Margin of Error: A Young Adult Short Story Collection

Dave Jenkinson is a professor in the Faculty of Education at the University of Manitoba and the author of the “Portraits” section of Emergency Librarian.

Choyce’s sixth book for young adults is a fine collection of a dozen
short stories that range in length from 5 to 19 pages and feature male
adolescents from age 13 to the early college years. Principally driven
by character and emotion, story content revolves around relationships
among adolescents and between adolescents and adults. For example, the
short story used as the book’s title focuses on a high-school
classroom in which a tyrannical male algebra teacher unsuccessfully
attempts to publicly humiliate the school “hood.” Five of the
stories present the many, and oftentimes painful, faces of adolescent
romance (refreshingly, from a male perspective), while another four look
at dimensions of adolescent male friendships. The remaining three
stories show adolescents interacting with adults; in “Reuben,” for
example, a young man mops the floors in a nursing home while listening
compassionately to the meanderings of an old man. Although each short
story stands alone, some reintroduce characters met earlier in the book.
Choyce makes frequent use of Nova Scotia locations.

These stories deserved much better packaging. Sloppy editing has
allowed typos to abound and pages 103-4 to be repeated. Because the ugly
cover illustration (which does not speak to the content of any of the
stories) will be offputting to its intended audience of late adolescents
of both genders, teacher or librarian intervention will be required if
Margin of Error is to reach the hands of many teens. Recommended.