https://nwhyte.livejournal.com/3566340.html

These are really good short stories, most of them liminal fantasies involving children in small-town America; the most famous one apart from the title story is "Subcommittee", where a human woman and her child manage to find a channel for peaceful communication with aliens where the grown men (of both sides) have failed. I did not even realise that it was a collection, and after finishing the first story was expecting another 150 pages of adventures for the child and teacher with the Anything Box (and then found myself on an alien world). Really something out of the ordinary. ( )

I loved this. ( )

Brilliant collection of polished little SF/F gems with a thread of the strange moving through most of them. Some signature tropes like the teacher / student relationship and the limitless imagination of children, bordering onto the purely magical, repeat, though with enough subtle variations to keep the entire book engaging through to the end. If you can find this collection somewhere grab it, it‰ÃƒÂ›Ã‚ªs out of print and not commonly found at the secondhand stores. Highly recommended to fans of classic SF/F with a dash of some quiet horror, a bit of the weird and pinch of the strange all in the mix. ( )

I was enthralled by the stories in this book when I read it. Henderson has a gift for writing SF short stories. ( )

Zenna Henderson is probably the most underrated author in the SF&F field that I can think of. Although her stories are among my favorites, they are long out of print.
Why?
Well, she's deceased (died in 1983), was never very prolific, concentrated on short stories - and had her vision brought to the screen through a movie starring William Shatner, that, by all reports, was pretty bad. (I have avoided watching it.)

Some critics have said they find her work to be "too sentimental" - but I would say, rather, that it is emotionally powerful. She often deals with characters that feel 'different' or disenfranchised, and I have never encountered a writer who could better articulate the longing for something 'more' than this mundane existence... (a common feeling among sf&f fans, I'd say!). She also deals frequently with themes of youth and age, and mixes wistfulness and horror to wonderful effect.

I'd read several of the stories in this collection before, but not all of them. And hey, I have to say that any story that can make me cry not just on first reading - but the third time I've read it as well, has to be pretty effective...

• The Anything Box. 1956
• Subcommittee. 1962
• Something Bright. 1959
• Hush!. 1953
• Food to All Flesh. 1954
• Come On, Wagon!. 1951
• Walking Aunt Daid. 1955
• The Substitute. 1953
• The Grunder. 1953
• Things. 1960
• Turn the Page. 1957
• Stevie and the Dark. 1952
• And a Little Child -. 1959
• The Last Step. 1957 ( )