books, twelve for a dollar!

[sab]

The queue on whatwasthatbook is maxed out, so y'all get first shot. Enclosed please find details on no fewer than two, but possibly as many as five different books! Tell me what they are!

The following details are probably about two different YA novels, that I read in my youth and conflated in my adulthood, which is why they've been impossible for me to find. Can you nice people help me untangle these details and find one or both of the missing books?

Book one:
About a girl (possibly named Jeremy, after her grandfather) who travels somewhere for summer vacation (possibly to Ohio, possibly during the polio outbreak) and meets a set of identical twins. The twins have a secret club and initiate her by hazing (she ends up reciting OH WAH TA GOO SIAM), but more importantly, they have fat white-wall tires on their bikes and our main girl only has an old ten-speed, but the (hot? mail carrier?) neighbor boy teaches her to love her bike. And she and the twins, something. ETA: This book has been found! It is I Would if I Could by Betty Miles.

Book two:
About a girl (possibly named Jeremy, after her grandfather) who travels somewhere for summer vacation (possibly to Ohio, possibly during the polio outbreak) and meets a set of identical twins. One of the twins has kidney failure, and is hooked to a dialysis machine several times a week. They play lots of hide and seek in the twins' house, which has a dumbwaiter. FINALLY! This book has been found, has been out of print since '86, and is Making Half Whole by Terry Wolfe Phelan. Huge, huge thanks to hadaverde for helping me end a decade-long search...

Two different books? The same book?

THEN, in unrelated news, I'm looking for other books, not about twins but rather about a fat girl and a thin girl. These seem more well known, the title's probably on the TIP of my BRAIN, it's someone normal like Judy Blume or Lois Lowry.

Book three:
About a skinny girl who moves to NYC (we never learn her name) and meets a fat girl whose name is probably the title of the book. And their landlord/building manager is a friend of theirs who mops his floors by tying dishtowels to his shoes. And there's some halloween debauchery, iirc? ETA: Found! A Girl Called Al by Constance Greene, thank you everso, pearl_o!

(Book four?):
Unless that's a different book where a girl moves to the suburbs and meets a fat friend, and has an annoying brother, and the fat friend gets skinny at the end and moves away? And there's halloween debauchery. Yes, those are two different books, dammit, again. I'll take the title of either or both!

Book five:
All I remember about this one is that the neighbor had cats, lots of cats, including one called tiny orange kitten that got SQUISHED when someone sat on it. Again, probably about two girls who are friends, probably one of 'em's fat. (That seemed to be a theme at the time!) And I believe also a younger brother, possibly the culprit responsible for squishing Tiny Orange Kitten. ETA! FOUND! Thank you, virulain, this is It's Like This, Cat by Emily Neville!

ALL of these are circa the sort that might be read by a 8-12 yo girl in the early 1980s.

Details that could belong to any of the above books:
- the girls have a sleepover and do slambooks where they each write secret truths about each other, the main girl learns she's "boy crazy." (prob. one of the books w/the twins?) ETA: this detail belongs to Judy Blume's Otherwise Known as Sheila the Great! Which may or may not be one of the same twin books as above?
- the fat girl and the thin girl decide to make matching dresses, the thin girl comments her mom won't let her wear vertical stripes, the fat girl says her mom won't let her wear horizontal stripes, they settle on, like, fabric with tiny horses on it or something. Also, weejun loafers feature prominently. (prob. one of the books with a fat girl and a thin girl) ETA: This detail belongs to Beverly Cleary's Ellen Tebbits, and not any of the other (still vague) books mentioned herein! Thanks, sophia_helix!

I love you ALL.

Comments

[likethesun2.livejournal.com]

I have no idea on any of these, because I fail spectacularly at YA, but oh my god, all your variations and qualifications are CRACKING ME UP.

[sophia-helix.livejournal.com]

Your very last detail is from Beverly Cleary's Ellen Tebbits, and they get fabric with monkeys and palm trees on it. But none of your other descriptions are that book. :)

I also think the "Mash Notebooks" thing is from a totally different book than any of the others you've mentioned, but damned if I can recall... maybe a Judy Blume book?

