Best Shorts: Favorite Stories for Sharing
Grade 5 Up–Unlike most collections, there is no integrating theme in the 24 short stories included here–just fine writing, cultural diversity, and timeless creativity. With such strong writers as Richard Peck, Natalie Babbitt, Lloyd Alexander, and Rafe Martin, one would expect nothing less. Strategic placement of genres sustains reader interest. Animals as heroes, time machines as homework helpers, along with Washington Irving's timeless classic Rip Van Winkle and Frank Stockton's highly provocative The Lady or the Tiger? offer many powerful, instantly engaging choices, especially appealing to reluctant readers. Scatterings of the supernatural appear throughout, such as in Patricia McKissack's The Woman in White, in which a desperate ghost propels readers into the injustices of the pre-Civil Rights era. Others are sure to elicit a shiver, like Robert San Souci's The Caller. Brief biographical sketches of the contributors are included. Katherine Paterson offers a persuasive afterword in favor of sharing, discussing, and reading these selections aloud as well as exhorting the dire need for more quality writing in short fiction.–D. Maria LaRocco, Cuyahoga Public Library, Strongsville, OHCopyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.