Julie Builds Her Castle by Hila Colman (1959)

Why in the world, thought Julie Hartman disconsolately, do we have to travel all the way across the United States to Cape Cod because Dad wants to paint the ocean? California would have been much nearer and just as good.

Julie began her summer on the Cape by building a dream castle and ended it by making plans for a real one. Although Julie, at sixteen, resented her artist father's nonconformity, she actually owed to it many of the summer's happiest moments. For as his daughter she found it completely natural to go out with the young son of a Portuguese fisherman. Peter was a boy you could rely upon, but his older brother Joe was a problem. And when Joe got into trouble, it was Julie's father who straightened him out. During this crisis Mr. Hartman told Julie his creed. "I believe in not going along with the mob for the sake of joining in; I believe in thinking things out and having your own integrity." But Julie had already begun to think out her own program for the future. (from the inside flap)

Skates for Marty by Barbara Clayton (1959)

Sports had little appeal for Martha Ann Fuller.  Although her beautiful mother had been an excellent ice-skater in her teens, Marty--plump, awkward, and self-conscious--never had any inclination to follow in her mother's footsteps. When Mrs. Fuller's job takes her to California, Marty is thrust into a new world. Moving to her grandmother's old stucco house in Ringport, Massachusetts, demands serious adjustments. Well-meaning grandmother is convinced that Marty can be transformed from a lonely, withdrawn girl into a social butterfly. And one way to accomplish this is for Marty to become a champion figure-skater!

Poor Marty resists in vain. The figure staking lessons she takes with Josef, a famous professional at the nearby Skating Club, are drudgery, and for a long time the rink is unbearable to Marty.

Besides, she has other pressing problems to solve. At the private girls' school she had attended, she never had to think about how to act with boys and they are a real puzzle to her. Now that she has had to transfer to Ringport High, she is really on unfamiliar "ice." Because she is so shy, her first real date is almost a catastrophe. The girls, too, are different, and Marty's unintentional blunders create friction with the prettiest and most popular girl in school, Taffy Wilson.

Yet, when Mrs. Fuller visits Ringport at Thanksgiving, she is impressed and pleased at the change in her daughter. With a glow in her cheeks and several pounds slimmed off from exercise, Marty appears more attractive and outgoing. Too, she is winning some friends, one of whom, a United States champion, kindles some enthusiasm in Marty for skating. But it is not until the Skating Club is host for the National Championships that Marty sees the fascination of figure-skating. She is captivated by the experts who have come from different parts of the country, and she begins in earnest to try to overcome her shyness and to develop as a skater.

Surprisingly, she has competition from her school antagonist, Taffy, who decides to begin skating again. Can Marty handle Taffy and resolve her conflict between school and skating? Why is she suddenly so anxious to sin the coveted figure skating scholarship offered by the Club? And will she be successful? The answers to these questions lie in the suspenseful climax of a story that sparkles with the flash of skate blades, the glitter of the ice rink, and the brave determination of its young heroine. (from the inside flap)

The Scarlet Sail by Betty Cavanna (1959)

Andrea Pierce, spending her summer vacation on Cape Cod, is given a scarlet-sailed Turnabout. But she doesn't know how to manage a sail boat and, being uncertain of herself, she thinks she will never be able to learn. Then Mike, the boy who is to give her lessons, further dampens her spirits by saying that the red sail which she found so cute is actually a safety precaution.

This is just the beginning of Andrea's conflict with Mike and with herself. But soon, through new-found determination, she takes second place in the boat race and wins the admiration of the people she loves ... (from the back cover)

Mystery in Marrakech by Betty Cavanna (1968)

The nine-hundred-year-old city of Marrakech appeared to Dizzy Driscoll very much as she had imagined it.  Medieval ramparts and ten great gates. Mosques with green-tiled domes and the wail of the muezzins calling the faithful. Even though she was visiting her roommate's family, Dizzy found her strange surroundings made her feel somewhat apprehensive.

Still she was unprepared when her vague fears were fulfilled, and her friend Felicia was spirited away from the city. Together with Rick, Felicia's brother, Dizzy set out on an anxious trip across the rugged Atlas Mountains to find help. Their journey led them finally to the ancient Casbah of Telouet, a cluster of ghostly spires reaching into the sky that seemed to emanate evil like a witch's castle in a fairy tale. What would they find concealed in its deserted 600 rooms?

