Is there a magical website that helps you find books from your childhood?

[NigelWithTheBrie79]

I've tried googling details I remember for different books but no luck as of yet.

@JoanOgden

"The other was a book we were either read in class or I read at school in year 5, so early 90s. Involved a boy and I think his dad who were on a small aircraft. It crashed, I think the pilot died, not sure what happened to the dad (if he was on board). Crashed in a forest (maybe set in America?). The boy had to survive by eating what was around, he tried some berries, but they made him sick."

I read this! I can remember the first chapter where the pilot had a heart attack (I think), but not the rest.

I think this is Hatchet by Gary Paulsen.

www.enidblytonsociety.co.uk/author/covers/the-mystery-of-the-pantomime-cat-4.jpg

@Silversun83 I had this copy of the book and had to be careful not to look at it while I was reading as it scared the life out of me!

[quote pollyhemlock]@Silversun83 The plague one could be The Pit by Ann Pilling, though the central character is a boy rather than a girl.www.goodreads.com/book/show/3616338[/quote]
Thanks for that, though I'm pretty sure it was set in the present day (also would pre-date this one)

@bookworm14 - Yep, that's it, thanks! I don't think I got to the end of it actually!

@pollyhemlock yes, that's it!! Thank you

Ooh, on a horror story theme..

This was an anthology of short horror stories (also terrified me)..

One was quite sad actually.. Was about a girl who always used to hear bells at night in her bedroom and feel as though she was being suffocated. She was scared that it was a malevolent ghost, but she found a teddy and it turned out to be the spirit of a brother who'd died as a baby (called Christopher?) I remember a line about her sobbing that she'd told him to 'Go away!' and how sad it was that her parents had lost him at Christmas time, but someone said that he didn't die then, but wouldn't that be the time of year you'd want to come back to your family..

Another story in the same collection involved a possessed set of ice-skating dolls that all the children coveted, but turned out to cause nasty accidents..

Goodness, some of these children's stories were particularly twisted! No wonder I had nightmares...

Ooh, found it!

I'm searching for a book I borrowed from a friend in probably very early 90s and loved it and want to find for my daughter so badly!

It was quite a large in size book with a magnifying glass but where the glass should've been there was red plastic. You held the magnifying glass over the pages and clues/pictures were revealed as part of the story that you couldn't see otherwise.

The magnifying glass was on a piece of string and tucked into a little pocket on the front of the book. May be wrong but I half remember it was perhaps about a little boy called Sam. Perhaps he was little spy you pretended to be while you read the book 🙏 will make my day if anyone knows this book and I can buy!

This is probably far too vague, but does anyone remember a book featuring 3 people and a 'horse with no name'? This was definitely mentioned in the blurb if not as a title/subtitle - something like 'the story of Tom, Jenny, Ray, and the horse with no name'. Those weren't the characters' actual names, but the syllabic rhythm was similar. It may have had references to the song (set in a desert?) but as I wasn't familiar with the song at the time I read it, I can't say for sure. I probably read it in the early nineties, but it may have been older.

Long shot here as not sure I am not mashing a few books together. I read a lot of fantasy as a child.

A couple/small team of archaeologists racing to uncover the secrets of a lost city before everything is lost to a natural disaster, ( a volcano possiblly). they realise the inhabitants were not human but a race of large Bipedal cats/Panthers or Jaguars I think. I think the story jumps between the last days of the city and the archaeologists.

The rulers are encased/preserved in amber resin when they die, part of the ancient story and the evidence the archaeoglists are trying to save.

I think it is set in South America but I could be wrong.

This has been buggin me for decades and I have google searched the hell of of this since internet searches became a "thing"

I also read a book a bout a Roman lost city in Africa as a child that is similar but I don't think I have mashed them together.

Hi, hoping someone can help me with these!

I have vague memories of a book where I think the characters might have been animals and there was a secret lemonade recipe that had been forgotten but was rediscovered and became very popular. There might have been a big tree or the animals lived in a tree or something like that.

Another book was about a boy who crawled through a hole in a hedge and found himself in a land where he could talk to animals.

Both would have been read in the eighties or early nineties.

Thanks in advance!

