This children’s story by W. D. Howells is actually a ‘story within a story’. A demanding daughter insists that her busy father tell her a Christmas story. Perhaps with his daughter in mind, he makes up a tale about a little girl who makes a selfish Christmas wish. She wants it to be Christmas every day so she can get presents and eat Christmas treats all year long. The wish comes true but in so doing causes problems for almost everyone in the world. Although told in an amusing way, you could call this a Christmas horror fairy-tale. More…
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Little Red Riding Hood
This time last year we featured Charles Perrault’s famous interpretation of an ancient folktale, Cinderella. Today we have another well-known Perrault story, Little Red Riding Hood. The version of the story most commonly told today is from a Brothers Grimm adaption known as Little Red Cap, published over 100 years after Perrault. In both versions, Red is punished for talking to strangers (the wolf) by being “eaten”. The Brothers extended the story to make it more appealing to children. In addition to Red and her grandmother miraculously surviving in the wolf’s stomach, they later meet and kill a second wolf. More…
Muffin
“Bullying” has been around since the first humans left their caves and formed hunter/gatherer groups. The problem in dealing with it, as in this story from Susan Cooper, is the power gap that often exists between perpetrator and victim. Set during the Blitz of World War Two, the story’s protagonist (a persecuted schoolgirl) tries striking back. As is often the case, this only makes things worse. A kindly old lady witnesses an assault and offers to help. When the poor woman dies in the bombing, an unlikely friend becomes the girl’s protector. Themes: bullying, kindness, sharing problems, offering help. More…
The King is Dead, Long Live the King!
This story from Mary Coleridge includes some excellent examples of situational irony. A king dies of fever, regretting that he had not lived long enough to finish his work. His spirit dreams his life will be restored if it can locate three people who wish that he was still alive within an hour of his death. The spirit’s findings are not what it had expected, and an even greater insult awaits when it returns to the palace. The story encourages readers to think about what kind of person they think they are, and whether their friends or partner would agree. More…
Victory Over Japan
Today we are featuring the trilogy of “Rhoda” stories from Ellen Gilchrist’s short story collection Victory Over Japan. In the titular first story, set in the final days of World War 2, Rhoda is a willful third-grader living in fear of when her disciplinarian father returns home from the war. In the second story, Music, she is a rebellious fourteen-year-old, obsessed with beauty and romance and constantly at war with her father. In the final story, The Lower Garden District Free Gravity Mule Blight or Rhoda, a Fable, she is a lost thirty-four-year-old at a crossroads. More…