Betty Cavanna, who has taken two extensive trips to Morocco, is a favorite author of young people's books. An exciting mystery plot against the striking Moroccan background makes this colorful adventure one of her most appealing stories. (from the inside flap)

Second Best by Barbara Clayton (1963)

Lucy Ritchard felt that she was always second best.  Her older sister Meg excelled scholastically and socially, her younger brother Brad was a baseball star, and to everyone in Berkshire, Massachusetts, Lucy was sure she was known as "the undistinguished Ritchard girl." Because Lucy and Matador, her golden retriever who is always recovering the wrong things, are involved in calamity after calamity, Lucy's brother has sarcastically labelled her "Lucky Lucinda."

When Professor Ritchard decides to spend the summer months writing a geology textbook on the coast of Maine, Lucy is delighted.  In Maine she'll have a fresh start.  She'll feel different, be different, and--maybe--finally shed the hated badge of second best.

Despite Lucy's dreams, her mortifying introduction to the Kettle Cove Yacht Club starts the summer off on the wrong foot.  Determined to erase that first bad impression, Lucy agrees to take sailing lessons with the Commodore of the Club.  Too late she realizes that sailing involves more hard work and discipline than she had bargained for, and that all of her old difficulties have traveled along with her the four hundred miles from Berkshire to Kettle Cove, Maine, where first is all-important.

A nearly disastrous accident forces Lucy and Marsh Norton, one of the young crackerjack sailors at the Club, to work off together the cost of the damages they have caused. Then, strange lights and happenings on spooky Witchpaw Light tempt the two of them to investigate the deserted island lighthouse and unravel a tantalizing mystery.

Labor Day brings the last exciting race, and as the summer of work, sailing, and racing on Penobscot Bay comes to an end, Lucy finds some of  the answers to her problems.  She discovers one important area where she can be first--and stay first! Armed with this new understanding, Lucy is ready for the return to Berkshire, confident that in the future she can be other than Second Best. (from the inside flap)

Jenny Kimura by Betty Cavanna (1964)

Wearing her kimono, Jenny faced her American grandmother and Alan. Her entrance was as theatrical as if she had planned it for the stage. Alan, the Kansas City boy who was showing Jenny so much flattering attention, liked her thoroughly Japanese appearance. But Mrs. Smith, her grandmother, was horrified to see her dressed so inappropriately for an afternoon wedding.

Mrs. Smith had invited her granddaughter to visit her in the United States, but Jenny, whose mother was Japanese and whose father was American, did not know how to please her domineering grandmother. As the summer flew by, it took even more than an intolerant attitude on the part of Alan's mother to show Mrs. Smith that her own outlook was also biased. All Jenny could do was follow her father's advise and be herself, however difficult that might be.

In this tender and thoughtful story, Jenny compares Kansas City and then Cape Cod to her home in Tokyo, giving readers the unique opportunity to see their country through another's eyes, and Betty Cavanna demonstrates again her complete understanding of the minds of young people. (from the inside flap)

A Girl Can Dream by Betty Cavanna (1948)

"Tomboy" Loretta Larkin excels in sports, but privately envies her popular blonde high school classmate, Elsie Wynn.  When the new local airport announces an essay contest with flying lessons as the tempting prize, Rette decides to enter--and wins!  She finds that learning to solo can be a way to not-soloing the prom.

TAB Club members voted heavily in favor of Betty Cavanna.  She writes of teen-agers with sure understanding of their inner lives and the high school scene.  A Girl Can Dream was a Junior Literary Guild Selection.  Before writing it Miss Cavanna herself took flying lessons and learned about "stalls" and "spins" From a flying instructor not unlike Pat Creatore. (from the back cover)

Fancy Free by Betty Cavanna (1961)

Some fancies dissolve in thin air ...

Frivolous Francesca Jones decides on impulse to go with her archaeologist father to Peru for the summer.  Dr. Jones is taking a group of students on an expedition high in the Andes. Fancy begins to regret her decision as soon as she meets all these studious types, but by then the plane is in the air.

Used to a kind of lazy life, Fancy, once in Peru, is amazed to find her mind stretching along with her muscles, as she learns the difference between a boy with charm and a boy with character; the care and feeding of a baby llama; and how not only to get along with eggheads, but to like them!  (from the back cover)

6 on Easy Street by Betty Cavanna (1954)

The Sanford family of Haverford has inherited a small inn in Nantucket.  All of the family except sixteen-year-old Deborah are excited over the prospect of a summer spent in learning how to run the inn.  Deborah is in love--and she is unhappy about leaving attractive Craig Vale for the whole summer.

