Not a bad little collection of stories. Apparently meant for younger readers (8 upwards it says on the back), though there's one story in particular I would personally have considered a little too disturbing at that age. I'm not so sure I don't still!

The title is a little deceptive, as not a single story in the collection is by Asimov, but he always did have an eye for a good story, and he gathered some excellent ones here. ( )

Doctor Asimov makes the pertinent point that most of us are mutants in some fashion, mostly very, very minor but sometimes noticeable.

The mutants in this anthology differ from baseline norms in major ways, mostly in ways that are useful, if not necessarily in obvious ways. Ray Bradbury's 'Hail and Farewell' takes a look at a person who'd been a boy of about twelve for longer than was really healthy, but his 'affliction' brings joy to those unable to have children of their own. Rather unusually, Zena Henderson's 'Come On, Wagon' was one of the few that ended on a downer. All the stories were of quite high standards though ( )

It's a little hard to judge this as a young adult anthology, as I first read it as full adult. But still, Young Mutants is very good and I think I'd recommend it to just about anyone.

My favorite stories from this anthology include: "Keep Out" by Fredric Brown, because human egocentrism is such a very dangerous thing; "I Can't Help Saying Goodbye" by Ann Mackenzie, the single best story here and not just because of the total lack of punctuation; "The Children's Room" by Raymond F. Jones, only partially because of the mysterious library books; and "The Lost Language" by David H. Keller,M.D., for such a lovely declaration of love.

"The Wonder Horse" by George Byram is another of my favorites, but I'd read it before in the Horses anthology, and I have a hard time thinking of it as a mutant story instead of as a horse story, even though it is decidedly both.

I love the range of stories that Asimov et al. selected for this anthology. As with the Young Extraterrestrials anthology, which was the first in this Young anthology set that I've read (review), the stories that make up this anthology were not written by direct request. While Young Mutants was published in the early 1980s, the stories themselves were first published in the 30s, 40s, 50s, and 70s. Asimov has really selected the best stories along the mutant theme to include here.

Favorite typo: "couln't" [p. 162, ISBN 0060201568] ( )

This is a book I have always enjoyed. From the story of the boy who has wings, who is wild at heart; to the horse that can run like a cheetah; to my personal favorite, the spoiled little boy whose first friend is a fuzzy green alien artifact designed to "make him better at being human".

Some of them are rather dated (not surprising, given when they were written) and one or two are heartbreaking at times, but they're good stories. ( )