A review by emily_m_green
Flying Lessons & Other Stories by Ellen Oh

emotional funny hopeful reflective medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

 

Flying Lessons & Other Stories is an anthology of short stories edited by Ellen Oh as part of We Need Diverse Books. The stories have characters and authors from a range of backgrounds and about a range of topics but all have adolescent main characters. 

The opening story, for instance, by Matt de la Peña, is about a boy who is Mexican American and who wants to spend his summer working on his basketball game. He spends every day at a gym where the best players, adult players, play. The story is told in second person and has an honest tone that students appreciate. It is also used in Units of Study for Reading: Investigating Character as a tool to think about characterization, which is where I discovered the book.

In Meg Medina’s story, “Sol Painting, Inc,” a girl plans to make her father’s one man, one truck painting enterprise into a multimillion dollar chain. The last job of the summer turns out to be painting the exclusive private school where she will start in the fall. This was not her decision, and she learns some big lessons working under her father and alongside her brother. . 

It is not easy to find good short stories for young readers. A few years back when I was teaching a creative writing class to elementary students, I found very few options. The works in Flying Lessons are a bit above most elementary school students and perhaps still a challenge for many middle school students. Not out of their reach, but they do need scaffolding. The stories are also good, well-written, and don/t talk down to their young target audience. In addition, they offer a diversity of characters that was also quite difficult to find a few years ago. 

Would I teach this book? Emphatically, yes. There are no clunkers in this anthology and there is so much for students to think about. We did some writing that involved modeling sentence structure after the sentences in stories and writing scenes from a different character’s perspective. I am so glad to have found this book.