.gif)
Not for the tender-hearted.]
