26Shorts2026: prompt --- coming-of-age

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                  🟨     26 Short Stories for 2026
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Discuss and share - topic: coming-of-age.

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  #26shorts2026

Completed prompt / 🎉
"coming of age" read January 3

"The Man in the Wall" by Dorothy K Haynes, c1970. 4 stars

Did you ever have a friend when you were a kid at school that told the tallest tales? It was appealing, right? The narrator in this story has a friend, Jessie, who tells her about the man that lives in the wall of her family's kitchen. He has a beard like Father Christmas, throws cleaned bones out from the wall, is quite moody and no telling what he might do if the narrator visited in Jessie's home. Or so that's the stories Jessie tells her. Instead, they play together on the stoop. The story grows more fantastical as the girls grow too and eventually the narrator decides that Jessie's story is fun but not to be believed. They drift apart. Years later, long after Jessie and her family had moved away, our narrator learns the truth.

I had the pleasure of reading this story aloud on quick weekend visit to see my granddaughters. The oldest one, age 9, loved that I brought this collection of stories (I had also brought it on a previous visit at Thanksgiving). The best part is the conversations we have during and after. She's an astute reader but still a kid, a sensitive kid at that, which makes for such interesting conversations.

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From my edition of the collection The Weird Tales of Dorothy K. Haynes
My full 26Shorts2026 log is here: https://www.librarything.com/topic/376315

🎉 Coming of Age:

"Destroy The City With Me Tonight" (2017) by Kate Alice Marshall

A young high school girl is diagnosed with a strange affliction. The disease draws the map of a city onto the afflicted's bones and renders them utterly forgettable and practically invisible. Yet along with this comes super strength, super vision, super speed. A forgettable super hero, now living in the city etched into her skeleton, discovers that she also has a nemesis. Someone else has the disease but prefers to play the role of super villain

Collection: The American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2018
Collection: Behind the Mask
📘 January 15, 2026.

>3 Nonconformisto: I clicked the spoiler alert. I'm horrible, I can never resist.

Sounds like a wild story!

Completed prompt

I read Abscond by Abraham Verghese. The main character is a boy who grows up in New Jersey as the son of immigrants from India.

15. Coming of Age
The second part of Michael Chabon's A Model World and Other Stories is a story cycle about a young boy, Nathan Shapiro. The five stories take Nathan from 10 years old to about 17. They generally focus on small coming of age moments, all framed by his parents' divorce, which is initiated in the first story "Little Knife." Individually, the stories are fine, but they are better when read together.

Finished Reading /📘

Brownies by ZZ Packer, read from Drinking Coffee Elsewhere

Finished Reading /📘

                                                              ✔️📗✔️📗✔️📗✔️📗✔️📗 Irish Revel by Edna O’Brien ✔️📗✔️📗✔️📗✔️📗✔️📗
                                                                   ✔️📗✔️📗✔️📗✔️📗✔️📗 07th Jun 2026, 3.5* ✔️📗✔️📗✔️📗✔️📗✔️📗

A sharp awakening for Mary, a young 17-year-old, who goes to a party hoping to see the man she has a crush on, instead it's a realisation that makes her look at things differently. This is the second story I've read by Edna O'Brien, an author new to me, and enjoyed both in how vivid her story unfolds.

Finished Reading /📘

                                                      ✔️📗✔️📗✔️📗✔️📗✔️📗 The Ring by Anna Jansson read from A Darker Shade✔️📗✔️📗✔️📗✔️📗✔️📗
                                                                   ✔️📗✔️📗✔️📗✔️📗✔️📗 6th June 2026, 3.5* ✔️📗✔️📗✔️📗✔️📗✔️📗

I’d like the play on JRR Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, in this short story Frederik Bengtsson sees himself as the ring-bearer, but here the ring is symbolic to protect him from the bullies, meanwhile a woman has been murdered which Frederik gets caught up in but through this experience, which is an awful one for him, he finds his courage.

Completed prompt / 🎉

                                                      ✔️📗✔️📗✔️📗✔️📗✔️📗 Foster by Claire Keegan✔️📗✔️📗✔️📗✔️📗✔️📗
                                                                   ✔️📗✔️📗✔️📗✔️📗✔️📗 8th June 2026, 3.5* ✔️📗✔️📗✔️📗✔️📗✔️📗

An understated story of how the world can shift for one so young with new experiences. I won’t say what happens but Claire Keegan gives a refreshing take on a child’s experience when fostered.

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here's a rundown of how I'm getting on with this challenge so far:

My ShortRead log tracks my challenge and comments on how I found those reads, message 3 also summarises in table form my progress.

So far I've completed 15 prompts, I'm going for 32 and aiming to complete 3 prompts per month.

My experience of reading short stories is in my journal, and random jots and quotes as I read short stories can be found in my short story workbook .