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100% written and illustrated by kids ages 6-13


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Alone

“What if I’m alone forever?” the narrator wonders when her mother isn’t waiting at the bus stop Boom! Crackle! It was dark and rainy, and as the clouds cried, lightning flashed through the sky like a gun being fired. The sky darkened. But in our school bus, there were always rays of sunshine. Our school bus wasn’t really a school bus, but more like a van. That didn’t really bother me and my friends, because we were always busy doing things to pass time. We did things together, like homework, or played truth or dare, or even watched movies on my friend’s phone. But like always, people would start to get dropped off and disappear like cookies from the cookie jar until it was just me and my friend Gabby. “Don’t you ever get lonely when it’s only you on the van?” Gabby asked. “Sometimes, but not really,” I said. But inside I knew that I was always lonely when it was just me. She looked at me with her eyebrows up in her questioning way, like she was searching for what I was really feeling. “Are you sure you’re okay?” she asked me again. “Yes, I’m okay. Really, I am,” I said reassuringly. We stopped in front of her house, and as she was about to. leave she said, “Well, I’ll see you Monday. Bye!” “Bye,” I said as she shut the door. As we were leaving, I looked through the window and saw her bright polka-dot umbrella open up and bloom like a flower as she walked toward her building. The van grew quiet without the voices of the jokers and the happy. All there was now was stillness and quiet. I had nothing to do but sit. Why am I always the last one? I thought. I leaned on the window and looked outside, only to find cars driving by—where they are going is left a mystery to everyone but the person who’s driving. On the sidewalk, there wasn’t a single soul to be seen. It was also a beautiful sight with raindrops that would water the plants and the wind that would tickle your neck until you put on your scarf or zipped up your jacket. But the darkness that hid behind this beauty was in the thunder’s booms and crackles that would scare cats and dogs, making their hair stand on end. As we reached my stop, my eyes searched through the field of rain for my mother’s bright-green and white umbrella that would be wrapped in her warm hands. But I couldn’t find her. Maybe it’s because it’s too dark to see. She must be somewhere around here, I thought. So I asked the driver if I could go outside to see if she was coming. I went outside in my black raincoat and looked for her. I still didn’t see her. I wouldn’t accept the fact that she wasn’t there, so I decided to look for her. I went up the block to see if she was just arriving from the supermarket, but I didn’t see her. I went down the block to see if she was turning the corner on our street, but she wasn’t. As much as I wanted to believe that my mom was somewhere here, I had to accept that she wasn’t. No matter where I looked, how much effort I put into finding her, how long I waited, she wasn’t there, period. I shook my head, though I knew that wouldn’t help the situation. Where could she be? I wondered. What can she be doing that is more important than picking me up, that she would just leave me here? A sea of questions with unknown answers filled my head as if this problem were a puzzle that I couldn’t solve. I heard the van roar to life and drive away, leaving me behind. Fear fell upon me. I felt like an ant in a world full of darkness. The only thing I could do was walk up the stairs and wait till someone got me. As I walked up the stairs, I thought, What if no one gets me? What if I’m alone forever? As I reached the top step, I plopped down and sat as if on command. I stared past the field of rain, past the buildings and into nothing. My eyes stung as tears tried to make their way down my cheeks. It felt like the time when I was small and my mom was busy with work and my brothers never seemed to notice me and would never play with me. It felt depressing with no one there to give me the love I needed, no one to give me comfort. With no one to talk to and no one to play with, I had to accept the fact that I was alone, and no one would be there. But I didn’t accept the fact that I’d just be by myself and sad for the rest of my life. I knew that my mom was busy, but I knew that she still loved me and that my brothers just acted like boys. Still, after a while, I wanted to have a sister, a person I could play with because I couldn’t just keep playing with myself forever. I asked my mom if I could have a sister, and she said that I’d have to pray hard if I wanted one. I never gave up on that dream. I had hope, and on March 13, 2012, my sister was born. Voices I knew well interrupted my thoughts. I turned around in joy to find my siblings coming out of the building and my grandma behind them, scolding them for making too much noise. “Mommy went to buy something, so she told us to pick you up. We were kinda late because Aja and Ernest were playing around,” my sister said. “No, that was Ernest who was playing around, not me!” my brother Aja


