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A sci-fi kids book, although might be teen as well, published sometime in the last decade. It's set in a normal small town in the US. Several kids decide to build a humanoid robot. They load up numerous different books on his system, to give him an understanding of science and whatnot. Unfortunately, no one bothers to put any sort of inhibitions in his system. The robot goes berserk, although I can't remember how far off the deep end he goes. I remember that the kids try to pass the robot off as an exchange or transfer student from Peoria, Illinois. At the end of the story, the Cool Old Guy, who is probably the grandfather or non-parent relative of one of the kids, electrocutes/incapacitates/destroys the robot with a device connected to a telephone. I think he gets wise to the robot's existence towards the end. I remember that he calls the school in Peoria but finds that the android never went to school there. I can't remember the name of this book, or even any of the names of the characters. Thanks!
openNo Title Literature
One of Aesop's fables - a pet bird refuses to sing because that's what got it captured, and its owner's dog tells it that's stupid since it's already been captured. What's this called? Other details I don't remember?
openNo Title Literature
It's a fantasy book for youngish children.
It starts with the protagonist living on an island but he gets swept away to adventure. The four elements are each ruled by a different king or queen (Air and fire were kings, water and earth were queens I think) who were all created by or children of Night and they're going to have a war, which causes the elements to meld and that's bad.
The protagonist meets a hermit philosopher type and his daughter, and one of the air kings soldures who made snowballs? Hailstones? in the back of a cloud for war but crashed it on his adventure, it ends when they meet Night who's spent years trying to figure out Truth but getting nowhere and convince her to tell her children to stop fighting.
Any ideas?
openNo Title Literature
I'm pretty sure that this is a Goosebumps book, It was about a girl who found this creature that gave her extremely bad luck, she couldn't get rid of it, and there was something about the letter J showing up on her arm or something odd like that. At the end, when she finally got rid of the creature, another one found her, but it was like a potato and it bit her thumb.
openNo Title Literature
This is a pretty popular kid's book, I think. It was about a mouse who was trying to hide a big strawberry from a... bear, maybe? He kept dressing it up and pretending to have dinner with it, and I remember he put some of those funny mustache-with-glasses things on it, and it was illustrated very nicely, warm colors. Another kids' book: Probably a little adaption of the Ants Go Marching song, it had a bunch of ants going to a picnic (At which there were no people for some reason) and then they ate all the food.
openNo Title Literature
A fantasy novel of some kind, and literally all I'm sure of is that the main character was a girl, and she started on her journey because she kept hearing a deep voice in her mind saying "Follow me to Alderloon". I'm not sure if I'm spelling that right - neither that nor any of the alternate spellings I've tried ("aldarloon", aldairloon", etc) have yielded anything relevant. I know that's not a lot to go on, but for whatever reason the "follow me to Alderloon" bit has just stuck in my mind for the longest time and I have to figure out what it's from.
openNo Title Literature
This was this youth series (I'm pretty sure was a Christian series, but I don't remember exactly) that opens with this girl (I thought it was Julie/Juliet/some variation thereof, but again, I'm no sure) getting a bunch of awards at her school because she's ubersmart. While she's on stage, a bunch of people start to insult her because she's getting all these awards until she drops on, and gains the name "Butterfingers".
After this, she and her family move, and the girl decides to try and hide her intelligence, pretending to be kind of... Dumb. Later, a group of people find out just in time for a tournemant or something, and I thing someone says something like "God gave you yoru smarts blah blah blah" (hence why I think it's a Christian series). There's also a missing necklace in a box, and a picture, and a mystery. There were more books after this, all mysteries.
Does this ring a bell with anyone?
openNo Title Literature
Fantasy young-adult novel series about an apprentice magician who is usually ignored by his mentor. In order to prove his worth, he summons a daemon without his permission, and through a strange series of events, manages to bind it (and be bound) into service for a series of wacky misadventures.
Edited by NamagemopenNo Title Literature
This may be me since I read the book in a dream, but I'm looking for this book. All I can remember is that it was about wealthy Chinese people in mid-to-lated 1910's San Francisco, and one of the earlier chapters took place at some sort of party that began in the late afternoon and there was a charity auction of some sort at the party. Can somebody give me the name of the book and the plot, please? And, no, it's not the fanfic, "Geishas of Winter", which has a party and auction.
openNo Title Literature
It was a Dr Seuss book. There was a big creature with multi-colored spots. He could put his spots on trees, and make them dance and turn red or blue, and all that jazz. He walked around with two kids, a boy and a girl. I think the title had something about a zoo.
openNo Title Literature
A book that was part of my required reading in English class either in middle school or early high school (New Brunswick, Canada.) It followed the story of a group of street children in russia. The parts that stick out the most is when one child visited Lenins coffin, and how they all wanted to go to the country because they had the idea the could just get food from fields with ease.
Edited by 142.166.52.66openNo Title Literature
Low Fantasy starring a woman who acts as a sort of spymaster for the king. The king has a whole system of them, who are always cloaked and masked in public. These 'spies' all have split personalities (only two) which have different skills and temperaments, usually without overlap. The spies use a silver mirror in order to switch personalities.
The plot involves the conflict between the main kingdom and these tundra dwellers who vaguely inuit-like. The king holds a race periodically, the winner of which can request a boon. This year is the first that the tundra land people are sending a runner, who is a shooin' to win. The tundra people are the only ones who refuse to be subjugated.
