From the Stone Soup Blog The Pipe Tree When Éclair the sparrow is forcefully shoved into a life in a cage, it is like a storm has come and swept away everything he has ever known. After years of living free in the wild, Éclair is now entrapped inside a constricting and inescapable prison. But when his captor, a woman coined as “the handkerchief woman,” starts bribing Éclair with muffins and bombarding him with stories from her daily life, he starts to grudgingly make a hesitant friendship with her. Such begins The Pipe Tree, the moving debut novel by Lily Jessen. It portrays the protagonist coming to terms with an uncertain future and friendship, with the easy choice between freedom and life behind bars suddenly becoming almost impossible as the relationship between the two becomes more and more complex. In short chapters set at Éclair’s present-day Portland, Maine, he narrates the story of how the friendship between him and the handkerchief woman came to be, and what further steps he should take to gain trust—and potentially a route to freedom. Some of the novel, however, addresses the question of freedom itself, and testing whether their friendship is strong enough to hold themselves together. As a wild, pastry-loving sparrow, Éclair easily falls to the temptation of a sweet treat, especially éclairs and blueberry muffins. When he arrives at the apartment, he easily feels out of place, trapped in a mysterious world. Looking for potential ways to escape, he starts closely observing the woman’s routine, and the house around him. When, on the first few days after capture, he immediately notices the lack of extravagance in the apartment, especially when it comes to the dinners, in which the woman eats cereal. But Éclair is particularly moved by the way the woman seemed to be missing something, just like he himself, something expressed in the way she talks and sings. Éclair sees the sadness in her actions. You can read the rest of Jeremy’s piece at: https://stonesoup.com/post/the-pipe-tree-reviewed-by-jeremy-lim-11/. About the Stone Soup Blog We publish original work—writing, art, book reviews, multimedia projects, and more—by young people on the Stone Soup Blog. You can read more posts by young bloggers, and find out more about submitting a blog post, here: https://stonesoup.com/stone-soup-blog/.
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From the Stone Soup Blog An Essay on Outrage Have you ever heard your parents say, “Back in my day, life was so much more difficult. Kids these days are so spoiled”? You would be surprised to know that they were the spoiled hipsters of yesteryear. As long as there have been Homo sapiens, there has been a generation gap and elders frowning upon it. One can almost imagine a geriatric Neanderthal rolling his eyes as his prodigy used the wheel or even before that, a Homo erectus grandfather looking suspiciously at his children living the easy life by using a fire to cook, leaving the good old days of raw meat dinners. From the complaints of Socrates turning young men against the establishment to the small but vocal groups of Boomers on social media, there have been many examples of elderly backlash to changing times. One of the first documented episodes of such outrage goes back to Ancient Greece, from the fifth century BCE onwards. During this time, a population boom and plentiful sustenance inspired philosophers and thinkers to question the world around them. In fact there is a saying, “All that I know is that I know nothing.” The young Athenians were educated to question everything, and this stung the established order. The noblemen condemned this wave of change and even succeeded in poisoning the leader of a major group, whom we know as Socrates, in 399 BCE. But the die was cast, and his doctrine spread under the likes of Aristotle and Alexander the Great. Despite the cry of the previous generations, change was inevitable. You can read the rest of Schamil’s piece at https://stonesoup.com/post/an-essay-on-outrage-by-schamil-saeed-11/ About the Stone Soup Blog We publish original work—writing, art, book reviews, multimedia projects, and more—by young people on the Stone Soup Blog. You can read more posts by young bloggers, and find out more about submitting a blog post, here: https://stonesoup.com/stone-soup-blog/.