Each of the children has a job to do in the old inn, and Deborah waits on table. Her main ambition is to get enough money to visit Craig in July for a week at the shore in Jersey.  Very few of the guests leave tips, however, and she is forced to work out a different scheme for saving the money she needs.

How Deborah faces her problems during this summer is woven into a story of how a girl grows up.  While it is difficult for her to overcome her selfishness and face the need for becoming mature, Deborah finds by the time the summer is over that her stay in Nantucket has turned out to be one of the happiest times of her life.

There is good characterization in this story, and a delightful picture of a family who know how to live together in heartwarming comradeship.  There are glimpses into the thoughts and feelings of this family and their friends which are genuinely true to life, and bring the reader into acquaintance with real people.  And there is the authentic background of Nantucket to add extra interest, zest and color to the story. (from the inside flap)

The Look of Love by Denise Cass Brookman (1960)

Candy was Kirk Stock's girl, and to be Kirk's girl was to be admired and respected--even envied.  For he was a letterman in football, president of the Senior Council, a good mixer, a good dancer and the most popular boy at Ryder High School.  Although they had similar tastes and backgrounds Candy found, oddly enough, that they had little to say to one another when they were alone.  All their friends shared the same comfortable standards and all of them conformed to the same safe, snug pattern that sometimes seemed to stifle Candy.

She had an indefinable yearning to find her own sense of values, and it was this quality that Joe Czierwotni recognized.  Joe's world was different.  Experience had made him realistic and truculent, but he was attracted to Candy even though common sense told him that he was remote from her life and therefore all wrong for her.  But the moment was right, and--feeling that she had everything, yet nothing--Candy was drawn to him regardless of her family's concern.

In this new junior novel about two people who are different--yet somehow the same--the author of The Tender Time introduces a sensitive, levelheaded young heroine who tries her own wings for the first time.  (from the inside flap)

Say Hello, Candy by Bianca Bradbury (1961)

Candy didn't start out by saying hello.  In fact, she felt she was saying goodby to everything; to the only home she'd ever know, to all her friends, and most of all, to Tom.

For Candy the world had stopped turning and the bottom had dropped out of life.  Here she was heading for Maine with Mom and Dad.

They had often spent summers in Maine, but this was for keeps.  Ever since Dad's accident, which confined him to a wheel chair, money had become a problem for the Andrews' family.  They were trying to solve the problem by moving to the house they owned in a small Maine town.

But loneliness can be deeply rooted in a teen-age girl, and Candy was not to be thawed by the friendliness and sympathy of a small town. She was there, all right, but she didn't have to like it!

Bianca Bradbury has written a deeply understanding story of loneliness, and a young girl's growing up.  Every reader will understand Candy's search, and will share her glow when "that certain boy" comes into her life.  (from the inside flap)

Christy by Carole Bolton (1960)

When the doorbell rang, Christy was wearing faded jeans and big fat curlers in her hair.  She was in absolutely no condition to meet her fate, but here he was, standing at her door.  Gideon Myles was a successful writer; he was dashing and glamorous--and he was almost as old as her father.  But he made her feel as though she had passed from one room to another, where a blue light was burning instead of the pink one she had left behind.

Christy soon became caught between her teen-age world and an impossible dream.  She found herself saying catty things about Julie, the thirty-year-old librarian who had always been dear to her--until Gideon's arrival.  She quarreled with Frank, a wonderfully solemn student of archaeology, whom she denounced as a callow youth.  And she learned, finally, that even when love goes away, its sad, sweet poignancy remains.

Christy's efforts to win Gideon are sometimes childish and absurd, sometimes agelessly feminine.  In this delightful book, which introduces a fresh new writing talent, Carole Bolton describes them with a keen awareness of the rue and humor and touching reality of love at sixteen.  (from the inside flap)

Meet Me in St. Louis by Sally Benson (1941)

"Meet me in St. Louis, Louis, meet me at the fair ..."

St. Louis--at the turn of the century, back in the age of innocence, when a date was called an engagement, a wolf was a lady-fusser, a long-distance phone call set the whole town talking, and the St. Louis World's Fair was the most glorious, exciting, glamorous thing that ever happened in the whole, wild world!

Here is the delightful, funny and wonderfully real story of the two pretty Smith girls, Rose and Esther, their beaux and romances, their troublesome small sisters, their young brother, Lon, a "Princeton man," and their nice parents, just as bewildered and bewildering as parents today. (from the back cover)

The Real Thing by Rosamond du Jardin (1956)

The summer after graduation from high school can be the shortest summer of a girl's life, especially when her favorite man is going to a different college.  Tobey Heydon found that September came too soon and that saying good-bye to Brose was much harder than she had expected.  Tobey and Brose had decided not to let their relationship stand in the way of new friendships at college, but their sensible decision didn't make the separation any easier.