Anyway, our spy is in the middle of a mission to the tundra lands. After she lets her other personality out to party (and so the 'main' personality loses consciousness), she wakes up broken at the bottom of a tundra. She gets saved, eventually, by some tundra dwellers, the plot plays with the whole Going Native thing while our protagonist struggles vainly against the charms of oh-so-noble and righteous nature loving xenophobes she stays.
Its eventually revealed that the protagonist is a long lost daughter of these tundra people. What happens is the kingdom tortures child prodigies A.) so they'll never become brilliant and influential enough to be threat, and B.) so that their personalities will fracture and allowed to be molded into spies. The protagonist has a third personality, with the memories of her people AND the memories of her torture, repressed. Hooray.
Our protagonist makes it back home, does some espionage, figures the above out, and sides with her people. The runner for her people wins the race with the protagonist's help, and the runner does some voodoo on the king that doesn't do much except make him into a genuinely better person, and the runner declares her people will bow to the rule of the king, 'cause you can't fight progress even if you should (or something. Progress is definitely a bad thing in this book, but they accept it anyway. Probably because that's a stupid message.).
openNo Title Literature
I remember a book, probably young adult fiction, that was about a girl (probably about 18?) who's mom was a thief (and so was she). In the book I remember she falls in love with a cop. Her mom may or may not have gotten sick at the end or something? I don't quite remember. I can't remember the name of it for the life of me, I have a feeling it's a fairly recent novel?
openNo Title Literature
Im trying to find a comic version of Faust. Not sure if it was in Heavy Metal, but it was definitely in an anthology. It showed the story of Faust through the eyes of his servant who he promises to free to become a student at university while he is under sway of Mephistopheles whom he summons through the dark arts. But of course it isn't the already tainted soul of Faust, Meph is after, but that of his virgin and saintly male servant, who of course, loves his master. Meph offers to release Faust, for that of the servants soul. Great artwork, have no clue who wrote it or inked
Edited by 68.37.32.226openNo Title Literature
Anyone heard of a book involving a woman turned into a mosquito? She was the wife of a peasant, when she died she was taken to a shaman who took a drop of blood from the man and revived her. Eventually she ran out on him for a richer man but the husband asked for his blood as the shaman warned him of this. When she lost the drop she became a giant mosquito. She hunted for her husbands descendants for hundreds of years in order to get his blood and turn back, draining failed candidates completely. She's pursued by the shaman who had become a giant yemen dragonfly to kill her as a natural predator.
openNo Title Literature
A book about a child, possibly of the nickname Tiger, who is leaving a war zone, and brings a fish from home. We are never told the child's name, or even gender I think, but through miles of hiking up and down mountains and getting caught in mud and avoiding land-mines with Father, Mother, and the guide, the fish (which may or may not have consistent size) comes to a refugee camp, with Father, Mother, and (?) Tiger, first in a pot, then a bottle, then the child's mouth.
openNo Title Literature
Young adult novel - there's a kid who befriends a girl, and then meets a wealthy relative of hers - he's really impressed with the man and his lifestyle and starts to feel a bit ashamed of his own in comparison (in particular I remember the man listened to a lot of opera, and the boy reminisced about how the only times he ever heard any opera were when his family used to turn the radio to an opera station and would all start mocking it by doing dramatic poses and faux lip-syncing). It then turns out the man was either a hiding Nazi war criminal, or just a former Nazi. I also remember the man had a pet papillon, and it might have been in another book, but I remember the girl saying something about having another relative who she compared to Archie Bunker, and adding that sort of thing isn't as funny in real life.
openNo Title Literature
I'm trying to remember a science fiction novel. It takes place on another planet. There is an organism like a fungus or plant that grows in the desert that extends life. The only way to harvest it is to spill the blood of a woman who has just given birth on to the sand. There is conflict between the desert dwellers and the evil aristocrats (old men who actually kill their wives and daughters to harvest the life extending plant). The desert dwellers protect their woman by threatening to dig the plant up and expose it to the sun thus killing it. Most the story takes place from the view point of a woman who is the daughter of an aristocrat. She doesn't know the dark secret of the nobles and the deaths of pregnant woman are explained away. I'm pretty sure she gets married and has a child. She needs up running away at some point and learns the terrible secret of the nobles. I read this book five or six years ago. Please help!
Edited by jendraopenNo Title Literature
There's a woman who was/is a Nazi, she gets into an accident, and while she's recovering in the hospital, she experiences this mind meld thing with a Jewish lady where she lives through her memories and gradually learns to sympathize with her.
I can't remember the title of these books, so please help me out. The plot (as far as I can remember) goes something like this: Due to a shortage in food in the last few years, the government has made it illegal for families to have more than two children. The first(?) book revolves around an illegal third child, Luke. Due to the law, Luke has never left his house(minus going out to his backyard for a short while). If it helps, his two older bros are Matthew and Mark.
The first half of the book goes on to show how he lived his life I believe. The second half revolves around him meeting another illegal child, only this girl can actually leave home with the help of a fake ID. He learns that there are actually a bunch of other illegal children she associates with via internet chat room. It ends on all the kids of the chat room trying to lead a march on the law that forbids their existence, but they get killed. Luke decides to attend a boy's only school that could possibly help out the illegal children under an alias. I believe the alias sounded Asian.
I know there is a second book showing a girl(?) with the same problem, only she's near the place Luke went to.