The Vine: September 3, 2010
I’d love help finding two books, one for myself and one for a friend. Friend’s is a children’s book about a hunter who shoots the tail off a swamp monster and eats the tail. He later lets his dogs out and they are eaten by the swamp monster. Then maybe the hunter is eaten as well? That’s as far as she remembers…
Mine is a chapter book about twin teenage brothers who are at a house with some kind of small well-house or playhouse in the yard. They’re told not to go into the little house, one does, and realizes time moves much faster in there than in the yard. For some reason, he makes a plan and sneaks into the house for a few minutes in real time, but a year in quick-time, partially in order to grow up and differentiate himself from his brother. He works out, keeps a journal, and has to figure out what it would cost him in time to run into the real world to grab food from the kitchen. (I think he mainly survives off hardtack found in the little house.)
A part of the story I remember not understanding involves a kind of steel serpent that the boy sees as an image in a basin of water, and the more time he spends in the house the closer the creature comes to the surface, until it appears in the real world and (i think) eventually consumes itself. Any help on either would be appreciated!
Meg
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Hi Tomato Nation:
You and your readers were recommended to me as a source for the title of a children’s book. It is a longer storybook, in which a young female artist lives in an apartment with a cat who likes to jump at people from high places. The woman needs a job. The cat knocks a plant off the windowsill at a man walking by below. The man gives the woman a job.
Can you identify this? Thanks.
EB
Tags: Ask The Readers popcult
I’m pretty sure that Meg’s story is William Sleator’s “Singularity.”
I loved his books when I was a kid.
Meg – I don’t remember the name of that story, but I read it too. There were two keys to the building – one said “Play,” the other said “House.” (If that helps.)
The first one is The Tailypo: A Ghost Story by Joanna C. Galdone. This is the edition that scared the pants off of me as a kid: http://www.amazon.com/Tailypo-Ghost-Story-Clarion-books/dp/0395300843
Ya’ll are awesome! Singularity is definitely the one I was looking for, I’ve been trying to figure that out for months! Tailypo has yet to be verified, but also, sounds pretty unique in it’s creepiness. Thanks ladies!
I think Friend’s story is a version of the Tailypo (or Taileypo, or Taley Po, etc.) legend. There’s lots of versions, I believe, contained in short story books for kids. I know my brother had one as a child, and even now 20 years on when we hear an unexplained noise we still say it’s just the Taily-po.
Meg’s second one is definitely the William Sleator.
Dang! Finally I know one and I’m beaten to the punch! Singularity by William Sleator, definitely. I recently re-read it, in fact. Holds up pretty well, which means I might have to go find some others. Interstellar Pig, anyone?
The first one is indeed “Taily-po.” However, it’s a folktale, so it’s in several different books and editions; the Galdone is the most popular, but if that doesn’t fit your memory try the Jan Wahl version next.
William Sleator was one of my favorite authors as a teen. House of Stairs is still one of my favorite books. A group of teenagers wakes up in a building containing nothing but stairs as far as the eye can see, and they have to figure out how to survive. I won’t give away the end, but it’s a truly chilling story.
@Anna- Yes! I loved those books as a kid! Now I need to find them…
Dude! Tailey-po scared the crap out of me as a kid. Just thinking about it now gives me the shivers. It’s a variation on the Golden Arm ghost story you heard as a kid, but the writer does such a good job with it. Super creepy.
Definitely Singularity. I read that book about a million times.
Singularity – I was just thinking about that book the other day! I have such vivid memories of parts of it. Like, the one who goes into the house eats peanut butter from a spoon. Why do I remember that?