Storm

A very short book (a short story in book form, really) about a young girl who must make a night journey in a storm for the doctor because her older sister is in labor. She gets help from an unexpected and possibly supernatural source.

I suspect that short stories are some of the more difficult things to perfect in the writing biz. How to be succinct but also fit in everything the story needs to be complete seems like it would test a writer's strength more than most other forms. This story doesn't succeed on a few levels, but mostly because it's too short; the ending is much too abrupt, as if the writer reached a required word count and refused to go any farther, so he revealed the ending solution and tagged a The End on it, dusted his show more hands, and left. It's too bad, really, because the idea behind the story is a good one, and were it fleshed out considerably more, could have made for an excellent middle grade book. show less

I wonder why it doesn't show up on the library extension. Manybooks says it is on openlibrary. I guess I'll have to check other promising candidates manually.
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Anyway, I did read it there. And it's an interesting enough leveled reader. But child me would have found it boring, and adult me can't find the nuances that others see... perhaps because it's so very short that they fly right by. But then, I've never been very fond of ghost stories or adventures either. If you have a child age about seven, they'll probably like it better.

First chapter book. good ghost story. British