I am so thrilled to have discovered this site that I must share it forthwith. There are many books from my childhood of voracious reading that I wish I could remember titles and authors for, but all I remember are vague details about the storylines and characters. Turns out I’m not alone… there’s a whole site, connected to a little independent bookstore in Cleveland, where people submit what they can remember about various children's books, and other people try to determine a title and author for what’s been described.
Isn’t that great? As I prowled the site, I have already found all kinds of books I once treasured. Now I have a list next time I go to the library!
There’s one, though, that I have always wanted to find, and not even this place seemed to have a reference to it. So I impulsively spent the two dollars to submit the following question, which they will post within the next couple of days:
I remember a book where a girl went reluctantly on holiday to the beach. She was hopping along the boards of the pier, and she hopped a certain pattern: forward one, back two, forward three, or something like that. Suddenly she could see a boy who hadn't been there before, who was dressed oddly. He was from another time, and she had travelled back to it. She had to get back to her own time by reversing the hopping pattern (which she almost forgot how to do, causing a certain amount of panic), and afterwards she kept coming back to help the boy and his father with... something... which eventually changes the future, I think. I was fascinated by the hopping-pattern thing, and tried it on several piers. ;-)
I can’t wait to see if anyone remembers it! I loved that book desperately, and it made for a wealth of adventures imagined on the pier in East Tawas.
Update: Mystery solved! It was called Up the Pier by Helen Cresswell. And apparently, alas, it's impossible to find any more.