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This fiction story is inspired by real events from the lives of my two guinea pigs, Oreo and Snickerdoodle, who were rescued from Prospect Park in Brooklyn, New York, in late 2021. The Life of a Guinea Pig Oreo sniffled. His human family had taken him and his brother, Snickerdoodle, here to die. Oreo didn’t really know where “here” was, but it was probably something like the wilderness. It was late fall, and soon he and Snickerdoodle would freeze to death in a cold, lonely place, with no food, no water, no shelter, no nothing. The last thing Oreo saw before his family took him away was a small brown puppy yapping at them. Oreo could only speculate, but he suspected that the puppy was to be their replacement. It was a terrible day to be a small, fragile, soon-to-be-preyed-upon guinea pig. Because Snickerdoodle was brown, he could camouflage a bit better with the forest around them, but noooo, he just had to have their only hiding place, which wasn’t even really a hiding place, just a tiny twig that didn’t even cover a square inch of either of their bodies. Oreo was black and white, the exact opposite of their surroundings, so if a hawk or another predator came, he would be eaten immediately. Oreo started to cry. But then, a mysterious guinea pig appeared out of nowhere. It looked almost exactly like Oreo. “Don’t be scared!” the new guinea pig oinked. “Ahhhhh!” Oreo screamed. “Oh, come on, I just told you—you know what, never mind. Don’t be sad that your humans abandoned you here, because I’m you from the future! Everything will be okay! You’ll get rescued by a kind human, who will take you to your forever family!” Future-Oreo oinked happily, jumping for joy. “But what about Snickerdoodle?” Oreo asked. “Yeah, what about me?” Snickerdoodle whimpered. “Oh, don’t worry! They’ll take Snickerdoodle too!” Future-Oreo said. “Bye! Don’t forget what I said!” He oinked as he faded away. You can read the rest of Nova’s piece at https://stonesoup.com/post/stone-soup-monthly-flash-contest-winners-roll/. About the Flash Contests Stone Soup holds a flash contest during the first week of every month. The month’s first Weekly Creativity prompt provides the contest challenge. Submissions are due by midnight on Sunday of the same week. Up to five winners are chosen for publication on our blog. The winners, along with up to five honorable mentions, are announced in the following Saturday newsletter. Find all the details at Stonesoup.com/post/stone-soup-monthly-flash-contest-winners-roll/.
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From the Stone Soup Blog She Needed Me and I Needed Her: “The Summer We Found the Baby” The Summer We Found the Baby, by Amy Hest, is a realistic fiction novel set in Belle Beach, New York, during World War II. The book’s main characters are Julie, age eleven; Julie’s little sister, Martha, age six; and their neighbor, Bruno, age twelve. The trio finds a baby abandoned on the steps of the Belle Beach Library and Julie decides to keep it as her other little sister. Julie writes, “I’m the one who found her. A real, live baby girl, and I saw her first. I saw the basket . . . I just wanted to hold her awhile. I didn’t mean to take the baby.” (Page 3) The main objective of this story is for the trio to find the mother of the baby and reunite the baby with its family. I found this book to be special because the author writes from several perspectives. The book also depicts how families are coping with loss and exemplifies how the characters fill gaps in one another’s lives and hearts. Each chapter of this book is written from the perspective of a different person from the trio. As I progressed through the book, my vantage point alternated between Julie, Martha, and Bruno. This is a very engaging style of writing because the story is not filtered through the voice of only one character. Instead, there are multiple points of view, and the reader develops a broader understanding of the other characters’ intentions and feelings. As we cultivate empathy for the people in the book, we understand their emotions better. This makes the book more intriguing and hooks the reader in from the first page. “Six. I’ve been to six of them altogether. Six memorials on the beach. All because of the war,” (Bruno, 109). I found this book absorbing because many characters in the story are struggling with loss of family members and uncertainty about the war and its outcome hovers over the book’s action. For example, the Ben-Eli family worries about their eldest son, Ben, at war in Europe, and they hope each day for a letter from the frontlines. Meanwhile, another family in the community loses their son in battle. In addition, Martha and Julie are continuing to cope with the passing of their mother, who died in childbirth. This attention to loss is intriguing because I learned from the characters’ struggles and better understood how humans confront and persist despite fear and grief. You can read the rest of Sydney’s piece at https://stonesoup.com/post/she-needed-me-and-i-needed-her-the-summer-we-found-the-baby-reviewed-by-sydney-kesselheim-11/. About the Stone Soup Blog We publish original work—writing, art, book reviews, multimedia projects, and more—by young people on the Stone Soup Blog. You can read more posts by young bloggers, and find out more about submitting a blog post, here: https://stonesoup.com/stone-soup-blog/.
