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Recommendations for book of short stories?

14 replies

minotaur · 05/04/2014 19:35

My 10 year-old DS's descriptive writing is developing beautifully, but he hasn't yet grasped how to structure his stories effectively. They tend to be very long, and a little random.

As he normally reads chapter-books, which don't serve as good examples for the stories he writes in class, I was thinking it might help if I bought him some books of short stories instead. Any recommendations? He likes fantasy books best (e.g. Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, Artemis Fowl, Fighting Fantasy).

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minotaur · 05/04/2014 19:41

Oh, and he likes thrillers too, like the Young Bond series.

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iseenodust · 07/04/2014 15:19

Not fantasy but Kipling's Just So Stories might be an idea.

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HercShipwright · 07/04/2014 18:18

Asimov did several volumes of short stories. Mainly, it is true, about Robots.

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minotaur · 08/04/2014 19:18

Thanks for the suggestions. I'm really surprised I haven't had more though. Is there a gap in the children's fiction market, or is everyone just on holiday? Given that kids are regularly asked to write short stories at school, I'd have thought it would be an obvious thing for schools to encourage them to read (I suspect my DC's stories are so long and rambling because in his head he's writing a novel!).

I found these two on Amazon, which looked interesting and had good reviews, so I will give them a try too:

Under the Weather: Stories about Climate Change, edited by Tony Bradman

Unexpected Magic: Collected stories by Diana Wynne Jones

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ancientbuchanan · 08/04/2014 19:22

Roald Dahl

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ancientbuchanan · 08/04/2014 19:22

P g wodehouse

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ipadquietly · 08/04/2014 22:16

Paul Jennings
Brilliant bizarre stories!

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Slapntickleothewenches · 09/04/2014 07:31

If he likes Young Bond, DS has just got "The Danger Society- the young Bond dossier"
It's full of info on the series but interestingly, there is a short Young Bond story in the front. I say interesting as it is a familiar theme but in a compact form which may give him some pointers as to how to condense his work effectively.

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minotaur · 09/04/2014 09:29

Great, thanks. Keep them coming!

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iseenodust · 09/04/2014 09:32

You'd get more responses if you started a thread on Childrens Fiction.

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DramaQueenofHighCs · 09/04/2014 09:43

If I remember correctly Tolkien write some short stories, the title 'Tales from the perilous realm' springs to mind. May be worth looking in to.

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InMySpareTime · 09/04/2014 11:15

The Strangeling's Tale on Smashwords, or there's an Amazon edition
Great reviews, a good blend of adventure and fantasy in several stand-alone short stories that link together.

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Clavinova · 09/04/2014 23:08

We used to have a Puffin Book of Stories for 6 year olds which is the nearest to essay length I've seen;they go up to age 9 on Amazon.
In Waterstones today and spotted:
Of Lions and Unicorns, A Lifetime of Tales - 25 short stories by Michael Morpurgo.
The Great Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - 8 stories of 30-40 pages long.
If he likes Harry Potter then there's J.K.Rowling's The Tales of Beedle the Bard which I remember not buying a couple of years ago although I can't recall why!

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HmmAnOxfordComma · 10/04/2014 20:56

The Daydreamer by Ian McEwan. Collection for children of fantastic imaginative pieces.

Short! By Kevin Crossley-Holland. These are about the length a child might write in 40 mins in school.

Oxford and Heinemann do lots of themed collections such as Stories From Around The World, Ghost Stories etc etc

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