Little Worlds : A Collection of Short Stories for the Middle School

by Peter Guthrie, Mary Page

The purpose of this text was to make available a large collection of stories that are high in literary quality yet accessible to middle-school students. Its widespread acceptance in schools throughout the country attests that this anthology has indeed achieved its goal. It presents students with a variety of issues, styles, conflicts, and points of view through the stories of Maupassant, Lessing, Hemingway, Welty, Hawthorne, Porter, as well as many others.

Genres: Short Stories, School, Classics, Middle Grade, Childrens, Young Adult

274 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1985

About the author

Now a psychotherapist, Peter Guthrie has an extensive background in literature, including an MA in American Studies. While teaching English at a private school in Boston, he co-edited a short story anthology (LITTLE WORLDS) and co-wrote a three-volume grammar series (RULES OF THE GAME). He has also worked as an editor in educational publishing and published freelance articles in a variety of local newspapers. An avid reader of murder mysteries and crime fiction, Guthrie’s knowledge of both literature and psychology makes him uniquely qualified to write a psychological thriller.

Reviews

[Judy · Rating 4 out of 5]

An excellent collection of classical short stories that every should read. Many of us did in our old anthologies but students today don’t get that opportunity. The author has grouped them to ‘teach’ plot, setting, character, irony, symbols, theme , and point of view. You will read Hemingway, Hawthorne, Poe, Cather, and others. I’d forgotten how much I use to enjoy a good short story.

[Kirsten · Rating 4 out of 5]

A delight to revisit some beloved short stories and discover some new ones.

[Devon Flaherty · Rating 4 out of 5]

I chose Little Worlds by Peter Guthrie and Mary Page over the summer to use in my English 1 classroom (early high school/late middle school) during our winter short story unit. I ended up adding a little: some Latin-American literature, Native American contemporary literature (see future review on Great Short Stories by Contemporary Native American Writers) and some essays (Martin Luther King Jr., etc.) before transitioning to short stories as a novel (The House on Mango Street), but otherwise we used Little Worlds to direct us. Not only does it include 29 short stories, but the first half-plus of them is divided into chapters/themes/weeks and we studied those themes—plot, character, setting/atmosphere, POV, irony, symbol, and theme—with the book as it went along. At least mostly. (I thought irony was a little specific.) Then I pulled in some more reading from the back (and swapped out the Ray Bradbury included for two others of his) before adding the extras that I just referred to. In hindsight, it would have been smart of me to loop in some more contemporary stuff, as this book was published in 1985 and included lots of classics that were around when I was in high school.

Still, this is an excellent book of short story classics (though you might have to find it used). I’m thinking it should be on the shelf of any serious reader. Sure, you can buy all the flashy, new titles at the bookstore and subscribe to literary magazines, but all the stories here are ones worth coming back for. The are also excellent for the classroom. The intro sections are a little short and to the point, but along with some teaching, they work. And many of the stories could also be used to introduce the reader to an author. From here, you could go to short story collections by Poe, Hawthorne, Hemingway, Hughes, London, O’Connor, etc., or The Martian Chronicles or poetry by Gwendolyn Brooks or…

Here is a list of included stories (which is sure to jog a memory or two. My picks/most memorable have an asterisk):

“The Sniper,” O’Flaherty*
“An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge,” Bierce*
“The Carbird Seat,” Thurber
“A Visit of Charity,” Welty
“The Masque of the Red Death,” Poe*
“The Lottery,” Jackson*
“Miss Brill,” Mansfield
“A Telephone Call,” Parker
“The Gift of the Magi,” Henry*
“The Monkey’s Paw,” Jacobs*
“Maud Martha and New York,” Brooks
“The Japanese Quince,” Galsworthy
“The Last Lesson,” Daudet
“Sun and Shadow,” Bradbury
“Winter Night,” Boyle
“Daughter,” Caldwell
“A Wagner Matinee,” Cather
“The Story of an Hour,” Chopin*
“Marigolds,” Collier
“The Minister’s Black Veil,” Hawthorne*
“Old Man at the Bridge,” Hemingway
“African Morning,” Hughes
“Through the Tunnel,” Lessing*
“To Build a Fire,” London
“A Summer’s Reading,” Malamud
“The Necklace,” de Maupassant*
“Why Reeds Are Hollow,” Mistral
“The Crop,” O’Connor
“The Fig Tree,” Katherine Anne Porter
“The Open Window,” Munro
Note: At the end of the unit on the test, I asked for the students’ least- and most-liked story. For a group of ninth-grade-ish boys, “The Sniper” won, hands-down. Short, straight-forward, a little violent, and complete with a twist ending: everything they could hope for, I suppose.

