Many of us have books that we vaguely remember reading years ago.  One of the best sites for looking for half-forgotten books is Loganberry’s Stump the Bookseller page where, for a small fee, you can describe the book you’re looking for and see whether the book sellers or other readers of the site can recognize the story and help you find the title and author.  I’ve used their site myself, but since I have the opportunity on this site to mention a few half-forgotten stories that I’ve been looking for, I thought I’d see whether anyone who happens to read this might happen to recognize them.  Please send me a message via the contact page or leave a comment on this one if you do!

The selection here might change from time to time if I figure out what a book is or think of another one I’m trying to find.  They are in no particular order.

American Girl Goes to England and Meets Princess Diana

I just can’t remember the title of this book, but I know it’s either from the 1980s or very early 1990s. An American girl moves to England with her mother because her mother got a job there. (I don’t remember why, but it’s just the girl and her mother. Her father is either dead or divorced from her mother, I think.) The girl didn’t want to move to England and leave her school and friends, and as I recall, she wants to go back to America and live with her best friend there so she can return to her old school, but her mother won’t let her, and she resents her mother for it. The name of the American girl is either Diane or Diana, and she develops a fascination for Princess Di because they have the same first name. She makes friends with an old man in the area where she’s living, and the old man suggests to her that they go see Princess Di. I think that he wanted a medal that he should have received for service in WWII or something, and he says that maybe she can ask Princess Di for help. The old man is a bit senile, and the girl doesn’t realize just how senile he is until they actually meet Princess Di. They burst in on some public visit or charity event that Princess Di is attending and force their way up to her. However, they don’t get to say much because Princess Di’s security team hustles her away, thinking that the girl and the old man might be a threat. The American girl realizes the hopelessness of appealing to Princess Di about her problem and also that Princess Di herself isn’t in control of everything in her own life and has to do things that other people tell her, going where they direct her to go. To appease the old man, who is becoming increasingly senile, the American girl pretends that she’s Princess Di and acts out giving the old man his medal so he’ll feel at peace. The old man strangely keeps referencing someone named “Sarah”, asking if “Sarah” is watching. The girl doesn’t know who he’s talking about at first, but later, the old man’s son explains that Sarah was the old man’s sister and that she died young in a fire. The old man always felt terrible that he hadn’t been able to save her. Then, when the old man starts reenacting the tragedy that look his sister’s life, the American girl pretends like she’s Sarah so the old man can experience the victory of rescuing her.

Skinny and Fatso

I can’t remember what the title of the book was. It might have even contained some reference to “Skinny” and “Fatso”, but I’m not sure. I think that there might have been a mystery or something as part of the story, but what I remember most and what I think the book most emphasized was the self-improvement efforts of the characters. The story was about two friends, a boy and a girl. I can’t remember what their real names were, but people often called the boy “skinny” because he was on the skinny side and people thought of him as a bit of a weakling. The girl was overweight, and people called her “fatso.” The two them felt a little badly about the way they looked, and they sometimes joked with each other about how they wished they could change places. I didn’t like the way the parents in the story behaved. The boy’s father was hard on him for being a skinny weakling, and the girl’s mother actually called her a “pig” at one point for eating too many cookies and having no self control. While I liked the kids’ decisions to improve themselves, I didn’t like the way the parents seem to bully them into doing it instead of sitting down with them and working out a helpful plan and encouraging the kids to stick to it. I don’t remember the parents really trying to do anything helpful or supportive for the kids. The kids basically handle everything themselves. Along with whatever mystery or other issue was going on in the story, the kids make their own decisions to improve themselves. The boy starts exercising more, and I think he joins the school’s baseball team. After awhile, he starts building some muscle and isn’t so skinny. The girl decides to go on a diet and works on breaking herself of the habit of having too many after-school snacks. By the time the book is over, they have both improved a great deal, and they jokingly trade their old “nicknames” with each other.

