To ask you help me find this 80’s kids’s book

[Eeksteek]

I have very poor recollection of it, but it bugs the hell out of me!

Boy and a girl. Herefordshire or Welsh borders. Go out looking for mushrooms in the early morning and find patterns on the frost leading to….. something supernatural. In order to prevent discovery by persons un-remembered (presumably evil) they go out with hot towels and melt the frost to hide the pattern. The girl may have been called Jane, and there may have been dragons, but honestly any of it could be suspect after all this time, so hit me with anything close. I probably read it late eighties, so it’s likely a late seventies/early eighties release, as I only read library books.

Why it made such an impression when I remember so little if it, I don’t know. It pops into my head every couple of months, despite the fact that I can’t remember where I put my bank card on the regular! (It’s driving me crackers in a repetitive, low key sort of way, and I’m overwhelmed and having a shit time in real life, so escaping onto kids books is about as good as it gets just now!).

Amazing!!! Thank you 🙏🏼

That's not of the 'My naughty little sister' books, is it? Shirley Hughes did the illustrations for those.

Anyone else remember a book of short scary stories called "We're coming for you Jonathon"? There were a couple of real chillers... a sofa that ate people when they lay down on it in an empty room, and a man who bio-engineered a carnivorous fungus into a house and fed his guests to it!

Bleurgh, even reading that makes me feel sick!

It was by Penelope Lively I think

I think that was one of the A.Mazing monster books - was it Webfoot?

@EilonwyWithRedGoldHair yours sounds so familiar! Could it be a short story by Philip K. Dick?

Mind if I throw one in?
not sure when this was written, but I read it late eighties.
I can only remember little snippets. I think the characters were animals.
There was a scene where weasels (because weasels were always up to no good!) were caught sticking faggots (old wood bundles) to the outside of someone’s house aiming to set fire to it.
there was also another scene where the main character was told off for trampling through someone else’s prized begonia garden, and the character says something like “begonias? I thought they were weeds!”

I don’t really have more than that!

Pretty sure not, I read a huge amount of PKD in my late 20s and didn't come across it

For a long time I thought it was a Louise Lawrence short story.

@WildImaginings

I think yours could be the House of Coloured Windows by Margaret Mahy (a prolific NZ childrens author). It’s part of a collection of her short stories, The Door In The Air.

My terrible summary is that it was about a girl who was slightly dissatisfied with her very normal life and somehow gets invited into a magician’s house at the end of her street. It’s full of little doors with coloured windows - one that is bright pink like candy floss leads to a circus world - and the magician says she can choose one of the worlds to go live in. After looking through all the many windows and not finding any quite right, she asks the magician whether there are any more windows. He says there is just one left and shows her a crystal clear window, which she then chooses and as the magician watches her go off into that world he says “how odd, she’s chosen the one she just came from “.

I’ve got one for you all. Children’s novel, set in England. A boy lives in a house/flat, I think he might have had to move in with a relative? The neighbouring house has barbed wire at the top of the fence, he becomes secret friends with the boy who lives there. It turns out that he is the son of an African king who has been kidnapped by his uncle as part of a plot to take the throne. They run away together and there’s also a little girl with them, who I think comes from an abusive home, but I can’t remember how she gets involved.

At the end they hide in a cave at the beach and nearly get trapped and drowned by the tide but they manage to crawl out a hole at the top.

I think this is 'On the Run' by Nina Bawden.

Yes to 'My sister sif', I borrowed it repeatedly from the library.
Also 'Playing Beatie Bow', anyone remember that?
And, 'The boy who reversed himself '.

All have stayed with me. Ty for this thread!

Definitely remember 'Playing Beatie Bow'; a really good book. Haven't come across 'The Boy Who Reversed Himself'- who is the author?

@ddl1 yes! Thank you

I have a couple of books that I would like to identify too (well, one's a series).

1. A children's book, I think it was an anthology of ghost stories, the one that sticks in my head was set on halloween I think and had several children possibly at a party. There's a room that no one wants to go into for some reason, then the kids start to go missing one by one. Finally the last child goes in and all of the other kids are there playing a game, plus an extra girl who seems to be the one luring everyone in and is possibly a ghost?

2. This was a series of books, they were collections of short supernatural/horror stories. Not aimed at children but my library put them right next to the children's section . Might have been originally published in magazines? Probably hardback.
   
   One story was horrible, about some sort of ancient Egyptian curse and someone with a broken leg dying in agony because his cast was unknowingly infested with scarabs that were eating his leg Others in a similar vein. Really shouldn't have read them, they gave me nightmares!

Wow I'm sorry about the formatting of that post, no idea what happened.

Happy Friday to me!

@moggerhanger - that’s the copy I had. For some reason the ghost stuff hasn’t stayed with me, but I think I remember one chapter heading - “Seagulls Inland”.

@Matildatoldsuchdreadfullies yes, that's one of the chapters! I have just read the whole thing (in bed with Covid) - very satisfying, though I had to look up what a butty collier was.

@ScrambledSmegs first one could possibly be from Haunted Houses by Aidan Chambers (or More Haunted Houses). Right period for a collection of ghost stories, but a long time since I read them.

@Pashazade thank you, I will take a look at that one.

@ScrambledSmegs I remember the Egyptian curse story. Not sure if it was the same book/ series but there was a story about someone being painted into a corner. And a girl that had nightmares about the plague that turned out to be real.

May or may not be the same book, but I remember one compilation called haunted children. I was cheerfully reading adult horror at primary age and picked it up assuming it was adult, and was really surprised when I discovered it was from the children’s section of the library.

Oh this sounds familiar! I'll have a quick Google, thank you.

Sounds like we had the same childhood reading experience as well. A bit worrying in retrospect!

Please update if you find it, I’ve never been left scared from ghost or horror stories but aside from a few adult books it’s one of the few that left me thinking after iyswim and I’d love to read it again.