I have one, but it might be from too long ago; I read it when I was at primary school, up to 1965. I remember the title as Snakes and Ladders, but it may have been slightly different. It was a novel about two children, brother and sister, who run away because they are going to be put into a children's home. They know they have a relative somewhere, so are heading for the town where this person lives (which I think was possibly Aylesbury, but that's also where Ivy goes in Rumer Godden's The Story of Holly and Ivy, so maybe I've muddled the two).

Internet searches just bring up the wrong books.

@Bloodybridget

I have one, but it might be from too long ago; I read it when I was at primary school, up to 1965. I remember the title as Snakes and Ladders, but it may have been slightly different. It was a novel about two children, brother and sister, who run away because they are going to be put into a children's home. They know they have a relative somewhere, so are heading for the town where this person lives (which I think was possibly Aylesbury, but that's also where Ivy goes in Rumer Godden's The Story of Holly and Ivy, so maybe I've muddled the two).

Internet searches just bring up the wrong books.

Sounds a bit like The Flight of the Doves by Walter Macken which is about a brother and sister who run away from their cruel stepfather in London and set off on a journey to find their granny in the West of Ireland. Just checked and it was first published in 1968 so probably not the one you're looking for.

@SittingOnAChair could yours have been the faraway tree by Enid Blyton?

@SittingOnAChair I know you said it’s not faraway tree but there is a whole series of them and it definitely sounds familiar .

@Bloodybridget I ‘m sure you’ve thought of this one, but this is pretty much what happens at the start of Noel Streatfeild’s The Circus is Coming.

Ah thanks @pollyhemlock, it definitely isn't that, though.

and thanks to @StrychnineInTheSandwiches too - not that book, but it's a good plot tool, isn't it?

@changeyourname11111

Could that be the Weirdstone of Brisingamen?

We were read that when I was little and that's about my memory of it too. I've recently reread it.

@pollyhemlock - I loved those Honor Arundel novels. Particularly the Emma series. This thread is brilliant - so many old favourites like Anastasia, Patricia Leitch and Antonia Forest. @x2boys - that sounds like the Ruth series by KM Peyton which starts with a pony book Fly by Night but then goes on to her meeting with Patrick Pennington - The Beethoven Medal. My sister ruined all my books when I went to Uni in the 1980s but I’ve been rebuying them over the years via Oxfam and eBay. Anyone remember the Elfrida Vipont books about Kit Haverard who becomes an opera singer and the wonderful Mantlemass series by Barbara Willard and of course Ramona the Pest!

@Fireweeds, thanks so much for replying yesterday, but I don’t think my book is ‘The Princess And The Goblin’.

@MargaretThursday I think you might be right - for some reason I always thought my remembered book isn’t ‘The Weirdstone of Brisingamen’, and is another book that I’ll never remember, but maybe you’re right which is quite exciting - I am also going to read it .

I am happy so many people have mentioned the Saturdays. I have never read the books but an extract from one of the books was used for a comprehension exercise in a text book used in English lessons in the 1970s and 1980s. I wish I could remember the name of the series as it had great little pieces from books and a lovely selection of poems. One of the poems was a teachers remembering a former student - a very famous poet but I can't recall the name. I'm sure the last line was 'I remember him well'.

Anyway, the extract from the Saturdays was where Mona takes the pooled money and gets a haircut and her nails polished bright red. When she gets home she has second thoughts and tries to cover up her nails.

I used to work very quickly in my lessons, so to keep myself from getting bored I would go through the stories and poems in the text book. The Saturdays extract was my favourite.

I have one. But it's for my mum and ive drawn a blank in online sleuthing!

It's an adult comedy book about two cancer patients who join forces to thwart the mob.

That's all she can remember and I'm drawing a blank everywhere. Apparently it's one of the only books to ever make her laugh out loud.

Any ideas??

Any chance it’s the Plague and I? That’s about TB but it’s hilarious.

@Fedupofmagic

I have one. But it's for my mum and ive drawn a blank in online sleuthing!

It's an adult comedy book about two cancer patients who join forces to thwart the mob.

That's all she can remember and I'm drawing a blank everywhere. Apparently it's one of the only books to ever make her laugh out loud.

Any ideas??

I don’t suppose it’s Beat the Reaper by Josh Lazell is it? Some similarities but not quite the same