By

Flood

Canon PowerShot G7 X Anya Geist, 13Worcester, MA


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Editor’s Note

We often think technology has made our lives better. We can easily heat up our leftovers in the microwave, dictate our papers and letters into our phones, take photos of anything we want, and FaceTime with family and friends who are far away. But instead of celebrating these conveniences, the stories and plays in this issue note the price that we pay for them. Technology— and all the power our devices require—has sucked the beauty and color from our planet. It has replaced humans in their jobs, creating endless, and endlessly frustrating, telephone calls with robots. It has become so addicting and seemingly necessary that it even seems to control us, rather than the other way around. Though the days are now getting longer, January is a dark month, and the poems, stories, plays, and art in this issue are all dark—sometimes darkly comic!—and extremely thought-provoking. I hope reading these stories will prompt you to reevaluate the role of technology as well as the role of nature in your life. As always, we encourage you to write these thoughts down and share them with Stone Soup in whatever mode of expression you prefer. Finally, welcome to 2020—we’re excited to share another year of Stone Soup with you!


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Huài shì hǎo shì (Evil Things, Good Things)

Every New Year’s Eve, my friend tells me she smashes six pomegranates on her lawn, and when I ask her why, she says it is because she is Greek, and when I want to understand more of what she means, I read up on pomegranates in Greek mythology, discovering that after Persephone was abducted by Hades and joined him in the underworld, her mother Demeter mourned by drying the Earth in a long, cold winter, until Zeus arranged for Persephone’s return, but because Persephone had been tricked into eating six pomegranate seeds, she had to return to Hades to spend every winter with him in the darkness, and I wonder if this is why my friend breaks pomegranates at night on her lawn, as if the more they break, the more their seeds are spread, and the more luck and fertility there will be in the New Year, which is not so different from my own superstition about my need to squeeze my eyedropper six times, never four, because my parents say four is an unlucky number, since the word for four in Chinese, Sì, sounds almost identical to the word for death, and the only difference is the level of inflection when pronounced, and it seems strange that the six seeds Persephone ate would have been so unlucky for her, but without her misfortune, there wouldn’t be new seasons to wish for, just as without the number four, I couldn’t learn to love the number six, and maybe that is why my friend and I aren’t so different as we seem— when she tells me about the pomegranate pulp in her yard, tiny seeds clinging to frozen blades of grass in the new January cold I have come to understand what she means. Sabrina Guo, 13 Oyster Bay, NY


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Stone Soup Honor Roll: January 2020

Welcome to the Stone Soup Honor Roll! We receive hundreds of submissions every month by kids from around the world. Unfortunately, we can’t publish all the great work we receive. So we created the Stone Soup Honor Roll. We commend all of these talented writers and artists and encourage them to keep creating. – The Editors Scroll down to see all the names (alphabetical by section), including book reviewers and artists. FICTION Anish Alur, 12 Beatrice Cappuccio, 9 Kayla Coulombe, 7 Levi Powell, 13 Olivia Song, 11 Bo-Violet Vig, 13 POETRY Arlo Atkinson, 8 Zina DeVoe, 13 Aadhya Garg, 8 Celia Mill, 13 Jason Shen, 8 Noelle Torgerson, 7 ART Marco Lu, 13 Savannah Murray, 13 Seish Norte, 13  


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A World Without Color

In a colorless world full of trash, the writer dreams of a lush, vivid rainforest Dear Diary, I woke up again yesterday and saw the hammering rain pouring harshly down on my small little house. It was the worst sight I had seen in years! It was quite a boring sight, though I’m used to it, so I wasn’t that surprised. I had another amazing dream. I dreamt that I was in a forest with tropical trees and exotic flowers. There was spikey grass and even tigers! I guess it didn’t come true. I had to try to tidy the rubbish by sifting and sorting, burning and burying, but it didn’t work. However, while I was sorting the rubbish, something caught my eye. It was a tiny tin flower! Suddenly an idea planted itself in my head. The idea sprouted and grew roots. Day after day, the idea got bigger. While I was feeding on the rubbish, a forest emerged under my hand. It was not the forest of my dreams, but it was a forest just the same. In the forest, there were tigers, toucans, tree frogs, and even butterflies! I was still a bit disappointed because it was a very dull forest with no color at all. As I walked through the forest, my heart was aching with emptiness. Elyse Bambrough, 7Bristol, UK Sage Millen, 11Vancouver, Canada


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I Would Like to Speak to the Manager

