Kinsey's comments (member since May 27, 2009)

Kinsey's comments from the What's The Name of That Book??? group.

Thank you! That seems to be it.

I read this young adult book back in the early eighties. A group of teenagers (possibly two boys and one girl) are training for a marathon. While they are out running, a thick fog rolls in, and when it clears, they discover they have somehow jogged into the past. They meet up with Houdini. When the girl mentions training for a marathon, Houdini exclaims that it would be preposterous for a female to attempt a marathon, since the strain would surely kill her. When she gets defensive, Houdini remarks that they are both in a similar business - that of accomplishing the impossible. That's all I recall. Perhaps there was some kind of mystery they had to solve.

Freezing Down
By complete chance I ran into a copy of this same book at a used book store and immediately recognized it from the description on the back.

The Parent Trap was based on a book, but there was also a book version of the movie:
Parent Trap
(I actually read this in elementary school several years before I had a chance to catch the movie on TV.) It's a longshot, though, because, Janna doesn't remember the parents being divorced.

Maybe. It was definitely a good book, but I definitely remember that there were parts that seemed to have been written quickly or poorly.

Yep, the book didn't seem well-written when I read it years ago, so I just assumed it was by a minor author. I may have to check it out again.

Randy, The Lighthouse Mystery was first published in 1963, so it *is* old enough to have been published when you were in fifth grade. (I took the liberty of checking your age on your profile page.) Also, the cover to the first edition looks a lot like what you described:

April Ann, you've done it again! It's Alvin's Secret Code. Thank you.

Oh, looks like Dave was typing his reply while I was typing mine. :) Vena gets bonus points for finding two people's book at the same time.

I don't know about Dave, but Strangely Enough is definitely what I was looking for (although there may be other similar books I read at around the same time). Thank you, Vena!

That's definitely not it, but it's certainly interesting how many commonalities it shares with my book. The story I read definitely takes place in the 20th century, probably no earlier than the 70s. The code the characters are working to solve is much older and may go back to the Civil War, but there are no flashbacks to earlier times.

April Ann, thanks, but it's definitely not Babel-17. The book I read wasn't science fiction.

I bet April Ann is right about it being Strandia. Here's a longer description from Amazon:

Sand, a privileged upper-class girl on the mythic island of Strandia, is gifted with the ability to telepathically summon dolphins and compel them to fish for her family. When Sand refuses to go along with an arranged marriage, she sets in motion a series of personal and social crises that come to a head just as her home is threatened by natural catastrophe.

I don't know the story, but I do recall an old episode of Andromeda that was probably inspired by it.

I read this YA book sometime in the early 80s. A boy befriends a retired master codebreaker, who I think may be disabled in some way and possibly house bound, maybe bed bound. The boy is very interested in learning all about codes and code breaking, and his teachings are discussed at great length throughout the book, making it quite educational.

At one point, the boy decides to come up with his own unbreakable code to challenge the codebreaker and is disappointed when it gets solved in a few minutes. The boy also has some friends his own age who are around a lot, but I don't recall anything about them.

There is also a real coded message that the boy and the codebreaker are mulling over. I think it reveals the location of money buried by a man on the run many years ago.

At one point in the story, there is some sort of crisis, and the boy runs to a pay phone and calls for the police. Then he decides to call an ambulance as well and then the fire department and possibly even the power company. All these emergency vehicles quickly show up, and the boy marvels at how such amazing things could be accomplished with four dimes. I also remember that the boy's father showed up, and seeing all the emergency vehicles, asked his son in a humorously understated way what was going on.

Wow! That's it. I immediately recognized the title (which I think is a reference to the Gingerbread Man), and the cover looks familiar. I noticed that the book has a Google preview. Unfortunately, it doesn't contain the most important parts of the story, but I'm 99% sure this is the book. Thank you!

I probably read this YA book in the early 80s. A little girl (probably no older than 12) learns that her little brother is sick and in the hospital. Although her parents never tell her, she quickly figures out that he is dying.

When she goes to visit him in the hospital, he starts saying something to her but doesn't have the strength to finish his sentence. She frantically tries to get him to finish it, but then her parents start dragging her out of the room, which makes her even more frantic and causes a huge scene. The parents tell her that she can't visit him again while he is in the hospital. Since she knows he will soon be dead, she realizes this means she will never be able to see him again.

At one point she says to her mother, "But I want to see him before..." and then can't finish. Her clueless mother even asks, "Before what?", but the girl makes up an answer.

Eventually the little girl has the perfectly reasonable idea to just sit down with her parents and calmly and maturely tell them that she won't make another scene if they will only let her see her brother once more. They respond that they've already been through all that with her, and they just don't think she's old enough.

Finally, at the end of the book, she is able to sneak into her brother's hospital room, only to find that he has just passed away (which is why no one is there). There is kind of an odd scene then when she talks to him for awhile and even cracks a couple jokes. I recall her at one point lifting his limp arm and letting it fall back onto the mattress and then exclaiming, "Yep, deader than a doornail." On her way toward the hospital exit, she runs into her grieving parents who break the news to her that her brother is dead.

This thread was put in the solved category before the the topic starter confirmed whether or not it was solved. I wish people wouldn't do that. After all, it might not be Running Out of Time.

Richard, that's it! Thank you. I recognized the title immediately.

Wow! That's the second time Running Out of Time has come up in this group.