Despite it being a little “old,” though, this is a great book of short stories and a great book to use in the classroom. (Yeah, I already said that.) If you ever come across it at a used bookstore, I think just about anyone would enjoy it, actually. You’ll probably recognize—even just as a nagging in the back of your subconscious—some of these, but they are classics for a reason. No, that reason is not to torture students. They are classics because they are well written, interesting, innovative, and many of them include a nice twist that leaves the short story reader with an imprint of the story in their mind.

TWO BONUS SHORT STORY REVIEWS: RAY BRADBURY

I actually skipped the Bradbury in the book and instead assigned both of these. One of them is also included in The Martian Chronicles, but they are both well-written, interesting, and surprising. They also both look forward from the 1950s to the “future,” so make good discussion points.

THE VELDT

This, along with “The Lottery” and “The Gift of the Magi,” maybe “The Necklace,” are short stories that have lived with me since I read them as a schoolgirl. “The Veldt,” in fact, made the strongest impression on me, so I wanted to share this story instead of “Sun and Shadow.” It is a bit long, but it has some really interesting things to discuss including, as I mentioned above, Bradbury’s predictions about technology but also parenting (etc.). The reason it really stands out for students, I suppose, it that it is creepy (and again, violent). There is a real atmosphere here, which would make it a good pick for the chapter on tone/atmosphere. There should be a series of crinkles going up your spine while you read this, though it’s not horror (though you should be horrified by the end). It’s a cautionary tale.

THERE WILL COME SOFT RAINS

I like Bradbury, clearly. I enjoy his clean, compelling story-telling and also the innovative places he takes us. Whereas “The Veldt” takes us to a futuristic family and their space-age “nursery”/playroom (and how technology with the best intentions can go so very wrong), “There Will Come Soft Rains” takes us to a futuristic home after nuclear fall-out. We get to see the family and their homelife through a totally different lens at a totally different approach. In fact, these two stories can be studied together as two views of the family/home-life in the future. “There Will Come Soft Rains” also has the added charm of being very descriptive, full of surprising language, tight “visuals,” and noteworthy quotes. As a short story, I like it better than “The Veldt,” it just hasn’t been the one that’s haunted me for decades.

***REVIEW WRITTEN FOR THE STARVIGN ARTIST BLOG***

[Tandava Graham · Rating 3 out of 5]

I like the format of this book, with sections on the different literary elements, and then example stories to study each one. There’s also a separate teacher’s supplement you can find online that offers a bunch of comprehension and discussion questions, which is very helpful, though it would have been better to just have it right in the book with everything else. Unfortunately, the stories are all “classics” that I feel like I ought to appreciate and yet don’t. I enjoyed a couple of them, and the others are all boring, depressing, or both. I certainly can’t see how I could pass them off on my middle schoolers. Very old fashioned and most with very little dialogue. I wish there were a collection like this, but with more modern stories, actually targeted at a middle school audience.

[Timmy Cham · Rating 4 out of 5]

"When we talked with other middle-school English teachers," write the editors, "we discovered that they were...frustrated by the lack of a good anthology for [their] students. It was out of this frustration that Little Worlds was born. The title, by the way, is inspired by an observation by Eudora Welty: that "we're seeing this story as a little world in space, just as we can isolate one star in the sky by a concentrated vision."

And a delightful collection of 30 short stories it is! In addition to the expected classics--including Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery," Katherine Mansfield's "Miss Brill," WW Jacobs' "The Monkey's Paw" and Jack London's "To Build a Fire"--Guthrie and Page include a number of wonderful stories off the beaten pedagogical path. Here are a few of my favorites:

Ray Bradbury, "Sun and Shadow" (1953)--Much is written now about the evils of "cultural appropriation." So what a surprise to find a short story from the 1950s touching upon this theme--and written by a sci-fi writer, no less!

Kay Boyle, "Winter Night" (1946)--An older babysitter tells her charge, Felicia, that she reminds her of a little girl the babysitter knew once. As the babysitter elaborates on the little girl and her fate, the reader comes to a horrible realization.

Eugenia Collier, "Marigolds" (1969)--A heart-rending account about how poverty and prejudice engender destructive rage in an adolescent girl: "I had indeed lost my mind, for all the smoldering emotions of that summer swelled in me and burst--the great need for my mother who was never there, the hopelessness of our poverty and degradation, the bewilderment of being neither child nor woman and yet both at once, the fear unleashed by my father's tears. And these feelings combined in one great impulse toward destruction." (To me, the story is one answer to the question Langston Hughes posed in his poem, "Harlem.")

Doris Lessing, "Through the Tunnel"--A boy sets an ambitious athletic goal, and strives day-by-day to slowly realize that goal. A wonderful story of spirit.

Bernard Malamud, "A Summer's Reading"--A young man's loneliness leads him to falsely boast about a summer's goal to read 100 books.

Needless to say, I greatly enjoyed (and was edified by) the editor's selection of stories. This book isn't just for middle-school students.

[Kris · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great short stories to read aloud--inspires rich discussions