Little Red-Haired Girl Considers Careers

I remember reading a picture book when I was in first grade (late 1980s) about a little girl with red hair who was considering what she wants to be when she grows up. She pictures herself in different careers and imagines what she would be asked to do. Whatever people asked her to do, she would would be a little nervous, but she’d say, “I’ll try.” When she tried whatever it was in her imagination, it always worked out well, and she would consider that it might be the career for her. For example, when she pictured herself as a ballerina, she imagined that she was nervous about going out on stage to perform, but she tried it and people cheered and clapped, so she decided that she liked it and could do that. When she imagined herself as a nurse, having to treat her first sick patient, she tried giving the patient a pill, and he got better. (It was a very non-specific pill, which I thought was funny, even back then.) I can’t remember exactly how the book ended, although I think it might have involved her not making a firm decision about what she wants to do, but she enjoys the thought that there are many possibilities.

Boy Discovers That He’s Good at Art

I can’t remember the title of this picture book, but there was a boy who hated art classes.  He started hating them because a teacher kept correcting the way that he tried to draw and paint things, like telling him that he should paint grass as thin rather than thick.  He is embarrassed by the teacher’s corrections and thinks that he isn’t good at art.  Then, he gets a different teacher a year or two later who is more free-spirited and creative.  When she assigns the students to paint their own portraits, the boy groans because he thinks that he hates art.  While the other kids draw conventional pictures of their own faces, the boy does something more unusual.  At first, people can’t figure out what he’s drawing because there are a bunch of odd colored shapes and (apparently) no sign of him in the picture.  It turns out that he drew a picture of himself eating pizza (the shapes were the pizza toppings), shown from his own perspective.  Some of the other kids tried to tell him that he was doing the assignment wrong because you couldn’t see his face in the picture, but the teacher says that he didn’t do it wrong, that it was a creative way to shows what he likes and how he sees himself.  The teacher thinks that he’s a real artist for looking at the world creatively, and the boy starts liking art.

Short Story Collection – Scary or Supernatural?

I remember that, in middle school, my English teacher assigned a story for us to read from a short story collection.  I think it was for a genre unit about suspense or scary stories.  The story we read was about a girl who wanted to be a writer.  A distant uncle of hers died, and her mother gave her the uncle’s old typewriter.  The uncle had been a famous newspaper reporter, known for “getting the scoop” on stories before anyone else.  The mother thought that the daughter would find the typewriter inspiring for her own work, and she does.  The daughter immediately starts using it to write stories, but she is shocked to discover that what she writes immediately starts coming true.  She starts writing an adventure story about the survivors of a plane crash in a jungle, and then she hears on the news that a plane just like the one she was writing about crashed in a similar location.  Horrified, she goes to write a quick, happy ending to the story on the typewriter to make sure that the people on the plane will be alright, but she discovers that the typewriter is now starting to type new stories without her, about things that are really happening, and like a lot of news stories, what the typewriter types is shocking.  The girl only manages to stop the typewriter by writing that the typewriter is struck by lightning and destroyed, only barely managing to escape being hit by lightning herself.  The implication in the story is that either the uncle wasn’t really good at learning about news stories before everyone else; he was using his magical typewriter to do the work for him, perhaps creating the news. Either that, or his ghost is using the typewriter to continue his work from beyond the grave.  I’m not sure if the girl ever really found out which it was, but my impression was that it was the typewriter that was magic/cursed.

An Anthology of Short Stories

I have no idea what the title of the book was, I just remembered that it was a collection of short stories, including:

1. One about a boy with ill health.  For a long time, people were afraid that he would die because he was so sick.  He came to think of “death” as a kind of place where people go and became interested in atlases.  Everyone thought that he was a weak child because he was so sick, but it turns out that his immune system is actually very strong, it’s just that the disease he was fighting was very serious.  It turns out that the boy’s strong immune system wins, and he recovers.  When he gets better, he decided that he wants to travel to the places that he’s read about in the atlases.  To decide where to go first, he sticks the names of various places on his body with post-it notes and sees which one is the last one to fall off.

2. Some mean girls tease a girl named Cluny on the school bus because they think that “Cluny” is like a clown’s name (she was actually named after a museum).  However, the mean girls are so loud and boisterous that they distract the school bus driver, and the bus crashes.  Cluny manages to keep her head while the mean girls are terrified out of their wits, and she has to comfort them after the crash.

