I think as a whole, this collection of stories would be good to use as a mentor text for students. Students could choose a story to model their own short story after that teaches a life lesson. It would allow students to see different ways they could foreshadow a lesson, or characterize others in a brief way. It would allow for creative writing while also learning how to write narratives in a variety of different ways.

As a whole I really enjoyed this book. I loved all the individual characters and their stories that had nothing to do with one another, though I like to think they were all existing in the same world as one another, learning life together. It was a slice of life in every section, and would be a great piece to introduce to students to demonstrate different lived experiences, and promote critical thinking.

As I read through the book, I was adding tabs to different parts of each story where I felt the lesson that was being shared was being highlighted. However, the only story I found I did not tab as I was reading was. “Seventy-Six Dollars and Forty-Nine Cents.“ It was not that there was nothing interesting about it, I was just so captivated by the prose-style writing that I got lost in it, and found it be more fun rather than a lesson.