Best Family Home Evening Ever

"Best Family Home Evening Ever!!" is a short story by Orson Scott Card. It appears in his short story collection Maps in a Mirror. Card originally published this story in the January 1978 issue of Friend magazine under the pseudonym Byron Walley.

Plot summary

This story is about a nine-year-old boy named Alan whose family frequently gets upset with him. When Alan’s dad announces that they are going to have a family lesson about not getting angry at one another, Alan gets very excited and when his father says that Alan will be the one giving the lesson he gets to work right away. On the day of the lesson he secretly makes a mess out of everyone’s things in the family room and then gets everyone to promise not to get angry. After Alan shows his family the mess, and they pass the test by not getting angry, he explains that he didn’t ruin anyone’s stuff but had carefully scattered the things around the room. When Alan says that he will clean up the mess the family volunteers to help and they tell him that it was a good family lesson.

Characters

• Allan – Main character
• Allan’s Dad - unnamed
• Allan’s Mom - unnamed
• Ryan - Allan’s brother
• Harry - Allan’s brother
• Alice - Allan’s sister

Byron Walley

In the Question and Answer section of his website, Card said that the first time he used the name Byron Walley was when he published the short story "Gert Fram" in Ensign magazine. Card did this because he had a non-fiction article “Family Art”, a poem “Looking West” and a short play "The Rag Mission" (published under the name Brian Green) appearing in the same issue.^[1]

References

See also

• List of works by Orson Scott Card

External links

• The official Orson Scott Card website
• "Best Family Home Evening Ever!!", Friend, January 1978: original publication