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From the Flash Contests The First Snow Linda sat on the porch watching the clouds, and occasionally, the butterflies fluttering over the front yard. Ever since she’d been diagnosed with late-stage breast cancer last year, she started to slow down and to appreciate the simple yet beautiful things all around her so much more. Suddenly, she heard loud footsteps. It must be Charlotte, Linda thought. Sure enough, her five-year-old daughter, Charlotte, came running around to the porch and sat down next to her. Linda noticed Charlotte’s unusual air of sadness. “What’s up, sweetie?” Linda asked. Charlotte turned and gave her a smile. “Mommy, I miss our old house.” “You don’t like this new house?” Linda asked. “I like it, but Daddy said it doesn’t really snow in Texas, even in winter. I miss the snow. It would always look like magic!” Charlotte said. She loved playing on snow days with her friends. Linda and her family used to live in Illinois, where it snowed a lot in the winter. But they recently moved south to Texas because it’s closer to Linda’s parents who can help take care of Charlotte. She saw disappointment briefly flash over Charlotte’s face. “You know what? Actually, it does snow in Texas sometimes. Just not that much, though!” Linda said, in an attempt to cheer Charlotte up. “Really?!” Charlotte’s face brightened up. “I wish I could see the snow . . . with you!” “Of course, sweetie! When the next snow comes, you and I will be together.” Linda pointed at the front lawn and said, “Right over there, watching the beautiful white magic falling down.” You can read the rest of Evelyn’s story at https://stonesoup.com/post/stone-soup-monthly-flash-contest-winners-roll/ About the Flash Contests Stone Soup holds a flash contest during the first week of every month. The month’s first Weekly Creativity prompt provides the contest challenge. Submissions are due by midnight on Sunday of the same week. Up to five winners are chosen for publication on our blog. The winners, along with up to five honorable mentions, are announced in the following Saturday newsletter. Find all the details at stonesoup.com/post/stone-soup-monthly-flash-contest-winners-roll/
An Archeology of the Future
A Collection of Poems by Emma Catherine Hoff Winner of the 2022 Stone Soup Book Contest Available now at Barnes & Noble online and at Amazon. The Little Mermaid “The darkness isn’t as bad / as people think.” So ends the first poem in Emma Catherine Hoff’s numinous debut, An Archeology of the Future—before proceeding calmly, curiously into the dark. People weep in the streets. The snow closes its eyes. Birds scream, a question begs the world for its answer, everything is “frozen yet moving.” Hoff’s world, like ours, is ending, and yet this is not a tragedy: “there was peace for Earth / with no one there.” Walking the tightrope between humor and despair, rationality and absurdism, the sublime and the material, Hoff’s poems are elegant, wise, ageless. These are poems written against eternity. Advance Praise Like the Surrealists before her, Hoff can see into the emotional lives of the things we use every day, things we toss around carelessly. These poems bring them to life in a way that enriches all the lives around them, even the lives of the people we see in de Chirico paintings. Hoff is a great poet and these are poems that will truly move you. Her concerns are ageless. And she writes with a careful observing eye that makes even the imaginative moments feel palpably real. If one of my friends had written this beautifully when I was starting out, I would have probably quit, and doffed my cap to her and said “you go on ahead” or more likely, “you’re already there.” — Matthew Rohrer, author of The Others When I read Emma Hoff for the first time years ago, I thought: She’s not from this planet. I thought: She does not remind me of other poets; she makes me forget them. I am tempted to use the words visionary, otherworldly, untimely, genius. I am tempted to say she flies above the earth. Let me say it this way. Hoff is related to Ovid, Blake, Rimbaud, Vallejo, Pessoa, Whitman, and Dickinson—not because she sounds like them (she doesn’t) but because she sees like them (indeed the verb “to see” appears on almost every page of this manuscript). Because her vision is prophetic, profound, and panoramic. Because she is unafraid to write about the grandest of topics—love, war, death, apocalypse, God, and eternity. Because she manages to write from places of knowing (“dirt is the only thing / we can become”) and unknowing (“Was the Minotaur / really / a monster?”). Because she writes about the past, present, and future all at once. Because just when you think you understand her poems, they change, shift, become-otherwise (“Please become / anew”). Because she is a master of craft and a musician of as-yet unheard music (“The lips play leapfrog with rain and hail and snow”). Emma Hoff is a rare poet. And one of my favorites. — Conner Bassett, author of Gad’s Book What I seek in poetry is the same thing astronomers seek: entire dark-dot planets hidden by lights too brilliant to see past. This is just what Emma Catherine Hoff delivers in An Archaeology