Avi

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Short Story Collection

Over the years, I have writ­ten a num­ber of short sto­ries. There are two col­lec­tions, Strange Hap­pen­ings (five sto­ries) and What Do Fish Have to Do with Any­thing? (sev­en sto­ries). Now and again, I have con­tributed to var­i­ous the­mat­ic antholo­gies, some sev­en (I think) in num­ber, includ­ing When I Was Your Age

short story collections

A few years ago I was able (along with co-edi­tor Car­olyn Shute) to pro­duce an anthol­o­gy of short sto­ries for kids titled Best Shorts. There were many good sto­ries we did not have room to include. To my taste, no one has writ­ten bet­ter short sto­ries than Kipling’s Mowgli and Ken­neth Grahame’s The Reluc­tant Drag­on.                   

There was a time when the short sto­ry was a pow­er­ful force in Amer­i­can writ­ing. True, that was also the time when there were many mag­a­zines who pub­lished them, and pre­sum­ably mil­lions who read them. Writ­ing short sto­ries was con­sid­ered the nor­mal pro­gres­sion for a writer who might then be dis­cov­ered and/or move on to nov­els. That has changed. 

Yet to write a good short sto­ry is extreme­ly chal­leng­ing, and takes great skill. I sus­pect that young peo­ple, par­tic­u­lar­ly in mid­dle and high school, are far more capa­ble of writ­ing good short sto­ries than nov­els. I can imag­ine a teacher start­ing off each day in class with a short story. 

These days—in classrooms—there is a great empha­sis on the nov­el. Indeed, there is “Write a nov­el in a month,” pro­gram which I know some schools have pro­mot­ed. Why not a “Write a short sto­ry in a month?” Per­haps that would be a more pro­duc­tive pro­gram for young peo­ple. Schools could pro­duce their own col­lec­tions of short sto­ries as an incentive. 

Maybe we should con­struct a list of good short stories—a list long enough so a teacher, librar­i­an, or par­ent could actu­al­ly read one each day to kids. A good short sto­ry can have a long life. 

11 thoughts on “Short Story Collection”

  1. Remem­ber the lit­er­ary mag­a­zine? Even high school Eng­lish depart­ments used to pub­lish one once a year full of short sto­ries and poems by stu­dents. Per­haps that would be a good way to bring back the artform.

    Reply
    • I liked Sto­ry­works when I taught ele­men­tary lev­el stu­dents. I bought class­room copies, so I could reuse sto­ries from year to year. I filed them by sub­ject and con­tent. One of my favorites, “As the Worm Turns” was filed in the sci­ence sec­tion, in the fold­er “worms”. I pulled it out when we did our earth­worm exper­i­ments. Some sto­ries I used for their themes, and some for con­tent, like his­tor­i­cal events or peo­ple. Avi is right. Some­times a small­er chunk of writ­ing is exact­ly what we need. 

      Writ­ing a sto­ry is a com­plex project. Teach­ers, before you ask stu­dents to write a sto­ry, write one your­self. Before you assign a report, write one to meet the stan­dards you’re expect­ing from the child. That will help you under­stand what tools/concepts he needs to accom­plish the task.

      Writ­ing is only part imag­i­na­tion and mag­ic. It requires skills that need to be mod­eled, taught, and prac­ticed. A lot of teach­ers allow stu­dents to write ad infini­tum with­out going back to revise, edit, and pol­ish. In my mind, that takes away their pur­pose and deval­ues the impor­tance of what they have to say.

      Reply
  2. When think­ing of short sto­ries only scary ones came to mind! I think chil­dren love scary sto­ries though so I vote for Mon­key’s Paw and one called “Where the deer are” which is by Car­o­line B Cooney and might be more young adult.

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  3. I would rec­om­mend The March­ing Morons by C.M. Korn­bluth. It’s a futur­is­tic tale, orig­i­nal­ly pub­lished in 1951, about eco­nom­ics, social dynam­ics, pop­u­la­tion con­trol, and class assump­tions. I believe grades 7 and up would get quite involved in a dis­cus­sion about this, as well as the writer who pre­dict­ed a social conun­drum more than 60 years ago. For cer­tain inter­est­ed read­ers, this could also be a good intro­duc­tion to the wealth of sto­ries from The Gold­en Age of Sci­ence Fic­tion. The March­ing Morons is in the pub­lic domain: http://mysite.du.edu/~treddell/3780/Kornbluth_The-Marching-Morons.pdf

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  4. Love this idea. There are sev­er­al teach­ers at the mid­dle school where I work that teach with short sto­ries. One does a study on Brad­bury. Anoth­er uses clas­sics by Twain, Hawthorne, plus The Neck­lace, The Veldt etc i intro­duced him to my favorite: A Rose for Emi­ly by Faulkn­er. The kids love that one. He often comes to me to find some­thing new. I have a large short sto­ry col­lec­tion. Love the guys read antholo­gies. Just today a coun­selor came to me ask­ing for a short sto­ry to intro­duce the ‘lift up let­ters’ cam­paign they are doing. And i gave two teach­ers whose stu­dents are writ­ing ahort sto­ries now! I cre­at­ed sites where they could share them and had them cre­ate ‘book trail­ers’ for each oth­ers’ sto­ries. How about we use a col­lab­o­ra­tive doc­u­ment? Be hap­py to cre­ate and share.

    Reply
  5. Some of my favorites:

    “The Things They Car­ried” Tim O’Brien

    “Lamb to the Slaugh­ter” Roald Dahl

    “The Neck­lace” Guy de Maupassant

    “The Gift of the Magi” O. Henry

    “Sto­ry of an Hour” Kate Chopin

    “The Ran­som of Red Chief” O. Henry

    “A White Heron” Sarah Orne Jewett

    “The Sun, the Moon, the Stars”
    Junot Diaz 

    This is a great idea! I’m look­ing for­ward to see­ing every­one else’s favorites.

    Reply
  6. Love the idea! Might want to try a Google form to col­lect all the sug­ges­tions and include cat­e­gories such as title/author/description/grade level(s)

    Reply

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