Overture: “Happy Go Lively” by Laurie Johnson. On the left half of the stage is a pristine white office room. On the right half, we see the burned down remains of a living room, with only a small side table still standing. On the table sits an old rotary phone. The OPERATOR sits in the office, and the CUSTOMER sits on a burnt stool in the living room. CUSTOMER angrily dials the phone. There is a pause, before the OPERATOR’S phone rings. The OPERATOR picks up the phone with a fake smile. OPERATOR Hello. This is customer service. How may I help you today? CUSTOMER Hello. Yes, I would like to file a complaint. The toaster I ordered exploded and burned down my house. OPERATOR Oh no! That’s terrible. First, you will need to give me the 16-digit personal identification code, your four-digit product verification code on the certificate of authenticity that you received with your product, and the official purchase edition number written on your product. CUSTOMER What? What are those!? OPERATOR You will need to take all of those things and fax them to the number listed on our website. CUSTOMER I don’t have a fax machine. I don’t think anyone does. Also, my house burned down. OPERATOR Yes. We will wait for your fax. Thank you. CUSTOMER Well, can I file a complaint through your website? OPERATOR Yes, we have a website. Please go there. CUSTOMER Can I please just file a complaint with you? OPERATOR Do you have your 16-digit personal identification code? CUSTOMER I already told you I don’t! OPERATOR Then no. CUSTOMER: AAAAAAAGHHHH! OPERATOR Transferring to AAAAAAAGHHHH department. Please hold. “Happy H. Christmas” by Maniacs of Noise begins to play. OPERATOR (As the music stops) Welcome to the AAAAAAAGHHHH department. Unfortunately, there has been a mistake. Please select a new department. For billing, press 1. For sales, press 2. For tech support, press 3. For a hilarious and amusing story, press 4. A very long time passes. For the complete soundtrack of both the movie and the Broadway production of Sweeney Todd, press 13,216. For the nearest free trade door knocker manufacturer, press 13,217. For complaints department, press 13,218. CUSTOMER sighs very loudly and violently spins the dial on the rotary phone. OPERATOR Okay, please hold. Thank you. “Happy H. Christmas” by Maniacs of Noise begins to play once more. OPERATOR Hello! This is the complaints department. What can I do for you today, valued customer? CUSTOMER I have a complaint regarding terrible customer service. Also, are you the same person? Because this sounds like the same person. OPERATOR (Suddenly speaking in a German accent) No. I am not the same person. Why would you think that? CUSTOMER Are you sure? Because you sound like the same person I was just talking to, only with a German accent. And I still have a complaint. OPERATOR (Still speaking with a German accent) Shall I transfer you to my superior? CUSTOMER Okay. Fine. Whatever. A different terrible, obnoxious song begins to play. OPERATOR (Russian accent) Hello, this is management! Management is testing out a new robotic help cyber-bot. It is still in the learning phase. Please be patient. CUSTOMER I don’t think I’ve got much patience left. And you are definitely still the same person. OPERATOR (French accent) Non. What is it with you and your false accusations? I’m a different person! CUSTOMER Well for starters, you keep changing your accent. OPERATOR (Southern accent) I do not. CUSTOMER Can I just talk to the robot? Please? OPERATOR Fine. Whatever. There is a long pause. CUSTOMER sighs heavily. OPERATOR exits stage left and is replaced with an advanced-looking ROBOT, played by someone wearing a plain, white mask that features a blank expression. ROBOT Hello! This is the management support robot! What can I help you with? CUSTOMER Customer service. ROBOT Could you repeat that, please? CUSTOMER Tech support. ROBOT I think you said, “Deck fork.” If this is correct, press any diagonal sequence of numbers. If this is incorrect, press the function key. CUSTOMER What?! What’s a function key?! I don’t have a function key! ROBOT I think you said, “I don’t have a function key.” If this is correct, press the function key. CUSTOMER This is insane! Why don’t you just have normal customer service?! ROBOT Uh-oh! What can we do to make your experience better? CUSTOMER I don’t know! ROBOT I am still in the learning phase. Please be patient. CUSTOMER They should have waited until you were done with the learning phase to let you take calls! (Beat) This ought to be against the law! ROBOT I think you said, “I shot my grandma.” Shall I call 911? CUSTOMER No! No! Don’t call 911! This is a disaster! ROBOT What can we do to make your experience better? CUSTOMER I haven’t got a clue. ROBOT I think you said, “My baby’s in the barbecue.” If this is correct— CUSTOMER No! No! Just shut up! I just want to talk to the complaints department! ROBOT Okay, redirecting to the complaints department. CUSTOMER (Relieved) Yes! Finally! ROBOT Uh-oh. There’s been a glitch. Restarting. Shutting down. ROBOT exits and is replaced by OPERATOR. OPERATOR Hello. This is customer service. How may I help you today? CUSTOMER slams the phone down and storms off stage right. OPERATOR sets down its phone, turns to face the audience, and shrugs. CURTAIN CALL. Music: “Window Gazing” by Ivor Slaney.