of the Future. This collection is a garden of eurekas, a cavalcade of astonishments as, stanza by stanza, Hoff delivers the musings of a subtle intellect fed by a deep and abiding empathy for this world. The deftness of the prosody is only matched by its variety; influences range from the elegiac to the ekphrastic to the surreal to Black Mountain experiments in form, but all unified by a passionate yet quiet reverence and a love of language that would have made Auden sit up a little straighter. My urge, in fact, is to stop speaking generally and just quote to you from this wonder-stuffed collection. But there’s no need. Open it, and read for yourself. — Carlos Hernandez, NY Times bestselling author of Sal and Gabi Break the Universe Is there any form that Emma Hoff can’t undertake? Any fissure in the universe that she will fail to inspect and fracture further until she breaks into the realm of the hidden yet true? The delights to be uncovered in An Archeology of the Future strike me with awe, urgency, solace, and compassion. How daring, how beautiful, how extraordinary it is, in this moment of the world when our world feels so broken, that Mt. Parnassas is still at work, and Hoff is a voice so richly sowed. — Jenny Boully, author of Betwixt and Between: Essays on the Writing Life The poems of Emma Hoff in An Archeology of the Future contend with some of life’s most Delphic questions. The young poet engages with inscrutable subjects like regret, darkness, the end of the world, and does so with as much precision as she does a pear or an apricot. Hoff acknowledges both the complexity and the simplicity of human experience, and her poems encourage readers to accept a certain level of unknowing, to embrace it even. Hoff’s lens is wide and varied. She points to other artists, draws inspiration from the paintings of Henri Rousseau and René Magritte, the photography of Pedro Luis Raota, the poetry of Tomaž Šalamun. She reflects on the life of Bobby Hutton, political activist, Black Panther, and ultimately victim of the Oakland Police. These are not small ponderings; they dig into our history to dislodge meaning, beauty, and an archeology of the future, a future which will, no doubt, contain further brilliance from Emma Hoff. — Melinda Wilson, Co-curator of the Poor Mouth Reading Series in the Bronx
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From the Stone Soup Blog Danny, the Champion of the World Danny, the Champion of the World by Roald Dahl is one of the most underrated books I have read. In comparison to his other books such as Matilda and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, I feel like this book doesn’t get as much praise as it deserves. Like his other famous books, Danny, the Champion of the World is very funny and imaginative. The story takes place around 1975 in a United Kingdom filling station (i.e., a gas station) on a country road out among empty fields and woody hills. There is a lot of traffic, and the station sees a lot of business. Behind the station is a caravan in which Danny and his father live. You would think that their life was all hard work without any fun, but you would be surprised. Danny is a very clever, loyal, and helpful boy. He helps his father, a mechanic, fix other people’s cars in the filling station. Danny’s father is described as “sparky” in the book, because he always comes up with amazingly interesting ideas. Like his grandfather, his father is a master poacher of pheasants and has lots of creative ways to catch them. He also has a deep, dark secret, but I’m not telling you it! Mr. Victor Hazell is an eccentric millionaire and is fairly well known. Every year, he holds a pheasant-shooting party, which allows people from miles around to travel to his estate to shoot pheasants. He is very conceited and loves his fame. His shooting party has drawn lots of wealthy people to shoot pheasants in trees and then keep the birds for themselves. Danny and his father are very poor and haven’t eaten pheasants in a long time, so they want to eat them now. Mr. Hazell is the archenemy of Danny’s father, so the father and son have to come up with a plan to stop Hazell’s big shooting party. What is Danny’s master plan for catching pheasants, and most importantly, will it work? And what makes him the Champion of the World? Find out in Danny, the Champion of the World, a fascinating novel recommended for anyone over the age of eight that will keep you turning the pages. A master storyteller, Dahl never disappoints his readers with his vivid and hilarious detailed descriptions of events. Moreover, his characters are fun, mischievous, and touching. I was especially touched by Danny’s close relationship with his father. The loving bond between them makes Danny, the Champion of the World a memorable book that tickles and warms your heart. You can read the rest of Philip’s piece at https://stonesoup.com/post/danny-the-champion-of-the-world/. About the Stone Soup Blog We publish original work—writing, art, book reviews, multimedia projects, and more—by young people on the Stone Soup Blog. You can read more posts by young bloggers, and find out more about submitting a blog post, here: https://stonesoup.com/stone-soup-blog/.
