Quick Picks
From the AADL Youth Collection

IT HAPPENS IN THE LIBRARY!
Favorite Fictional Forays

Compiled by the Youth Services Librarians of the Ann Arbor District Library,
April, 1997

Avi. Who Stole the Wizard of Oz? 1981.

Twins Becky and Toby follow the clues provided by classic children's books to find a rare copy of The Wizard of Oz which has been stolen from the Checkertown library.
J Mystery

Beatty, Patricia. Eight Mules from Monterey. 1982.

A widow and her children haul books by muleback to start a library in nineteenth century California.
Y Fiction

Bellairs, John. The Treasure of Alpheus Winterborn. 1978.

Student Anthony Monday and librarian Miss Eels pursue the lost treasure of the late Alpheus Winterborn, but they have a rival in Winterborn's wicked nephew Hugo Philpotts.
J Fiction

Cleary, Beverly. Emily's Runaway Imagination. 1961.

Emily's ideas usually have unexpected results, but her plan to start a library in Pitchfork, Oregon just may work!
J Fiction

Clifford, Eth. Help! I'm a Prisoner in the Library. 1971.

Two girls spend a scary, stormy night locked in the public library.
J Fiction

Eager, Edward. Seven-Day Magic. 1962.

Four children check out a library book which proves to be magic, and find themselves involved in all sorts of exciting situations.
J Fiction

Enright, Elizabeth. Thimble Summer. 1938.

Beginning with the discovery of a silver thimble in the riverbed, Garnet's summer is filled with adventures, including a "locked in the library" episode.
J Fiction

Estes, Eleanor. Rufus M. 1943.

Five-year-old Rufus is determined to get his own library card, even if he has to learn to write his name to do it.
J Fiction

Friermood, Elisabeth Hamilton. Doc Dudley's Daughter. 1965.

After her 1898 high school graduation, Em Dudley begins work in her town's new library and worries about her brother Ashton, fighting in the Spanish- American war.
Y Fiction

Giff, Patricia Reilly. Pickle Puss. 1986.

Emily Arrow badly wants to win the library reading contest, even if she has to do it dishonestly.
J Paperback

Greenwald, Sheila. Mariah Delaney and the Lending Library Disaster. 1977.

Mariah's plan to start a library with her parents' books has very funny (but disastrous) results.
J Fiction

Haynes, Mary. Wordchanger. 1983.

A visit to the local library proves that William's suspicions are correct: his evil stepfather has invented a machine that could change the world for the worse.
Y Fiction

Hildick, E. W. The Case of the Secret Scribbler. 1978.

A scrap of paper in a library book provides the McGurk detectives with a clue to a crime that has not yet been committed.
J Mystery

Lindbergh, Anne. Travel Far, Pay No Fare. 1992.

Owen and his cousin Parsley use a magic bookmark (from the Vermont Summer Reading Game at the library) to enter books, where they look for a way to prevent the marriage of their parents.
J Fiction

Levy, Elizabeth. Something Queer at the Library. 1977.

Someone has been cutting pictures out of library books, and a dogshow may reveal the culprit.
J Mystery

Mahy, Margaret. The Great Piratical Rumbustification, & The Librarian and the Robbers. 1978.

After kidnapping the beautiful librarian Serena Laburnum, a band of wicked robbers is exposed to measles and introduced to the joys of literature.
J Fiction

McCloskey, Robert. Centerburg Tales. 1951.

After a mysterious stranger puts a record in the Centerburg lunchroom jukebox, nobody in town can stop singing the song, but Homer Price knows the solution to the dilemma is somewhere in a library book.
J Fiction

Nesbit, E. The Town in the Library. 1988.

After being told not to touch anything in their father's library, Rosamund and Fabian build a town out of books and are astonished when it becomes real.
J Fiction

Service, Pamela. Weirdos of the Universe, Unite. 1992.

A school project about mythology turns very strange when the library's online catalog produces actual mythological beings, rather than just book citations.
J Science Fiction

Snyder, Zilpha Keatley. The Velvet Room. 1965.

Robin finds a marvelous refuge in the library of an old deserted house near the farm where her father has been hired as a seasonal worker in the years after the Depression.
J Fiction

Taylor, Sidney. All-of-a-Kind Family. 1951.

Five sisters in New York City at the beginning of the twentieth century must make a terrible confession to their librarian: one of them has lost a library book.
J Fiction

Arrangement and original material copyright © 1997 the Ann Arbor District Library. This list may be copied and distributed without requesting permission, so long as this notice remains attached and appropriate credit to the compilers is given.