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Diary of Nellie Custis
"I'm looking for a historical fiction book that's supposed to be a diary by Nellie Custis."
Solution: Nelly Custis' Diary, by Miriam Anne Bourne, illus by Heidi Palmer. Coward, McCann and Geoghegan, c1974.
Small Dog in Woods Leads Lucy to a Magical Place
"A little girl lives with her aunt. One day she decides to go exploring in the woods. A small dog appears and she is off to a place with dragons, fairies, ogres, kings, queens, etc. I remember that the girl's name was Lucy."
Solution: Shadow Castle, by Marian Cockrell, illustrated by Olive Bailey. Whittlesey House, 1945. Reprinted later by Scholastic Books. Backinprint Books has just issued a "new, expanded author's edition with material never published before." You can see information about it if you go to Amazon.
Scary Summer Camp
"A girl goes to summer camp and, if I am remembering correctly, it is the same summer camp to which her mother went. I think something really scary happens during the course of the summer. I want to say that the title was Allegro, Allegra, Sing Allegro, something like that."
Solution: Allegro Born, Allegro Dead, by Barbara Corcoran. Atheneum, 1981. Later reissued as You're Allegro Dead.
A Little Yellow Monkey in a Banyan Tree
"We have a patron who remembers reading a poem to her daughter (as a toddler a long time ago) that read something like this: 'A little yellow monkey in a banyan tree / Once got the giggles, going "tee, hee, hee..."' It may have been in a small book of poems."
Solution: The poem "The Banyan Tree" is in Rimskittle's Book, by Leroy F. Jackson, illustrated by Ruth Caroline Eger. Rand McNally, 1926. It begins:
"A Little Yellow Monkey
In a Banyan Tree
One morning got the giggles,
Going tee-hee-hee."
Aunt Book wishes to thank Orrin Schwab of Orrin Schwab books, who was kind enough to check a copy of the book that he has for sale to confirm that this was the correct poem.
Tourist Trips to Another Land and Time
"I am looking for a book, maybe a series, that has the following storyline. There is a family that lives in a magical house, full of magical animals. The father of the family has a job to arrange tourist visits to this fantasy land. Groups of tourists come from another land/time and dress up in clothes of the period. The people in the land they visit are all actors who put on fake battles and other exciting stuff for tourists to watch. There are lots of problems because sometimes tourists get hurt in fake battles. Sometimes in the story some evil group tries to ruin the fake battles so they turn real. The main character ends up going to some other land/time to resolve the problem. I just remember that all the actors are tired of acting for the tourists and problems get worse as the story progresses. The main character spends all his time trying to deal with all these problems the tourists cause. The book or series is at least 7-8 years old."
Solution: The Dark Lord of Derkholm, by Diana Wynne Jones. Greenwillow, 1998. ISBN: 0688160042. (Has been reprinted as a paperback by HarperCollins, 2001. ISBN: 0064473368. There is a sequel called Year of the Griffin).