Always considering requests and suggestions: mondomolly@gmail.com
50 years of lost Young Adult classics, updated with a new title every Sunday! (Or occasionally: Tuesday. Or Thursday! Or the following Monday!)
Occasional Features: Magazine Madness and/or Mania: Vintage Teen magazines and related ephemera and Movie Madness and/or Mania: Lost Teenpic Classics.
Imaginary Summer Book Club Featuring Lost Classics of Women’s Literature: four titles featured irregularly from July through October.
Find Lost Classics of Teen Lit on…
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Twitter: @MondoMolly
Lost Classics of Teen Lit: 1939-1989 
Hi there! I am looking for a title of a book I read in the 4th grade. The book was something I found in my grandmother’s closet. It was an old book at the time about a teenage girl sleuth who was trying to solve a mystery related to a cat’s shadow that appeared in two halves. Sound familiar? I would like to know who the author was and if there are other books. Thanks for your help!
Hi Amy! Thanks for writing- unfortunately the description doesn’t ring any bells for me, but it sounds like a really interesting book. Two places where you could ask about it are on the Shelf Discovery Facebook page, where they occasionally run a feature called “Plot Finder” to answer questions just like this- they are usually very successful!
https://www.facebook.com/shelfdiscovery
You could also visit the Series Books for Girls website, which has lots of photos of covers that might be helpful, and perhaps pose this question on the blog there- she specializes in girls mystery series:
http://www.series-books.com/
Good luck! I’d love to hear if you are able to find out what book it is, I know what is like to vaguely remember one and then go crazy trying to figure out what it was 🙂
Amy, I know it was a long time coming, but if you haven’t found it yet, I think this might be the book you were looking for:
Just wanted to say how much I enjoy this site! I look forward every week to seeing what book it’s going to be, and I am rather pathetically thrilled when it’s one I remember reading lol. Thanks for taking the time to do this. 🙂
Thanks for reading and taking the time to comment, Jen! If you ever have any suggestions for titles drop me a comment or an e-mail at the address above- I love discovering books that I missed the first time around 🙂
Where can I find earlier posts? I would love to read your thoughts on the well of loneliness. Thank you!
Unfortunately, reading The Well of Loneliness predates this blog, so I don’t have a formal review of it. (Although it does get a brief mention in the review of Spring Fire: https://mondomolly.wordpress.com/2013/06/18/spring-fire-by-vin-packer/)
Thanks for your comment!
Hi! I am a student taking a class on children’s literature and I was just wondering if you were a past teacher or librarian or just a book lover! I love your blog by the way 🙂
Hi Jessica! I actually do work with middle-school students, but my background is in Media Studies (film & TV), and I’ve always been interested in mid-20th century pop culture, so both of those aspects got parlayed into this blog as well as just being a book lover!
Thanks for for reading! 🙂
Just stumbled across this site and can already tell I’ll be spending hours here, and lots of $ on new “old” books to read. I’ve been hooked on this genre since my mom shared with me her collection of books from her youth back before I was I teen myself, and it looks like you touch on all my favorites. From Trixie Belden to Beverly Cleary, Maureen Daly and Rosamond du Jardin, I grew up with them, loved and laughed and cried right along with them. I’ve re-read them all so many times I’ve had to start downloading them on my kindle to preserve the books my mom gave me, some of which are original hardcover. I’ve just started browsing your blog, and I look forward to reading some unfamiliar titles and rediscovering some that I’ve read but long forgotten. I was never much into Nancy Drew, but loved a series about a teenage sleuth with an identical cousin. Can’t for the life of me remember the names or the author. If you know of them, I’d appreciate the info. Anyway, so glad I found your site, and a kindred spirit!
Hi Michelle, thanks for you comments! So happy to hear you’re enjoying it!
Could the book you’re thinking of be Patty Duke and the Mystery Mansion? I have not read it, but it looks like it was a tie-in to the TV series, in which Duke played “identical cousins”:
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/5930563-patty-duke-and-mystery-mansion
Hi! LOVE this site!
