[I received an electronic review copy of this book from the publisher – Dancing Lemur Press – in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.]
Summary and Review
This is a collection of short stories for middle grade readers. There’s a mix of genres – fantasy, science fiction, history. As examples, there’s a story with ghosts, some with time travel, one with a character on a slave ship, and another with nature-based magic. It’s an eclectic mix so readers are likely to find a few stories that click for them no matter what genre they prefer.
I think the format of short stories can be especially helpful for developing readers. Shorter stories means a shorter time commitment. For the longest time the books my students all wanted to read were 400 page behemoths. My poor kiddos who weren’t strong readers languished for weeks trying to make some progress on those longer books. A collection of short stories might have allowed them a sense of accomplishment when they finished some of the stories. They can also be great for classroom use as a group of students could all read one story fairly quickly and move on to discussion, where reading whole novels takes longer.
“The Orchard” was probably my favorite of the stories – I liked the characters. “The Blind Ship” was good and also horribly sad. I liked that it was based on a true story and that the actual journal the character was keeping was used to fight slavery. “The Third Ghost” is the story that has stuck with me the most since I finished reading.