Teeny Weenies – Freestyle Frenzy and Other Stories

Teeny Weenies, Freestyle Frenzy and Other Stories by David Lubar is a collection of very short funny stories for 7 year olds that each take a sharp turn somewhere near the end.

What happens

The first one is about a swimming gala. The narrator is the anchor leg of a good relay team, and she's nervous, although she tells her teammate she's never nervous.

Then four swimmers nobody recognises line up in the next lane. They've got long towels wrapped round them all the way down to their feet, and the first one doesn't let go of hers until she's actually leaving the block.

They win by miles. And they keep their feet very close together, and one of them walks off with a strange shuffle.

The narrator works out what's going on. Her friend tells her the idea is ridiculous. It is ridiculous. It's also the only thing that fits, and the only way to do anything about it involves her brother and her dog Tugger, who cannot walk past a loose piece of fabric without pulling it.

That's the shape of most of them. A perfectly ordinary situation, one detail that's slightly off, and a last page that explains it in a way nobody sensible would have guessed. Nothing frightening happens. The strangeness is silly rather than spooky.

They're short enough that your reader can finish one in a bath or a car journey, which makes this a useful sort of book to have about. The stories are separate, so there's nothing to remember from one to the next and nothing lost by stopping halfway through.

The voice is chatty and full of the small unfair details children actually notice. An older brother who complains about wet dog while coming home smelling of basketball practice. Two boys having a was-not, was-too argument over a groundhog hole until they get bored and start punching each other's shoulders instead. A man who turns up at the riverbank with a lure the size of something you'd use on a tuna.

One thing to know. It's American, so there's a swim meet rather than a gala, and "Weenie" is what characters call each other when somebody's being annoying. Your reader will probably start using it.

What to read next

Your reader will get through these fast. When they do, David Lubar wrote The Intergalactic Petting Zoo in the same series, and it opens with a family talking their way into a roadside attraction run by a man in silver overalls with purple scales instead of hair.