A collection of recently salvaged short stories, written by fifth graders in 1931! - General

[quote]This thin, pocket-sized book -- no title on its cover -- whose brittle pages made soft crackling protests when opened easily drew me into its long-gone world. I'd expected an accountant's ledger, columns of faded numbers, given its drab earthy brown-green cover, but to my delight instead there on the inside flap was a bookplate bearing "Harry W" carefully penciled in beginner's cursive. The next page proclaimed this the "Book of Short Stories" with the oddly enticing notice "printed and bound under supervision of K.E. Killeen, Director of Handiwork". Perhaps you've met a "Director of Handiwork", but I have not. The next page obligingly revealed all by way of a peppily sweet introduction which began with this greeting: How do you do! I am the little book that you have made. This at least explained what I held: a collection of stories written by fifth graders. It ended with the date: February 18, 1931. I can only speak for myself, but kids' writings are always revealing and a great find, but that a school district published, during the Great Depression no less, a collection of fifth grader's stories, book reports, and odd poems struck me as, well, it struck me. In a great way. Here then are all of the stories found in this 63-page book (download all the stories in a single, Adobe Acrobat PDF, 375KB). There are 86 in all. Some no more than four or five sentences, others span pages, but charmers all, some offering a few sweet surprises. At times the excercise of making this site felt like a typing or stenography test, I have tried to leave in only the book's typos and odd punctuations, but have probably introduced a few of my own: forgive me. (I jotted that at 1AM my first night of re-typing these stories, when I still thought coffee and stubborness would see me through in one sitting... how wrong I was. Two or three weeks later, finished, this "little weekend project" is at last finished. Zounds! Apologies abound!) If you'll also endulge one more impertinence I've marked my favorites with gold stars ( ).[/quote] A link to the book. [url]http://www.bookofshortstories.com/downloads/book-of-short-stories.pdf[/url] It's awesome. Some of them are really clever.

[quote]Origin of Rivers Long, long ago there weren’t any rivers. One day the fairy folk were playing on a mountain atop. They were digging a hold and a fountain sprang out of it. The water flowed down the side of the mountain until it reached the valley below and formed a river. Ever since the we have rivers. School No. 36 Rosaria Zizzo[/quote] It all makes sense now [quote]Friends Again Last summer Red, a boy friend of mine and I went down to the scout troop. We were both good friends. When we got down there the scouts were playing basketball so we joined in the game. One of the boys who disliked me pushed me into Red. He got mad and started an argument which ended up in a fight. The Scoutmaster told Red he was in the wrong. Red said something that the Scoutmaster didn’t like and he put Red out of our club. Then Red said he would get even with me. After this he was my worst enemy. But a few weeks after that we went on a hike and Red went with us. We were suppose to bring money for our lunch because we were going to eat at a country hotel. When it came time to eat I had lost my money. The Scoutmaster asked the boys if they had found it but they said no. They all we4nt out and looked for it but we couldn’t find it. Then Red said he had some money. The Scoutmaster said, “How much money have you”? Red replied, “Oh, abut forty cents.” Then the Scoutmaster asked, “How can you buy Bill’s lunch and yours toowith only forty cents?” But Red replied, “Bill and I will go halvers. Bill will have twenty cents worth of lunch and I will have the other twenty cents. Bill and I want to be friends.” I was surprised when he said this. So he paid for my lunch. The thing that impressed me most was that my worst enemy was willing to share with me what he should have had for himself. School No. 55 William Mollwitz[/quote] Aw that's nice.

Looking at this kinda makes me sad how the kids of this generation are. Lovely read.

[QUOTE=ParoshWasHere;35832838]Looking at this kinda makes me sad how the kids of this generation are. Lovely read.[/QUOTE] I disagree, I think nothing changed. Kids just want to differentiate themselves from the masses so they complain about the "kids these days".

[QUOTE=Probiedobie;35835775]I disagree, I think nothing changed. Kids just want to differentiate themselves from the masses so they complain about the "kids these days".[/QUOTE] nothing changed? Dude, todays kids are stuck on nintendo's and shit. Back in those days they used to go to river banks and play with toads and stones. This effects the mentality of children very much.

[QUOTE=KlaseR;35842108]nothing changed? Dude, todays kids are stuck on nintendo's and shit. Back in those days they used to go to river banks and play with toads and stones. This effects the mentality of children very much.[/QUOTE] Why don't you get off facepunch and have fun with some frogs at a river bank then? Also i hate this new generation of old people, they didn't use to live so long /sarcasm

[QUOTE=KlaseR;35842108]nothing changed? Dude, todays kids are stuck on nintendo's and shit. Back in those days they used to go to river banks and play with toads and stones. This effects the mentality of children very much.[/QUOTE] Uhhh, I owned a SNES and I played at rivers and other dumb shit like that pretty often, and I'm pretty sure a lot of other kids did too.

[QUOTE=Squeaken;35842553]Uhhh, I owned a SNES and I played at rivers and other dumb shit like that pretty often, and I'm pretty sure a lot of other kids did too.[/QUOTE] Same here. I played my first video games on my grandparent's Sega Master System, and from then on I was hooked. When I got my own N64 I thought I'd never leave the house again. I lived in a town of about 100 people in rural Australia. Me and the other kids would crash BMXs, start fires, built fortresses out of corrugated iron, make bombs with gunpowder, make slingshots/bows/potato cannons, play in the river and commandeer boats around the floodwater... when I was 10 years old I used to drive my dad's truck out to a property with a .223 rifle under the seat and go pig hunting :v: I'm not sure if kids still get up to stuff like this, all I'm saying is that we were hardcore gamers and still did all this. (honestly I am surprised at the amount of stupidly dangerous stuff we did, playing games all day was probably much safer)

I think it depends where you live, if you have access to that stuff, you tend to go out and explore and do stuff like that. If you live in an urban or sometimes suburban are you can't really do that too much. I live next to 100 acres of forest and used to have a blast building forts and doing "covert operations", I just don't think a lot of kids are in places where they can easily go into the woods every day. I think it is really neat that they found this, I wonder what people in the future would think if they found some of our fifth grade writings.

It'd be really cool if any of the children who wrote this were still alive and a copy could be given to them, I know if I was 91 or 92 and someone gave me a piece from elementary school it'd be amazing.

I can vouch for people in urban/suburban areas not being able to go out and play. The only area I ever played in was my street because we have some trees and houses are only on one side. If I had a forest to run around in, I'd be out there all the time.