The Legend of the Bluebonnet by Tomie dePaola, 1983.
This is a story about the Comanche People in what is now Texas, based on an old folktale.
There has been a severe drought and famine in the land for a long time, and many people have died. The survivors pray to the spirits for help in ending the drought, and they receive a sign that it will not end until someone among the Comanches makes a sacrifice of the thing that is most dear to them.
The people debate about who is supposed to make the sacrifice and what object the spirits could want, but one young girl thinks that the spirits are talking about her and her doll. The girl is called She-Who-Is-Alone because she is the last of her family. Her parents and grandparents are dead, victims of the famine. The only thing she has left to remind her of them is her doll, a warrior with blue feathers in its hair, that her parents made for her before they died.
Desperate to end the drought and famine and to save her people, the girl makes the difficult decision to sacrifice her doll by burning it. Her sacrifice is rewarded not only by the end of the drought but by the sudden appearance of a field of flowers as blue as the feathers in her doll’s hair. The girl receives a new name from her people, acknowledging her sacrifice on their behalf.
A section in the back of the book explains a little about the Bluebonnet flower, which is the state flower of Texas, and the origins of the story in the book, which is based on a folktale. This is also a little information about the Comanche People.
The book is currently available online through Internet Archive (multiple copies).
One Halloween, Jenny goes to visit Nancy, a woman who local people say is a witch. Jenny is curious about magic and, knowing that there are magical creatures abroad on Halloween, she wonders if she might see something unusual at Nancy’s house.
This is a kind of cautionary story about the dangers of curiosity. Jenny’s curiosity invites the attention of dangerous creatures and leads her into a frightening situation, something that she never wants to repeat. For the most part, I think that curiosity is a trait that should be encouraged, but Jenny did deliberately seek out a person with a dangerous reputation and pry into the things she was doing, even trying some herself because she wanted to know more about it, so she could be considered to have gone looking for trouble.
A boy called Nicky and his mother are looking for a new place to live somewhere in New England. The mother wants to buy an old cottage with the idea of turning it into a tea room. At first, they have trouble finding a place, but finally they buy an old house that badly needs fixing up, not knowing that there is an old witch living there.
Cranberry Autumn by Wende and Harry Devlin, 1993.
School is about to start, and Maggie and her grandmother realize that they’re short of money. Maggie needs new school clothes, and her grandmother needs a new coat. They know that some of their neighbors could also use some more money, so Grandmother suggests that they hold a sale. Some of them have some antiques and other interesting old items that they could sell.
Jestress's Forgotten Books and Stories 