I've been looking for the titles of these short stories for a very long time. I read them back in say...2000 or so, so they're not recent stories. One may, in fact, be a book, not a story. Here's the one I have more info on:
It was science fiction and definitely a short story, and it was published in what I'm thinking was an anthology along with other stories, one of which was definitely "The Father Thing" by Philip K. Dick.
The story was about a group of children with a sort of psychic link, and they were being persecuted for having this power...perhaps the others thought they were witches or something? I think they wanted to kill them/burn them. The youngest of the group (I believe a girl?) was only about 4-6 years old and was very frightened, and in order to help calm her down, one of the older children conjured up a scene of a row of ducklings (representing each of the children, I think) walking in a row. Because the kids had this psychic link, they could basically "watch" this scene play out in their shared mind-link or whatever.
Okay, story two:
This one may be a novella or even a book. It's about a boy (I'd say elementary or middle school age) who is somehow turned into an ant. And there's something about how as a boy, he never tucked in his shirt tail and even now as an ant, he has a weird little tail bit in the back that looks like an untucked shirt. Eventually, he stumbles upon a friend (?) who has somehow become a caterpillar, and there's a human scientist studying the caterpillar and being amazed because it's contorting itself into strange shapes...that we as the reader eventually realize are letter spelling out S-T-U-P-I-D.
And yeah...that's all I have to go on.
Now I realize these both sound like children's stories, but I really think they aren't, especially the first short story. It was really rather grim. The second MIGHT be a kid's story, but it's certainly not a picture book or anything like that.
I'd reeaally love to be able to re-explore these stories. I read them as a very young child when my father brought home books from his university library, and though I can't remember their titles, they've really stuck with me over time, and it's like this big mystery I can't figure out!
It was science fiction and definitely a short story, and it was published in what I'm thinking was an anthology along with other stories, one of which was definitely "The Father Thing" by Philip K. Dick.
The story was about a group of children with a sort of psychic link, and they were being persecuted for having this power...perhaps the others thought they were witches or something? I think they wanted to kill them/burn them. The youngest of the group (I believe a girl?) was only about 4-6 years old and was very frightened, and in order to help calm her down, one of the older children conjured up a scene of a row of ducklings (representing each of the children, I think) walking in a row. Because the kids had this psychic link, they could basically "watch" this scene play out in their shared mind-link or whatever.
Okay, story two:
This one may be a novella or even a book. It's about a boy (I'd say elementary or middle school age) who is somehow turned into an ant. And there's something about how as a boy, he never tucked in his shirt tail and even now as an ant, he has a weird little tail bit in the back that looks like an untucked shirt. Eventually, he stumbles upon a friend (?) who has somehow become a caterpillar, and there's a human scientist studying the caterpillar and being amazed because it's contorting itself into strange shapes...that we as the reader eventually realize are letter spelling out S-T-U-P-I-D.
And yeah...that's all I have to go on.
Now I realize these both sound like children's stories, but I really think they aren't, especially the first short story. It was really rather grim. The second MIGHT be a kid's story, but it's certainly not a picture book or anything like that.
I'd reeaally love to be able to re-explore these stories. I read them as a very young child when my father brought home books from his university library, and though I can't remember their titles, they've really stuck with me over time, and it's like this big mystery I can't figure out!