[iamsab.livejournal.com]

That IS Ellen Tebbits! Is that the same one with the weejun loafers? I totally remember the monkey fabric.

And the slam books (I remembered what they were called!) might well be from something else entirely? But...weren't there twins? A main girl and some twins? How many twins books can there be? (Clearly as many as fat girl/thin girl books.)

SQUEE, thank you!

[sophia-helix.livejournal.com]

No weejun loafers in Ellen that I recall...but oh, MAN, the twin thing is totally coming back...

Let's see. It's a group of friends, right? And two of them are twins, yes, and they're doing the mash notebook things -- and one of the twins writes something mean about the other. Damn! I just remember everyone being very upset at the end of the party. And one of the twins might be fat and the other not, yet, and I think the fat one cries.

[iamsab.livejournal.com]

YES, ALL of that is true, and mom comes in at one point for snacks! And the main girl thinks they're going to call her "bossy" and is completely surprised to learn she's "boy crazy."

What is it, what what??

OH and I think her BROTHER barges in at one point, or they run into him in the bathroom? It's a slumber party. Main girl, two twins, and some more people too!

[sophia-helix.livejournal.com]

It IS a Judy Blume book -- Otherwise Known as Sheila the Great.

Thank fuck for Google.

[iamsab.livejournal.com]

YES! YES. Now, do any of my OTHER details belong to that book? Like the DIALYSIS maybe??? *desperate*

[sophia-helix.livejournal.com]

Dialysis is coming back to me, vaguely, but I think it might have been a Babysitter's Club book. And your thing about the dumbwaiter makes me think of Harriet the Spy, because I know she sneaks into one in the beginning of the book.

[iamsab.livejournal.com]

No, this isn't Babysitter's Club and not Harriet the Spy either, this is, I believe the one where her name is Jeremy, and we learn a lot about dialysis and kidney failure because the poor kidney twin can't drink anything, ever, or pee. And THEY play hide and seek in the dumbwaiter, I think, and I think the requisite fat friend gets STUCK in the dumbwaiter.

I don't think it's the same as any of the other books here. But then, what do I know?

[wanderingfrog.livejournal.com]

Ooh, ooh, I think I know the "dumbwaiter" detail! Except it's not a dumbwaiter, exactly. You know how someone said that the slam book scene is from Otherwise Known as Sheila the Great by Judy Blume? Well, so is this scene. This is where the girls are going to play hide and seek at Mouse's house, only Mouse's mother isn't home and Mouse doesn't have a key, so they sneak in through this little door that's supposed to be for the milkman to leave the milk. Or something like that. Obviously it's pretty small, and the fat girl (Sonia? Sonya?) gets stuck. The really silly part is that other people had already gone through ahead of her and could have just unlocked the regular door from the inside, but didn't.

This isn't the book with Jeremy and the dialysis, though, and I also agree with you that there aren't any BSC books where there's a friend with kidney failure.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_swallow/]

> And their landlord/building manager is a friend of theirs who mops his floors by tying dishtowels to his shoes.

Whoa, I remember that! They have tea parties for one another and their mothers compete by sending party invitations on very fancy stationary, right? I feel certain I read it at my grandmother's house, which means my mother owned it when growing up, which means it was probably published in the fifties or sixties....

[http://users.livejournal.com/_swallow/]

(That is where I learned the term "one-up-manship".)

[iamsab.livejournal.com]

THAT is the one, with the fancy stationery. It struck me as a 60s type, yeah. And they eat bread and butter and sugar at the building manager's apartment. And skate on the floor on dishtowels.

[pearl-o.livejournal.com]

Okay, I have no idea if this is right, but could three be A Girl Called Al (http://www.amazon.com/Girl-Called-Al-Constance-Greene/dp/0140347860)? Because it sounds way vaguely familiar to me, and I remember the name Constance being involved as either character or author, and this seems to be it.

[iamsab.livejournal.com]

OMG YES! AL is her friend, and we never get her name! EXCELLENT googling, young lady, and, yes, Constance Greene!