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From the Stone Soup Blog Jonathan Livingston Seagull Several people are kept in a cave. They have lived in the cave their entire lives, chained to the ground, watching blurry shadows dance on the stone wall in front of them. They think that this is all there is to the world. But one day, one of the captives breaks free of his bonds and leaves the cave. He is amazed by all he sees outside, but when he returns to tell the other prisoners of his findings, nobody believes him. Instead, they kill him. This story is known as the allegory of the cave. Plato, an ancient Greek philosopher, wrote it in reference to his teacher, Socrates, another Greek philosopher. Socrates was sentenced to death and made to drink poison for “corrupting the youth” with his new ideas. But what would have happened if Socrates was not killed but exiled? And what if he returned one day, years and years later, to teach others about the wonders he discovered while banished? And what if Socrates and the other Athenians were not humans but seagulls? Okay, the last question probably sounds extremely weird, but this is basically the plot of Jonathan Livingston Seagull, a novella written by Richard Bach and first published more than fifty years ago. At the start of the story, a seagull named Jonathan feels incomplete. Unlike the rest of the flock, he yearns for more than food. He wants to learn more about flight. He keeps experimenting, and one day learns how to fold his wings, using only his wingtips for maximum speed. After he bursts through the flock at terminal velocity, he is called forward and banished for disrupting his community. He lives a quiet, peaceful life on the Far Cliffs for many years, and then he goes to the next stage of his existence, in which he realizes his true purpose: to return to the flock and teach them the wonders of flight. I was apprehensive at first about this novella, because it starts off slowly and the action only gradually builds up. But once I warmed up to the story, I saw that it was written wonderfully, with many sensory details. I could feel Jonathan’s heartbreak, his fear, and also his euphoria whenever he discovered a new flying trick. Readers will also learn a lot about amazing aerial acrobatics and flight mechanics from the author, Richard Bach, a pilot who has written many fiction and nonfiction books about flying. Even though I am not a flight expert, I could still picture Jonathan’s aerial whirls and spins in my mind’s eye. I also enjoyed the black-and-white photographs of seagulls in flight, taken by Russell Munson, which illustrate my copy of the book. I would recommend Jonathan Livingston Seagull to eight-year-olds and up. You can read the rest of Nova’s review at https://stonesoup.com/stone-soup-blog. About the Stone Soup Blog We publish original work—writing, art, book reviews, multimedia projects, and more—by young people on the Stone Soup Blog. You can read more posts by young bloggers, and find out more about submitting a blog post, here: https://stonesoup.com/stone-soup-blog/.
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From William’s Stone Soup Writing Workshop #71: Stream of Consciousness (Revisited) The Writing Challenge: Write a stream of consciousness piece for thirty minutes. This journey follows a path that is set down by the mind you are portraying in your story. That mind might, itself, not know where the ideas are coming from. Become your character, and let her take you on a journey into her mind. Sprinting I can do it. I can win. Win the race. Beat the high schoolers. People are cheering for me, cheering for me, of all people. My four good friends are jumping up and down, shouting encouragement. But the finish line seems a million miles away. Wait, are there even a million miles on Earth? They are winning. The high schoolers. They are beating me. This isn’t right. Just like how it wasn’t right when a mean boy stole my ginormous Kit-Kat bar I had gotten on Halloween. Or was it a Twix bar? I like Kit-Kat bars better. But all chocolate bars are good. I should’ve practiced more, spent more time on the track. But being on the track is so tiring, and then I go to bed early, and then I don’t have time for homework, and then I get bad grades. Just because I ran. But there is no going back, just like how there is no going back after you turned in homework and realized that it had been wrong after you left school. Once, that happened to me and I had panicked on the bus. Everyone had laughed at me. I hate homework. I need to go faster, as fast as the wind or as me and my friends during lunchtime on Taco Tuesday. I like Taco Tuesday. Especially the shrimp tacos, although the school doesn’t always have them, even on Taco Tuesday. Not having the best kind of tacos on Taco Tuesday! Unbelievable. Some of the high schoolers are behind me. Some are in front of me. Some look angry. Some even look amused. Amused? Doesn’t that mean, like, funny? I’m not sure. I’ve never been good at vocabulary. I’m better at running and athletic stuff than actual school subjects. You can read the rest of Pearl’s piece at https://stonesoup.com/stone-soup-writing-workshop/ About the Stone Soup Blog The Stone Soup Writing Workshop began in March 2020 during the COVID-19-related school closures. In every session, a Stone Soup team member gives a short presentation and then we all spend half an hour writing something inspired by the week’s topic or theme. We leave our sound on so we feel as though we are in a virtual café, writing together in companionable semi-silence! Then, participants are invited to read their work to the group and afterward submit what they wrote to a special Writing Workshop submissions category. Those submissions are published as part of the workshop report on our blog every week. You can read more workshop pieces, and find information on how to register and join the workshop, at https://stonesoup.com/stone-soup-blog/.