3. A little boy disappears for awhile, and when he reappears, his family asks him where he was.  Because he’s so young, he just describes the place where he was by writing the word “HOPE” with an extra line on the ‘E’ on a piece of paper. Years later, the boy is in his teens, and he’s angry and depressed about a lot of things, and he finds the place where he disappeared to as a small child when he follows another young boy, maybe a cousin or younger brother, there.  It turns out to be an abandoned truck in the woods from the “Hope Bakery.”  It gets him thinking about the sense of hope he had as a child, so he’s less angry and depressed.

Chanukah Doll Mystery

I’ve long forgotten the name of this picture book, only that I saw it at the library more than 20 years ago.  I’m not Jewish, but I liked dolls and mysteries, so the book caught my attention at once.  I might not be using quite the correct spelling of Hanukah, but I remember stumbling on my pronunciation of that word when I was about 7 or 8 years old because this book was the first time I’d ever seen it spelled with a ‘C.’  Funnily enough, that’s actually what I remember most strongly about this book now.  I remember very little about the story beyond that except that it was about a young girl and her doll (who may have been a present for Hanukah or maybe not, I’m not sure now).  As I recall, the doll wore a pretty blue dress, and I loved the pictures.

The Princess Who Had Nightmares

I vaguely remember reading a children’s picture book years ago about a princess who kept having nightmares.  I remember that every member of the royal family had a fancy bed (I think the prince’s bed looked like a ship, and the princess’s looked like a swan), and there was always a rose on her pillow to give her sweet dreams, but that didn’t stop her from having nightmares.  After the characters in the story try several things to help her, I think they figure out that what she really needs is a bedtime story to make her feel better and sleep better.

The Cradle was Sadly Empty

I remember once reading a story about a pioneer family.  I think the eldest son went ahead to the place where his family was going to live to prepare a house for them.  When he left, his mother was expecting another baby, so he carved a new cradle as a present for the baby, all ready for when the rest of his family arrived at the house.  Unfortunately, when the rest of his family came, his father sadly told him that the baby had died.

The Old Woman Was an Painter

There was a picture book where a woman had moved to a new place (I can’t remember exactly when, it might have been after her marriage when she was younger or in her old age), but she always missed the place where she had come from.  Her relatives had given her some nice paintings for her house, but she didn’t really like them because she kept thinking about the scenery in the place where she grew up.  As an older woman, she started painting pictures of her old home from memory.  However, when her relatives came to visit, she always hung up the paintings that they had given her because she didn’t want them to think that she hadn’t appreciated their gifts.  When they left after a visit, she would hang up her own paintings of the scenery she loved.  Then, one day, she forgot to change the paintings when they came to visit and left hers still hanging up.  At first, she was afraid that they would be upset that she’d taken down their paintings, but when they saw her paintings, they were delighted to discover that she was such a wonderful artist.

Boy Stays Overnight with Eccentric Family

I can’t remember who the boy was or why he was staying overnight with this family, but I think the daughter of the family was a friend of his.  However, he never realized until he stayed with them just how eccentric they were.  The girl eats weird snacks because the family is following some kind of odd health trend, and the boy is alarmed when he sees the father of the family dragging chains down the hallway in the middle of the night.  The boy asks the girl about it, and she says that he’s going to chain up his exercise bike.  I think there was at least a semi-reasonable explanation for that, like he keeps his exercise bike on the front porch and doesn’t want it stolen or something.  I think there were other explanations for other strange things that the family did, too, but I can’t remember what the other things were now.  It seems to me that the boy realizes that the family is eccentric but not quite as weird as they seem at first because there are reasons for the things they do.

Little Bears Eat Beans and Franks

There was a picture book where a boy bear was baby-sitting for his younger brother bear for the first time.  At one point, he has to make dinner for the younger bear, and he makes beans and franks.  However, he makes a mistake and uses jelly beans instead of regular beans.  The younger bear likes it anyway.

The Kids Were “Under the Weather”

An older woman who is babysitting for some children takes them on magical trips instead of taking them to school every day.  I think she might have had a magical car or van or something.  She kept writing excuses to the school about why the children were absent, and they were always jokes about what they were really doing.  For instance, when they went swimming (maybe her car magically converted into a swimming pool or took them somewhere to swim?), she noticed clouds overhead, so she wrote that the children were “under the weather.”