College proved to be even more exciting than Tobey had foreseen.  Rush Week, classes and roommates kept her from thinking too much about Brose during the first hectic weeks.  The week ends were filled with sorority activities and dates with a variety of new and interesting college men.  But in spite of the fun of being a freshman, Tobey looked forward to vacations.

She missed her family--even her little sister Midge, who had stopped being a pest and started asking for Tobey's advice--and she missed Brose.  As the year went on, Tobey began to realize that the new friends and new experiences of her freshman year had not changed her mind about Brose or about their future. 

Readers of Practically Seventeen, Class Ring and Boy Trouble will welcome another story about Tobey, whose feelings and problems ring true to all girls.  (from the inside flap)

Double Wedding by Rosamond du Jardin (1959)

And in the Distance--Wedding Bells ...

Graduation seems terribly far away to Pam and Penny, as they start their second year of college, especially since they and their fiancés agree that graduation should come before marriage.

But college days are crowded days and many things happen to speed the waiting.  One of the most intriguing of them is Pam's growing friendship with lovely, unhappy Geneva Day, who had been so unfriendly during the twins' "showboat summer"!

Then sooner than Pam and Penny ever dreamed possible, it's commencement time--to be swiftly followed by rice and old shoes!  (from the back cover)

A Man for Marcy by Rosamond du Jardin (1954)

Trouble for the Senior Girls ...

Marcy Rhodes and some of her friends face the start of their senior year in high school with a sinking sensation.  Last year they had dated only senior boys, who are now off to college, and the girls find themselves high, dry, and desperate.

When a club called "The Widows" is organized, Marcy enthusiastically joins the "mourners," and by the time her erstwhile steady arrives home for Thanksgiving vacation, Marcy is wallowing in self-pity.  And her mood doesn't improve when she learns he has been dating at college!

Only the skillful intervention of Marcy's brother Ken averts disaster.  Thanks to him, and to Marcy's basic good sense, the balance of the year is gratifyingly different.  (from the back cover)

Double Feature by Rosamond du Jardin (1953)

Pam Does a Double Take

Pretty Pam Howard is still taken aback by her quiet twin Penny's new attitude of independence.  Until recently, Pam led the way, and Penny followed.  Now Penny wants them both to go to the college that her friend Mike plans to attend, but Pam is resisting--partly just for the sake of resisting.  Old field marshals don't give up easily!

Oddly enough, the ensuing fireworks strengthen the twin's relationship, and the college of Penny's choice proves an exciting place for Pam. also.  As a matter of fact, for a while, it's almost too exciting!  (from the back cover)

Senior Prom by Rosamond du Jardin (1957)

New Year, New Dear?

A New Year's Eve spent with Steve Judson convinces Marcy that from now on, she and Steve will be "just good friends."

Luckily, her last term in high school provides many distractions:  work on the school paper; the effort to get permission for a senior trip to Washington; a growing friendship with reliable Rick Whitney; and a date in prospect with exciting Bruce Douglas for the long-awaited Senior Prom.

The Marcy discovers that Bruce's plans for that gala event are not at all what she has in mind, and is she doesn't go with him, she can't go with Rick, because he's out dating someone else--at Marcy's unselfish insistence!  (from the back cover)

Boy Trouble by Rosamond du Jardin (1953)

An Embarrassment of Riches ...

All the fun of high school graduation and that special summer before college are heightened for Tobey Heydon when dashing Dick Allen adds his attentions to those she is receiving from her favorite young man, Brose Gilman.

And the plot really curdles (along with Brose's feelings), when Tobey meets a handsome artist who seems to be the object behind her non-objective paintings. 

But Brose gets his revenge, and it's not only sweet, it's hilarious.  (from the back cover)

The Golden Dream by Jean Nielsen (1959)

Inside the house Starli's mother was still waiting up. "Oh, Mother," she cried, "Avery brought me home, and then daddy . . ."
"Hush, dear, I heard it all." Mrs. Ryland was very gentle.
"It's the first time a boy has ever liked me. And he said such wonderful things. Then Daddy began to--but maybe it's all just a dream."
"But it isn't, Starli, so you might as well make the best of things. They're going to get better. They have to, because I'm afraid they can't get much worse." (from the back cover)