Fans of Pni­na Moed Kass’s Syd­ney Tay­lor Book Award and Nation­al Jew­ish Book Award win­ning Real Time, will be thrilled to read The Five Sto­ry House, a con­cise but emo­tion­al­ly packed col­lec­tion of five pre­vi­ous­ly pub­lished short sto­ries. In this col­lec­tion, Kass’s favorite themes — immoral­i­ty, injus­tice, and inequal­i­ty — are on full dis­play. Although the sto­ries take place in a vari­ety of set­tings and time, they all depict char­ac­ters who must over­come life’s harsh­est, most chal­leng­ing cir­cum­stances. In one, the read­er will fol­low a teacher to the safe­ty of a bomb shel­ter. In anoth­er, a young girl deals with the death of a beloved moth­er. In yet anoth­er, a fam­i­ly flees Spain. To make this col­lec­tion per­fect for the class­room or dis­cus­sion group, Kass includes excel­lent dis­cus­sion ques­tions for each sto­ry. The sim­ple design, which fea­tures sin­gle black and white pho­tographs before each sto­ry as well as a less than sol­id bind­ing, will not draw new young read­ers to this series. But once they open this col­lec­tion, read­ers will not turn away from Kass’s com­pelling char­ac­ters. The Five Sto­ry House is sure to become a sta­ple for many inter­est­ing, sus­tan­tive dis­cus­sions. For ages 9 – 12.