Best Shorts: Favorite Stories for Sharing [Hardcover]

Avi (Compiler), Chris Raschka (Illustrator), Katherine Paterson (Afterword), Carolyn Shute (Contributor)

Book Description

Age Level: 8 and up | Grade Level: 4 and up | Series: Best Shorts

Newbery Medal–winning author Avi has selected short stories from the past and present in this entertaining collection for young readers. And whether you begin by reading alone or reading aloud, these stories are some of the very best to share.

Featuring loyal pets, rogue waves, ghosts who use cell phones, and young people caught up in events beyond their control, these stories are written by some of the most entertaining and esteemed authors of children’s literature. They will have you savoring a quiet moment by yourself, talking during dinnertime with your family, and laughing in class with your friends.

Though it may take only a few minutes to read, a terrific short story can take you on a long journey. Are you ready for the trip?

Editorial Reviews

From School Library Journal

Grade 5 Up–Unlike most collections, there is no integrating theme in the 24 short stories included here–just fine writing, cultural diversity, and timeless creativity. With such strong writers as Richard Peck, Natalie Babbitt, Lloyd Alexander, and Rafe Martin, one would expect nothing less. Strategic placement of genres sustains reader interest. Animals as heroes, time machines as homework helpers, along with Washington Irving's timeless classic Rip Van Winkle and Frank Stockton's highly provocative The Lady or the Tiger? offer many powerful, instantly engaging choices, especially appealing to reluctant readers. Scatterings of the supernatural appear throughout, such as in Patricia McKissack's The Woman in White, in which a desperate ghost propels readers into the injustices of the pre-Civil Rights era. Others are sure to elicit a shiver, like Robert San Souci's The Caller. Brief biographical sketches of the contributors are included. Katherine Paterson offers a persuasive afterword in favor of sharing, discussing, and reading these selections aloud as well as exhorting the dire need for more quality writing in short fiction.–D. Maria LaRocco, Cuyahoga Public Library, Strongsville, OH
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

About the Author

Katherine Paterson's international fame rests not only on her widely acclaimed novels but also on her efforts to promote literacy in the United States and abroad. A two-time winner of the Newbery Medal (Bridge to Terabithia and Jacob Have I Loved) and the National Book Award (The Great Gilly Hopkins and The Master Puppeteer), she has received many accolades for her body of work, including the Hans Christian Andersen Medal, the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award, and the Governor's Award for Excellence in the Arts, given by her home state of Vermont. She was also named a Living Legend by the Library of Congress.

Ms. Paterson is vice president of the National Children's Book and Literacy Alliance (www.thencbla.org), which is a not-for-profit education and advocacy organization. The NCBLA's innovative projects actively promote literacy, literature, libraries, and the arts.  She is both an Alida Cutts Lifetime Member of the United States Board on Books for Young People (www.usbby.org) and a lifetime member of the International Board on Books for Young People (www.ibby.org).

Her most recent book is The Day of the Pelican, a moving, dramatic story of a refugee family's flight from war-torn Kosovo to America. It is the 2010 selection for Vermont Reads, a statewide reading program.

She and her husband, John, live in Barre, Vermont. They have four children and seven grandchildren. For more information, visit www.terabithia.com.

Chris Raschka, writer, illustrator and trained violist is one of the country’s top children’s book talents. His Yo! Yes? was a Caldecott Honor Book in 1993 while his Hello Goodbye Window won the Caldecott Medal in 2005 . This is Chris’s first picture book for Houghton Mifflin Books for Children.

Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 8 and up
  
• Hardcover: 342 pages
• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Books for Children; 1 edition (September 25, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0618476032
• ISBN-13: 978-0618476039
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 6.3 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #589,905 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Courtesy of Teens Read Too, December 10, 2006

By 

TeensReadToo "Eat. Drink. Read. Be Merrier." (All Over the US & Canada) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Best Shorts: Favorite Stories for Sharing (Hardcover)

In BEST SHORTS, you never know what surprise you're going to get next. Unlike many short story collections, which usually revolve around some thread of a theme, the stories Avi selected for this anthology come from all over the genre spectrum. The one thing they all have in common, however, is that they are all great little adventures you can experience without the big time commitment of an entire novel.

Readers can get freaked out by seeing what happens when Dad loses his cell phone at Auntie's funeral, travel along with some city-smart boys who try to camp out alone, and root for an entire bank who adopts a baby abandoned in the night-deposit box.

It's pretty slick how a well-written short story can suck you in; before you know it, you're reading a genre that you are sure you don't like. An interesting thing that happened to me as I read this compilation of stories is that I enjoyed stories in genres that I may never have picked up if they had been labeled. As I read these stories to my sixth-grade students, they wanted to get copies of their own. They, too, enjoyed the punch in these stories and the wide variety of styles and genres.

How can you go wrong with a book featuring stories from such authors as Richard Peck, Lloyd Alexander, Washington Irving, Theodore Taylor, and even Avi himself?

If you're looking for a sampler of authors or genres, or a few short stories to read between novels, or something to read without committing to an entire book, or you just feel like something a little different, then try BEST SHORTS on for size. It is one of those one-size-fits-all kind of collections.


Reviewed by: Dianna Geers

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Terrific choice, July 9, 2010

By 

M. Criss "phoenix" - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Best Shorts: Favorite Stories for Sharing (Hardcover)

Avi wins again! This is a terrific group of stories, some funny (Avi's own short) and some scary...some classic and some new. The stories are deeper than a typical collection of say, scary stories, and will spark conversation in a classroom. This is a great anthology for the classroom, by the way, but I've only seen one other teacher who uses it aside from myself, so was glad to read a review by a teacher. Yea! Kids deserve this book and it will help them love to read! Highly recommended, even if you're not a teacher! :o)

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars You'll love it!, September 12, 2007

By 

Ada (Hong Kong) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Best Shorts: Favorite Stories for Sharing (Hardcover)

Even though these short stories were collected with young or teen readers in mind, I found many of them highly entertaining and some even made me laugh out loud on the underground train where I was reading them!