Wednesday, November 30, 2011

What You Wish For: Stories and Poems for Darfur YP FIC WHAT


Stories and poems about wishes (the ones that come true and the ones that don’t).  Francisco X. Stork, Joyce Carol Oates, Jane Yolen, Gary Soto, Meg Cabot, and many more pen poems and short stories with some proceeds of the book going to Darfur refugees.  

This is a wonderful and surprising collection.  I expected this to be a book about Darfur and to be grim, humorless, and depressing, but this book is filled with stories of life, love, magic, and hope.  Also, it’s not about Darfur it’s just FOR Darfur.  Sort of confusing.  Also, the fact that it is about ‘wishes’ feels a little too general for a collection for short stories.  That out of the way it is a really GOOD collection of short stories.  My favorites personally were “Nell” a dark retelling of an old Danish short story, “The Protectionist” a funny story about a economics obsessed kid looking for a bodyguard, and “The Conjurers” a comic from the always wonderful Nate Powell.  There is a lot of gems and no real clunkers, so it’s a really good way to read a lot of stories to find new authors to follow. 

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