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From the Stone Soup Blog The following is a transcript of part of the second installment of Emma’s poetry podcast. Head over to our blog at Stonesoup.com/young-bloggers/ to listen to it or read it in full! Poetry Soup (A Poetry Podcast) — Episode #2 Hello, and welcome to Poetry Soup! I’m your host, Emma Catherine Hoff. Each episode, I’ll discuss a different poem and poet. Today, I’ll be talking about two different poets—one real and one fake. Can a poem be written by someone who doesn’t even exist? “The Keeper of Sheep” is written by Alberto Caeiro, which is a heteronym invented by the poet and writer Fernando Pessoa. A heteronym is different from a pseudonym because a pseudonym is just a name, while a heteronym is an entire personality. I’ll talk more about the heteronym Alberto Caeiro later. But first, a little bit about Fernando Pessoa. Fernando Pessoa was born on June 13, 1888, in Lisbon, Portugal. When Pessoa was six years old, he made up his first heteronym, a man by the name of Chevalier de Pas. Pessoa created at least seventy-two heteronyms throughout his lifetime. Pessoa was a poet, writer, literary critic, translator, publisher, and philosopher. He was deeply influenced by English poets like William Shakespeare and Percy Bysshe Shelley. You can also see the influence of Walt Whitman in much of Pessoa’s work, including the poem we’ll be reading today. Fernando Pessoa died on Nov. 30, 1935, in Lisbon, Portugal, at the age of 47. But now there’s another poet to talk about: Alberto Caeiro. In creating Caeiro, Pessoa had to come up with a whole new personality with an entire history. Caeiro has had only a grade-school education—he is a peasant who is in touch with his surroundings and is greatly influenced by them, yet not curious about their existence. According to Pessoa, Alberto Caeiro does not question the things around him—he has interesting ideas, but he simply takes in his surroundings without asking “why.” Speaking in the voice of another heteronym, Ricardo Reis, Pessoa said, “Caeiro, like Whitman, leaves me perplexed. We are thrown off our critical attitude by so extraordinary a phenomenon. We have never seen anything like it. Even after Whitman, Caeiro is strange and terrible, appallingly new.” The perspective of the poems changes based on the personality of the heteronym Fernando Pessoa might be writing under at the time. Octavio Paz even called Caeiro the “innocent poet.” Head to our website to read or listen to the rest! About the Stone Soup Blog We publish original work—writing, art, book reviews, multimedia projects, and more—by young people on the Stone Soup Blog. You can read more posts by young bloggers, and find out more about submitting a blog post, here: https://stonesoup.com/stone-soup-blog/.
