Zenna Henderson was a schoolteacher - right here in Arizona, in fact.  She obviously loved children - almost all of her stories are about children.  This collection of short stories are ones that were published between 1951 and 1962 in Galaxy Magazine, Beyond Fantasy Fiction, Imagination or the ever-popular The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction  - oh, the voices of my misspent youth.

This is a very dear favorite of mine and a comfort read from time to time.  I did review it several years ago on this website.  I thought it could stand to be expanded upon and offered it up again.  Henderson's voice is, in turn, endearing, frustrated, loving and caustic; most of the emotions that children stir up in adults.  You see, most all of her stories concerned children or teaching, in one way or another. She particularly liked dwelling on the wonder that children see in common things; a wonder that is conditioned out of us as we age.  She waxes nostalgic for the loss of a sense of wonder between many of her pages.

"The Anything Box" of the title explores one teacher's willingness to believe in magic simply because she can see how much one little girl believes.  The teacher's belief is what eventually saves the girl from a loss.

"Subcommittee" is from the point of view of a young woman with a small boy, and a husband who is part of a 'first contact' military group; trying to come to terms with a totally alien race that has landed on the planet.  The problem is, of course, communication; they want/need something but seem reluctant to confess it and our military has become more suspicious that the visit will end up being more of an incursion.  It takes the native curiosity of two young ones and the natural acceptance of difference between two young mothers to shake the men-types out of their suspicion and start them towards trust.  A cute story; the children and mothers being the 'sub-committee' of the title.

"Something Bright" is seen through the eyes of a depression-era poverty-stricken young girl whose mother 'loans' her out to an old woman neighbor for company when the old woman's husband is away.  For a princely allowance and daily meals (eggs- every day!), the girl sleeps with the old woman.  But before she's allowed to sleep, she must help search the house for 'something bright.'  And the old woman gets more and more despondent each night.  When the girl finally does find it, it is a source of amazing wonder and a longing to join the old woman and her man; the reader experiences the utter joy and relief of the two old people.

"Hush" is nothing less than a true horror story.  A babysitter trying to finish her geometry homework, absentmindedly agrees with her young charge that he is allowed to make a 'noise-eater' so that he can make all the noise he wants without disturbing her concentration.  To their horror, he succeeds all too well; but he can't turn it off.

"Food To All Flesh" is singularly different in that the main point of view is not a child but a priest.  Padre Manuel is a loving man and quite willing to accept the idea that God sent down an alien ship in the field.  As he becomes more familiar with the alien, it seems to him that the poor thing is hungry.  But everything he brings is tasted and promptly thrown up.  He even starts bringing things that human wouldn't eat but to no avail.  Finally, in desperation, the alien reveals that it has little ones who are also starving.  Poor Padre Manuel would like nothing more than to help sustain them but he's run out of ideas and offerings.  And then one of the little ones bites him… It's a nicer ending than most authors would have run with.  I thought it uplifting.

"Come On, Wagon!" is her usual trope of a small child believing in wonder and an adult learning to accept it.  In this one, Henderson belabors the point that society and adults condition children out of their sense of wonder into a more acceptable belief system; often to their detriment.  This had a strong sense of sadness.

"Walking Aunt Daid" is one of my favorites.  For some reason, I think on this one from time to time over the years.  A rural family (I tend to think hillbillies) has an old relation in their home.  She's very very old but not a lot of trouble.  The family had been taking care of Aunt Daid for generations; not because they had to but because they ought to.  But once a generation, Aunt Daid has to be taken outside for a walk and she must be accompanied by a male relation.  This year the task falls to a twenty-year-old named Paul.  But his father is very reticent about sharing with him what the point of the walk would be.  His father merely insists that he stay with her and bring her home when she's done.  What Paul and all the generations before him witness is something beyond their comprehension.  What they witness is a young soul trapped in a wrinkly skin and her own memories and belief system; and even if they understood, it was unlikely they could ever help.  A hopeless sort of story; don't know why this resonates with me.

"The Substitute" takes us back into a classroom.  A young female teacher is at her wits end trying to teach a young boy who is obviously intelligent but doesn't care a whit about schoolwork.  When a bug hits the school, the principal is forced to bring in a substitute teacher for the class.  We, the reader, aren't told who or what he is; or where he came from or why he knew to come.  But he knows exactly what is confounding the young boy.  He offers the boy a chance of a lifetime; a chance to leave the confines of a single world and expand his opportunities.  But what the boy decides to do speaks a great deal about Henderson's hopes and dreams.

"The Grunder" is, for Henderson, an odd story.  No children; just a young married couple trying to cope with their differences and make their marriage work.  The man is plagued with overwhelming jealousy to the point of driving away his wife.  In an act of desperation, he decides to believe in a local legend; a way to stop his unreasoning jealousy and save both his marriage and his sanity - unless believing in the legend destroys him.  And we're brought back to the recurring theme of believing in wonder.

"Things" is a first contact type story but from the view point of the natives meeting human aliens.  As with most SF stories, the humans bring gifts both technological but also societal; much like the Europeans trying to 'civilize' native tribes, our gifts often come with a steep price.

"Turn the Page" is my least favorite in this collection.  We're back in a classroom with a magical teacher who teaches life skills to a class of first graders by showing them exactly how it feels to be a bird on the wing hunted by a predator and then, in turn, exactly how the predator feels.  The lessons she tries to teach are profound and this reader wondered at just why the teacher (and Henderson) thought this would be a good idea.  Without more lifetime experience, what were these children to make of these experiences; how could they possibly apply these lessons?  And, sure enough, damage was done…

"Stevie and the Dark" is one of her more typical stories; a young boy encounters an alien thing he dubs The Dark.  Being only five-years-old, little Stevie has a profound belief in magic and the point of the story is that belief makes you stronger.  Stevie does everything he can to keep The Dark from escaping or hurting him.  But nature has a way of destroying the best made traps and plans.  It takes Stevie's firm belief in the magic of his two popsicle sticks tied together perpendicularly with the letters INRI written on them to save himself and his mother, but not, sadly, his donkey.

"And A Little Child" revisits the theme of children believing in magic and an adult trying to do the same.  A camping trip befuddles one woman when a young girl maintains the rolling hills around them are alive.  When the young girl risks her life in a terrible storm to save the beasts; it takes the woman's growing belief to save both the beasts and the girl.

And finally, "The Last Step", the most haunting of all this collection.  Like the story I mentioned earlier, I think of this one from time to time but this one haunts me the most.  There's a teacher recruited to teach children belonging to a group of colonists on another planet.  She's the type of teacher that we all hated; a by-the-book, no-frills, and definitely no-troublesome-imagination type of teacher.  She observes a couple of young boys on the playground engaged in a very serious activity; one that captures her imagination even while she does her level best to deny her growing concern and worry.  Her refusal to contemplate the truth of their efforts - they are trying to save everyone in the settlement - actually causes her own demise.  And when it happens, she knows exactly what would happen next and how she'll die - all because she was resentful of their imagination.

I wish Henderson's books were still in print; I haven't seen one on a new bookstore shelf in years.  There really isn't anything else like them that I've ever read.  They are, for the most part, sweet and loving, focused on observing the world through the eyes of a child, and trying to restore a sense of wonder in adult readers.  I highly recommend her.  ~~ Catherine Book

For more reveiws of Zenna Henderson's work click here