I had a book I treasured when I was about 10 years old. All I could remember was that the cover was pale blue and the girl in the story lived in Carmel, CA. A couple of months ago, I went to an estate sale and found it! Unbelievable! It’s called “Milestone Summer” by Nicolete Meredith.
(It’s not as good as I remembered, but I’m not 10 anymore, either).
Thanks for commenting! It is always great to be reunited with a childhood fave, even when they don’t quite live up to the memory 🙂
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I’m trying to find the title/author of a story that we studied in my 10th/11th grade English Literature class (1975-1977). There must have been a protagonist youth character..but the character that stands out was a soccer player with the nickname “Le Boucher”..the butcher..that the crowd would shout as a rallying cry. I know that isn’t much to go on.
Added to the Name That Book! page
Thank You!
Hey, I just discovered and am loving this blog, definitely brought back some memories of the books I read in the 80s! I was wondering if you’d ever come across a book called something like “The Boy Who Would Not Come Clean.” I read it in my downtime in the classroom we used as a dressing room during high school theater and it was definitely an oldie in the early 90s. The plot was that some popular kids harassed and threw mud at an outcast girl who was kind of a witch (?) and she cursed the main character to never be able to clean anything off himself. So like he got jelly on his hand while eating toast and it wouldn’t wash off no matter what. As the days go by, he becomes more and more filthy and disgusting. As a person who takes hygiene seriously, this DEEPLY disturbed me as a teen and I have never been able to find it. Anyway, thanks for sharing all these books with us, look forward to looking for some at our town’s used bookstore next time I go! Cheers
Thanks for commenting! I have added your description to the Name That Book! page to see if anyone recognizes your description!
Im trying to find a book i read in middle school. This wouldve been around 2011-2012. I think the title had something about clouds in it. I remember it was about a you g girl in a beach town during summer, i think her mom falls in love with a tulip man? I think there is also a scene where the girl goes to church. I don’t know how much of what im remembering is real but this book is haunting me. I can see the cover in my mind but no idea what the title is!! I loved the feeling this book gave me. Please help!!!
Hi, I’ve been trying to find a series I read in grade school in the mid to late 80s. There were at least three books featuring the same character, possibly more. The volumes were pretty slim if I remember. They starred an Indiana Jones tomb raiding type of fellow. I only remember one cover painting which had a realistic skeleton sitting upon a throne with a tattered red tunic, and possibly an off kilter crown upon its head. The only plot detail I can recall featured that same skeleton – the title character peering through a loose brick or keyhole into the tomb and spying the bony one the throne. There’s a slim possibility the book had a second cover on top of the one I described of the outside of the tomb with a cutout in which you could partially see the skeleton. The gimmicky type of thing publishers were so fond of in the 80s – but I may have imagined that based upon the one plot detail I could remember. And that’s all I’ve got. I’ve been trying to find this series again for 30+ years. I doubt it’s very good, I just wish to see the cover paintings again, and see if there were any more volumes past the 3-4 I read at the time. Searching for a single 80s paperbacks with a skeleton on the cover however is a lost cause, they were so ubiquitous!
Help me find this book
I read it in middle or early highschool so mid to late 90s. I probably borrowed it from the school or town library.
It was about a girl, teen???, who was home alone when a group of teens or young adults broke in her house. She was thrown in the basement, hurt bad. They messed up the house and I know one of the guys ur!n@ted in a (her?) room.
They got away and she was found and spent some time in the hospital; she had some amnesia which made it harder for authorities to catch the people who broke in.
One of the guys that was in the group felt bad about what they did and was keeping tabs on her. I don’t remember how but he ended up meeting her and since she didn’t remember him they became close.
She eventually remembered or somehow found out he was part of it but I don’t remember what happened after that.
I’m a huge dark romance reader and I do remember hoping the guy would get redemption so I would love to find this and read it again.