Tag Archives: short stories

Dragon vs. Unicorn: Friends or Frenemies?

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Dragon vs. Unicorn: Friends or Frenemies? written by PJ Hoover draws readers in from the get go. I can envision many kids I would put this in the hands of – great for a reluctant reader, great for dragon and unicorn kids, and great for kids who love choose your own adventure style books. Lisa Wiley did an excellent job on the illustrations to this book and they add so much life to the characters. The panels are easy to follow to kids who may be new to graphic novel style books.

Dragon and Unicorn are best friends, but very different. This book teaches us that we can be friends despite our differences but we’ll probably need tools for empathy, listening, and problem solving along the way. This is where I love the illustrations – the characters emotions! Their eyebrows, nose crinkles, and gestures add so much to the feelings that best friends go through. As the reader follows these two along their adventures, the reader gets to make decisions that will side with one friend or the other and then see how that works out for them. When you get to the end of your story, you’re invited to go back to the first decision making page turn and try the alternate route. I love this! If you were reading it as a social story with a student, the invitation to go back and see how the other choice would have affected the friends is perfect for conversations. I also hope it adds incentive for the solo reader to go back and try again. There are three short stories in this book.

If you have students who love cute unicorns, who love tidy dragons, who love friendship stories where its not always perfect, then this book would be a good fit for your space.

The publisher has this book tagged under cooperation, empathy, honesty, and teamwork – this book has plenty of examples for each of those social skills.

cover of the book dragon vs. unicorn

Snail & Worm

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Tina Kugler has credownloadated an engaging beginning reader book. This book contains three short story that feature Snail and Worm.  Snail is a happy, likable guy that is sometimes misguided in his understandings. Worm is more astute and is friends with Snail.

The repetitive words and phrases are enhanced by the colorful, simple drawings.  The page layout is a mix of traditional full page with minimal text and multiple images with in-line text.  Younger readers will laugh at the absurdity of Snail playing tag with a stick and a stone, but may miss the secondary joke concerning Snail’s speed. They will giggle as Snail climbs a flower that bends under his weight, leaving him 1/2 inch from the ground. Worm cheers him on as he makes the climb. “Wow, I can see so much from up here!” Snail exclaims. Worm responds, “I’m so proud of you.” What a supportive friend!

Snail & Worm will provide the beginning reader a sense of maturity as this book is a bit different than the traditional beginning readers in shape, layout and content. It will also offer the struggling older student a good choice without embarrassment.

 

The Curiosities: a Collection of Short Stories

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I am not usually a fan of short story collections; I like really long books, long enough that I feel like the characters are friends by the time I finish reading. However, this collection of stories was delightful. I was engaged from the first story to the last. All three authors, Gratton, Stiefvater and Yovanoff, are popular young adult authors. They created a website, www.merryfates.com, as an avenue for experimentation and critique. This book is a selection (more than 25) of the more than 250 works the three have posted online. Some of the stories originated from an image, others from an idea, a sentence or a common prompt. Just as good as the stories themselves are the comments and illustrations of the authors. Every story begins with an introduction by one of the Merry Fates and comments from the author and has handwritten notes by any or all of the authors throughout the story.  The selections range from stories about the fey and serial killers, to pyromaniacs, dragonslayers, berserkers and ghosts. This would be a wonderful book for any teen who wanted to become a writer.

Bambert’s Book of Missing Stories

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Reminiscent of The Chronicles of Harris Burdick, Bambert’s Book of Missing Stories  is a collection of stories that has mysterious origins. A back story was created about the mysterious Mr. Bambert, a man whose deformity causes him to become a recluse. His only outlet is sitting on the roof and talking to the moon. The moon gives him ideas for stories and Bambert writes them. Finally, Bambert decides to set his stories free to find their own settings. He sends out the stories, including the last four pages of his book which are still blank in the hopes that the last story will write itself, and requests that the people who find the stories return them with the finder’s address to Bambert so he can learn each story’s proper setting. This book is the story of Bambert’s life, the collection of the stories with the places where they were found, and Bambert’s notes about each story and its setting. There are stories about princesses and court jesters, Tsars, revolutions and wax museums. The illustrations are charming.  This book is fantastic; it could be used as prompts for a creative writing class, and it has a place in every library.