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Short Stories every middle school student should read


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This site has a good list:

http://www.classicshorts.com/bib.html

 

I would want to include some O Henry stuff for sure. Kipling has some really good reads (the one about the leopard!), Bierce's A Horseman in the Sky, Jack London, O'Keefe's Death Makes a Comeback and Dylan Thomas's a Child's Christmas in Wales.

 

Oh - and something by Wells too - The Time Machine is really good!

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Oooh, posting just to hang on to the link to these great lists.  I really like short stories for teaching.  I don't really like reading them all that much, LOL, but I do like to use them for teaching!

 

Some of my favorites for this age group:

 

The Ransom of Red Chief - O Henry

 

almost anything by Poe - The Fall of the House of Usher, The Cask of Admontillado, The Telltale Heart, the Pit and the Pendulum, The Black Cat

 

Wells - The Country of the Blind

 

Hawthorne - The birthmark, Rappacini's daughter, Dr. Heidegger's Experiment, 

 

Kipling - The Cat that Walked by Himself

 

Saki - Tobermory, The Open Window

 

The Monkey's Paw - WW Jacobs

 

Why I Live at the PO - Eudora Welty

 

All of the Sherlock Holmes short stories!

 

The Bottle Imp - RL Stevenson

 

The Lady or the Tiger

 

and of course . . . The Lottery by Shirley Jackson

 

Those are the ones, off the top of my head, that I'd use for a middle schooler.  Can't wait to check out the other lists people posted!

 

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Here is a link to some of the ones my high schoolers have read this yr. I have a different take on some of the ones in my link and others suggested. I wouldn't recommend them for all middle schoolers. I know my 6th grader could not handle the content of stories like The Lottery. The idea that they would stone even a baby to death for some unknown tradition would be too much for her. It really disturbed my 9th grader for the entire day after we read it. Same with Poe. (Not the disturbing my 9th grader, just too much for my 6th grader.)

 

Fwiw, The Necklace and Gift of the Magi are not dark like many of the others.

 

http://forums.welltrainedmind.com/topic/499657-short-stories/?do=findComment&comment=5397336

 

My kids did have a great discussion comparing/contrasting The Lottery to Hunger Games,though.

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I just read All Summer in a Day with my fourth graders.  By far one of my favorites of all time.   :)

 

We read it this past fall for science (we read relevant stories from the Holt Anthology of Science Fiction), and then we watched the movie on YouTube (I remember the movie from when I was in school). It was the first time I ever saw my daughter cry over something she watched.  :001_wub:

 

Aside: Keith Coogan played the male lead. I had forgotten all about him!

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We read it this past fall for science (we read relevant stories from the Holt Anthology of Science Fiction), and then we watched the movie on YouTube (I remember the movie from when I was in school). It was the first time I ever saw my daughter cry over something she watched.  :001_wub:

 

Aside: Keith Coogan played the male lead. I had forgotten all about him!

 

I've taught it when I was teaching middle school.  But we read it with our co-op just a couple weeks ago and then watched the movie, which I had never seen - what a weird but also awesome little movie.  I was worried I did it too early, but I have an extremely vivid memory of reading it as a child - probably in fourth grade.  And I didn't even remember the title - or that Bradbury was the author - and had to refind it as an adult.  It was so perfect not only for the message, but also for the metaphors and the language.

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