You are so good at this game!

[illiterate.livejournal.com]

Is is possible that book 4 is Walk Two Moons or was that written too late to fit into your timeline?

[iamsab.livejournal.com]

No, definitely not that one, no Native Americanness at all. Thanks though!

[castalianspring.livejournal.com]

I remember one about a fat girl moving to the suburbs and having a hard time making friends, but I think she had an annoying sister instead, and a really rotten home life. Nothing's Fair in Fifth Grade (http://www.amazon.com/Nothings-Fifth-Grade-Barthe-DeClements/dp/0140344438/sr=1-1/qid=1161257127/ref=sr_1_1/104-9074319-9525528?ie=UTF8&s=books) by Barthe DeClements.

Oh, Ellen Tebbits! I haven't read that in ages. I loved that book as a kid.

[iamsab.livejournal.com]

GOD, I read that one! It is not one of the fat/thin books I was looking for here, but that was a great book when I was a kid. I remember she thought "tummy" was the most vulgar word in the English language except maybe "nostril."

[moireach.livejournal.com]

I am very distraught that I can't help with ANY of these. I thought if I knew anything it was YA books of the '80s! Clearly I need to repeat elementary school.

[qowf.livejournal.com]

It was monkeys. In Ellen Tebbits. Monkeys with little palm trees and the girls had a big fight over it because the fat girl's mother couldn't sew and Ellen's could. Ellen's bow was better and the other girl kept untying it. Then Ellen tried to untie hers and basicallly ripped her skirt off.

And the friendship all started over bunched up long underwear under ballet clothes.

Sort of like us. :)

[(Anonymous)]

is the book about the thin girl and the fat girl Jacob Have I Loved?

[iamsab.livejournal.com]

Unfortunately it is not. Though that's a good book! Probably a better book than the one with the halloween debauchery, actually

[virulain.livejournal.com]

Actually, I know I've read #5... I think it may be one of those cat story anthologies. o___o And I think the main character was a guy.

[iamsab.livejournal.com]

OMG, it WAS a guy in the story, and he befriended the woman with the cats? It was, it was, he was...nerdy or shy or something but he thought the cats were lame at the beginning? And Tiny Orange Kitten got squished during some sort of...dinner party? Wake? Funeral?

[virulain.livejournal.com]

He did. I don't know if it was nerdiness, shyness, or if the kid was just a total punk--I think there was also ANOTHER story in that edition with a kid who adopted a cat and lived/worked in a convenience store and dreamed of the Scarlet Pimp. But back to this story, I'm pretty sure the kitten was squashed by a reporter?

[iamsab.livejournal.com]

Yes! It was totally a reporter? Because the woman died, maybe? Or her...brother died?

Look how it's It's Like This, Cat. It is ALL coming back to me now! Thank you, I would never have found this without you, never.

[virulain.livejournal.com]

I swear I read that in an anthology... Perhaps in a short-story pre novel version?

ANYWAY, IT'S FOUND AND THAT'S COO.

[iamsab.livejournal.com]

Apparently this book has chapters in other POVs? It's possible it presented itself...anthologically? I did a "search inside" on Amazon and found Tiny Orange Kitten!

GO US, anyway. Woo!

And kisses to Jon/Stephen OTP GFEO OMGWTFBBQ!

[virulain.livejournal.com]

FOR REALS. SCREENCAPS FOR THE WIN. My only OTP.

[deliciouspear.livejournal.com]

*grin*

*pats your icon*

[deliciouspear.livejournal.com]

Book Four sounds like "Nothing's Fair In 5th Grade" by Berthe de Clements (I might have spelled her last name wrong)

[tiropitakia.livejournal.com]

I'm too slow!

[tiropitakia.livejournal.com]

The fat girl book is "Nothing's Fair in Fifth Grade" by Barthe DeClements.

[gg-83.livejournal.com]

Might one of the fat and thin girls books been Blubber, by Judy Blume?

[wanderingfrog.livejournal.com]

There is totally Halloween debauchery in Blubber.