Xbox 360 Operations Manual by Microsoft

"All Summer in a Day" by Ray Bradbury. -This short story is set in the future and is about a class of school children on Venus, a planet where the sun is visible for only two hours every seven years. A mean group of school children lock a young girl from Earth in the closet and forget about her for the whole two hours. The girl cries.

In the fictional story Number the Stars by Louis Lowry a 10 year old girl in Nazi-occupied Denmark in 1943 undertakes a dangerous mission to save her best friend, Ellen Rosen, on the even when the Nazi's will capture the Jews.

Tales of the Greek Heroes retold by Roger Green. This book has the mysterious and exciting stories of the gods and heroes in Ancient Greece, from the adventures of Perseus (son of Zeus), to the labors of the half-man, half-god Heracles, and even the voyage of Odysseus, who is trapped at sea when he angers Poseidon, god of the sea.

Very short stories with talking animals and a moral

The Complete Book of U.S. History by School Specialty Publishing. This TEXTBOOK tells the history of America, from the Revolutionary War to the first war in Iraq

Stories with magic and/or talking animals, usually have a human main character and start with "Once upon a time."

John Henry retold by Julius Lester. A great American hero comes to life in this epic retelling. From his momentous birth, when all the animals come to see him and the sun won't go to bed, John Henry works wonders. As a child he helps his father by adding "a wing onto the house with an indoor swimming pool and one of them jacutzis" and that's just before lunch. His greatest feat is, of course, in his batle against the steam drill, as he races the machine to cut through "a mountain as big as hurt feelings"

Stories with magic, monsters, superpowers, or other things that do not exist in reality

This type of fiction could actually happen but is imagined.