Featured Stories

Stray

Stray: Children's story by Cyntia RylantHeavy snow can cause many problems, closing roads and stopping people from going to work or school. Today’s story from Cynthia Rylant is about Doris, an only child from a poor family. A cold, shivering puppy comes into her yard as she is clearing snow from around the front door. It has been abandoned. She takes the animal inside and cares for it, knowing that her parents will say they don’t have the money to keep a dog and take it away when the snow clears. The story’s themes are loneliness, compassion, responsibility, understanding, cruelty to animals, kindness and love.

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The Ambitious Guest

The Ambitious Guest: Short story by Nathaniel HawthorneBased on a true event, this Nathaniel Hawthorne story illustrates the power of nature and the futility of man in trying to best it. A young man stops at an inn high on a mountain pass and boasts to the family inside about his ambition to do something great to be remembered by. Above the inn are towering mountains from which rocks and boulders are frequently dislodged. The family have built a safe house nearby in the event of an avalanche, but when the ‘slide’ comes, nature wins. Other themes include hubris, ambition, contentment, connection, fate.

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At the Pitt-Rivers

At the Pitt-Rivers: Short story by Penelope LivelyIn this story by Penelope Lively, a sixteen-year-old boy regularly visits the Pitt-Rivers museum to “mooch around and be on his own”. One day, he notices a woman of about thirty waiting for someone. Although ordinary looking, her face glows in a way that makes him feel good. His views on “correctness” in relationships are challenged when she greets a man in his fifties she obviously loves. The couple meet frequently at the museum. He watches as their relationship grows and, one day, crumbles. Her glow fades to a look of despair. Themes include beauty, teen dating, non-traditional love, disillusionment.

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The Scholarship Jacket

The Scholarship Jacket: Short story by Marta SalinasThis story by Marta Salinas is about prejudice, privilege and hope. Martha is 14 and about to enter High-School. Her parents are very poor, so she lives with her grandparents. Marta gets top grades, and wants nothing more than for this to be recognized by winning the Grade 8 Scholarship Jacket. She is devastated when she hears two teachers arguing about whether the jacket should go instead to a lesser student whose father is on the School Board. When Martha explains the problem to her grandfather, his answer proves that you don’t need a formal education to acquire great wisdom.

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The Dunwich Horror

The Dunwich Horror: Novella by H. P. LovecraftIn this cosmic horror story by H. P. Lovecraft, an early 19th century practitioner of the black arts summons an “Elder Thing” from another dimension to mate with his daughter. The result is an unusual set of twins. One has enough human characteristics to allow it to function in society. The other, which takes more after its father, is an invisible monster the size of a house, intent on destroying life on earth and moving the planet to the “Other Side”. Themes include the occult, madness, fear, heroism, realms beyond human understanding, the potential transient nature of humanity.

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Here’s Your Hat What’s Your Hurry

Here’s Your Hat What’s Your Hurry: Short story by Elizabeth McCrackenIn this story by Elizabeth McCracken, a homeless woman with no family has spent her life traveling the countryside and staying at the homes of people she says are distant relatives. Now in her eighties, she visits a young couple claiming to be the niece of the man’s great-grandfather. While there, she forms an unlikely attachment to a neglected, undisciplined young boy living nearby. When the truth comes out and it is time for her to leave, she considers taking the boy with her. Themes include homelessness, deception, family, loss, connection.

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The Sea Beyond

The Sea Beyond: Short story by N. V. M. GonzalezThis story by N. V. M. Gonzalez describes a journey on a Philippine passenger-cargo ship from a small port to its provincial capital. In addition to paying passengers, the ship is transporting a young cargardor (stevedore) who was critically injured during the loading of cargo to the capital for medical treatment. Tending him are his pregnant wife and her mother. Despite a supposed telegraph request for a doctor meet the ship on arrival, as the ship departs the capital they are left stranded on the dock with no sign of help. Themes include suffering, inhumanity, social class, superstition.

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Parallel Universes

Parallel Universes: Short story by Gary SotoThe title of this Etgar Keret story describes his writing, which takes readers on humorous, often shocking journeys to worlds so absurd they could only exist outside our own. Keret developed a special interest in parallel universe theory when told that thinking about them helped his father get through the privations of Jewish persecution in World War 2 Europe. Although Parallel Universes fits the Keret mould in terms of the absurd contrasts between the described worlds, it is also a poignant love story that ends: I enjoy knowing there’s one place … where I’m falling asleep happy.

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