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From the Book Club An update from the thirty-fifth meeting on the Stone Soup Book Club for Writers This month we discussed A Wish in the Dark by Christina Soontornvat, a suspenseful and moving novel set in a magical version of Thailand. The book follows Pong, who is born in Namwon Prison because his mom was imprisoned for stealing. He escapes the prison and hides in a monastery, where he is guided spiritually by the wise Father Cham. But, he’s still in danger! Nok, the daughter of the warden of Namwon Prison, is determined to capture Pong and bring him to justice, hoping that doing so will help her gain glory and acceptance. Pong flees Nok back to Chattana, a beautiful but very crowded and unequal city, which floats on canals and is lit by colorful magical lights, all controlled by the Governor. There, he reunites with his old best friend from prison, Somkit, and gets involved in a community made up of the city’s poorest people, who are organizing to make their city a fairer place. Pong has to decide whether to join in on the organizing or whether he should flee Chattana (and Nok, who is still hunting him down), while he can still escape. This book had so much drama and suspense, so many larger-than-life characters, and so many interesting and important themes to talk about. Students joined us from all over the country, hailing from different states, and in different grades of school. We had a lively discussion. Everyone agreed that they enjoyed the book, and talked about their different favorite characters. Some people loved Pong for his fierce sense of justice; others loved Ampai for her courageous organizing. Some loved Father Cham for his gentle wisdom, and one person’s favorite character was Nok, who has such impressive fighting skills and changes so much over the course of the book. Next we got into a discussion about the major themes of the book: justice, law, right, wrong, prison, punishment. We talked about the unfair way that children are punished for their parents’ crimes in Chattana, and that prison tattoos prevent people from finding work, even after they have served their sentences. We discussed different proverbs that are said in the society in the novel, such as “Light only shines on the worthy,” and “The tree drops its fruit straight down,” and how we disagreed with these proverbs. One student mentioned that although it would be very nice if good people always had good things happen to them, and vice versa, this is not how the world works, and so it is not fair to say that if someone is poor or otherwise struggling, it must be because they are a bad person. You can read the rest of the report at https://stonesoup.com/stone-soup-book-club-2/ About the Stone Soup Book Club The Stone Soup Book Club is open to all Stone Soup readers ages 9–13. We started the book club for our readers during the COVID-19-related school closures, and it has been running ever since—currently once a month, usually on the last Saturday of the month (depending on holidays). You can find out more, including how to sign up, here: https://stonesoup.com/stone-soup-writing-and-art-classes/
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From William’s Writing Workshop, #68: Sense of Place The Writing Challenge: Describe a place or a setting in which a story will take place from the point of view of a character. Arctic Winter Cold, howling wind whipped through my fur, blowing endlessly. The deep snow crunched under my paws, stretching as far as my keen blue eyes could see. Snow-covered mounds that were once gray cliffs rose out of the white sea, not a hint of rock visible on them. Farther beyond the once-cliffs were the towering mountains, also covered in snow that was continuously piling higher and higher. The streams that ran and pulled in spring were now completely frozen over with ice. Everything was beautiful. But like many things, the looks of the tundra didn’t say much about the tundra. I couldn’t see or smell any other animals except the six other wolves in my pack, all of them my relatives. The prey, even the caribou, had disappeared, like all the other animals, having hidden in their snow-covered burrows or migrated south. To make it even worse, the falling snow prevented me from seeing far. I was an Arctic wolf living in my Arctic habitat with a thick winter coat, but I was still shivering. The snow, though beautiful, covered up all of the hares’ burrows, and even rocks that I could fall and hurt myself on. Hunger, as ruthless as ever, gnawed at my stomach. But I had survived one cruel Arctic winter before and could live through another, even if I wasn’t thriving. “Taiga!” my cousin Icicle called, standing on top of one of the snow mounds, clearly trying to find prey like me and the rest of my pack. But, unlike me and the pack, he wasn’t a good hunter. At all. “Leave her alone, Icicle! She’s a much better hunter than you,” Icicle’s mother and my father’s younger sister, Snowclaw, growled. Icicle bowed his small head and padded down from the mound he was standing on. I couldn’t help but feel sorry for him. He was still young, with plenty of room to improve his hunting skills, and Snowclaw didn’t seem to like him at all. Smelling a wisp of deeply buried hare, I started digging into the endless sea of snow. The smell grew stronger, more vivid, as I dug. Crackly brown grass started to appear, a hole in the middle of it. Lighting up, I started digging in the hole. Surprised yellow eyes glared at me. The snowshoe hare leaped up and started sprinting away from me, but he was tired from his hibernation and wasn’t used to running in such deep snow. My paws pattered on the ground, barely touching the snow before they lifted up. The howling wind was even louder and stronger as I ran, flurries snaking down faster. Suddenly I wasn’t cold anymore. Suddenly the Arctic winter wasn’t as menacing anymore. You can read the rest of Pearl’s piece at https://stonesoup.com/stone-soup-writing-workshop/. About the Stone Soup Blog The Stone Soup Writing Workshop began in March 2020 during the COVID-19-related school closures. In every session, a Stone Soup team member gives a short presentation and then we all spend half an hour writing something inspired by the week’s topic or theme. We leave our sound on so we feel as though we are in a virtual café, writing together in companionable semi-silence! Then, participants are invited to read their work to the group and afterward submit what they wrote to a special Writing Workshop submissions category. Those submissions are published as part of the workshop report on our blog every week. You can read more workshop pieces, and find information on how to register and join the workshop, at https://stonesoup.com/stone-soup-writing-workshop.
