If you wanted to cover some short stories and poems in middle school

[conuly]

which ones would you pick? Public domain preferred, but if there's a super great anthology out there, I'm good with that too.

Comments

[conuly]

Not sure. Mostly, I think I want to take one year with both girls and cover well-known poems and short stories that are age appropriate and reasonably accessible, interspersing that with longer works of literature.

(Maybe I just want an excuse to read Ransom of Red Chief with them.)

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

O. Henry is good. Saki, Kipling and Mark Twain have some rollicking tales too. In my adolescence, I read every Ray Bradbury story I could get my hands on: a lot of them scared the heck out of me, but I loved them. Ursula LeGuin's short stories are amazing.

Poets: start with Robert Frost and Edna St. Vincent Millay. Are your girlies good enough readers that you can just turn them on to a poet or author, and then sit back and let them search out and devour as much as they like? If not, maybe start with Shel Silverstein, Dorothy Parker and/or Ogden Nash.