A Chest of Stories for Nine Year Olds

by Pat Thomson and Peter Bailey

Featuring classic, mythological and humorous tales, this is a collection of stories especially selected for children aged nine. This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0552527580
• Release Date: January 1992
• Publisher: Young Corgi
• Length: 256 Pages
• Weight: 0.45 lbs.
• Dimensions: 7.7" x 0.6" x 5.2"

Customer Reviews

"Let's Go to the Park..."

There has been a series of short story anthologies aimed at children from "A Pocketful of Stories for Five Year Olds", to this, the last of the age groups and the biggest vessel - a chest. Pat Thomson has brought together a range of short stories aimed at nine year olds, ranging from humorous ones, scary ones, poignant ones old folktales and science-fiction stories. Some are definitely better than others, as a couple are rather inappropriate for any age group, let alone nine year olds, but on the whole this is an entertaining collection of stories that I myself received on my ninth birthday. "Little Red Riding Hood: The Wolf's Story" is a gem, one in David Henry Wilson's series of fractured fairy-tales that takes new angles on old stories, and in this case paints the big bad wolf as the innocent victim, and Red Riding Hood and her grandmother (who has an unlicensed gun) as the conniving villains. My primary school teacher used to read us Wilson's short stories, and it would always end with us laughing hysterically. Philippa Pearce (best known for "Tom's Midnight Garden") gives us the creepy tale of "The Shadow Cage". Ned Challis finds a strange green bottle on Whistler's Hill and gives it to his daughter, who then trades it to her younger cousin Kevin. The bottle has a strange effect on Kevin, and when he leaves it behind in the playground, he decides to go out at night in order to fetch it. The atmosphere is captured perfectly with the unspoken unease that the adults share about Whistler's Hill and the mysterious story of the so-called witch that lived there. "Poor Arthur" is Gene Kemp's short, somewhat bitter, but very poignant ode to all the pets out there that always come second fiddle to the "favourite" animal of the household. Arthur and Chuchi are two gerbils, but both come to very different ends - Kempe has no sentimentality; this story tells it as it is. "The Cat Who Lived in a Drainpipe" is perhaps the longest story in the anthology, and written by the wonderful Joan Aiken, who's given the world of children's literature a wonderful selection of novels. Here she takes the real life figure of Tomaso Albinoni and works in his musical career with the night-time concerts of three cats: chimney-sweep Nero, palace-cat Sandro and the timid, tiny Seppi who falls in love with the human's beautiful music and ends up saving the young musician's life. "The Asrai" is Pat Thomson's own contribution to the collection, a short but mysterious and memorable account of a man's experience with an Asrai; an aquatic creature found in real folklore. The next two stories are both retellings of old fairytales, one from the Grimm's fairytales, the other from the Arabian Nights. Mark Cohen gives us "The Cat and the Dog", who get the best of wild animals and their cruel owner, and Naomi Lewis retells "The Prince and the Tortoise", which tells of the youngest son of the monarch marrying a tortoise, who has magical gifts and ultimately gets the better of her