I didn't read every single entry.

4 ⭐ Who Wants to Shoot an Elephant? , By Wells Tower
While the subject is a despicable one, the author points out the POV of hunters. Moreover, for those who are sickened by the sport of hunting, he points out the speciesism of those who eat animals and their products.

3 ⭐ Jack, July, by Victor Lofato
About a young meth-head in Tuscon.

2 ⭐ 780 Days of Solitude, by Bauer, Fattal, Shourd
About 3 young Americans who had been living in Damascus who were arrested while taking a hike. They were almost to the top of the hill when a soldier standing there beckoned to them. They didn't know it, but where the soldier stood was Iran land. So they're imprisoned. They have a chance, after a year's imprisonment, to meet with their mothers, and they find out what their families have been doing to obtain their release. Shane says:
"mom talks about my friends as if they were hers. she and Sarah's mom have been living together, working on our campaign full time. Our friend Sean macfessel, who was with us in Kurdistan, is moving in with them. dad is raising money through hog roasts in rural Minnesota and by raffling off bobcat skid loaders."

Here's what I'd say to Shane's Dad, "hey Shane's dad what irony that you are roasting hogs to raise money to get your imprisoned son released from an Iranian prison. Did you know that pigs are intelligent and social creatures? And that they are imprisoned? and that when they are in prison and treated the way they are, they just want to die? and then they are tortured and murdered?"

3 ⭐ The Contestant, by Daniel Alarcón
A family is destroyed when one of the daughters appears on a reality TV show "El Valor de la Verdad," in Perú.

5 ⭐ The Christmas Miracle, by Rebecca Curtis
This is a strange, but engrossing, entertaining story of an upper-middle-class extended family Christmas holiday. The cat scene is horrifying. I'm glad no characters got to hurt or kill the coyotes, who were killing the family's cats, because the houses where they and their well-to-do neighbors lived had taken over the coyotes' land.

2 ⭐ Isaac Cameron Hill, by Ammo Keller
Probably if I weren't cis/asexual, I'd enjoy this story more.

2 ⭐ A Speck in the Sea, Paul Tough
A story about a lobster/crab killer who fell off his boat at 3 am in the morning, in North Atlantic waters. Too bad the crabs didn't get to eat him. This time.

3 ⭐ Things You're Not Proud Of, by Tom McAllister
I love stories about married people who hate each other.
"she dips a finger in the bucket and swipes it across my gum line, says it ought to fix my crooked incisor, and maybe it will make my jokes funnier.
Texture of a pulverized crayon, taste of an overripe orange. my jokes are equally as funny as they were 15 years ago, when she thought they were plenty funny. I want that on the record.
i dab some of the paste on her chin where she seems to have given up the fight against her persistent sprouting hairs. I rubbed some into her ears so maybe she'll become a more generous listener. She shoves her index finger up my nose to stop my snoring."

3 ⭐ Out of Eden Walk, by Paul Salopek

4 ⭐ An Oral History of Neftalí Cuello, by Corinne Gotta
A teenaged tobacco field worker tells us how it is working in a tobacco field. It makes you sick from absorbing the tobacco and the pesticides that they spray the plants with. And they make pitiful money.

2 ⭐ Remote Control, Sarah Marshall
Tonya Harding/Nancy Kerrigan
If you think you know the story of what happened between Olympic Skaters Tonya Harding and Nancy Kerrigan in 1992, you should read this story. You'll get to hear Tonya's side of it.

2 ⭐ The Future Looks Good, by Lesley Nneka Arimah
More men controlling women's lives. ( )

The high school students at 826 National always do a wonderful job of compiling terrific readings for this annual collection. The 2015 collection is every bit as wonderful as the ones which preceded it and contain something for every reader. Not every story appealed to me, but all were excellently written and worthy selections for this annual anthology which I look forward to reading every year. ( )

The high school students at 826 National always do a wonderful job of compiling terrific readings for this annual collection. The 2015 collection is every bit as wonderful as the ones which preceded it and contain something for every reader. Not every story appealed to me, but all were excellently written and worthy selections for this annual anthology which I look forward to reading every year. ( )

I think I'm probably done with this series now. Well Tower's "Who Wants to Shoot an Elephant?" is well written but pretty hard to read; other than that, the selections this time were pretty skippable. ( )

I looked forward to reading this anthology, but I was somewhat disappointed. Granted, I am older than the high school students who comprise the team of editors who made the selections, and I think that was important. There is one awesome very short piece by Claudia Rankine titled "You are in the dark, in the car..." (page 139), which I am going to scan. I need to follow up on this author. Great piece. There is also a nice group of four poems by TJ Jarrett which I want to scan as well. "The world we knew favored speed or steel. Or both. We could run when they took up arms or we could square the body against the pain we each would know." That is excellent: "square the body against the pain we each would know." Other than those two pieces, I found that I stopped reading each piece after a certain point, saying to myself, "Oh, well, that's enough of that." I am going to try other years of the series just to get a broader view. I appreciate the long-term commitment that the students make to the process of reading magazines and journals over the course of a year. ( )