Pen
The House
A lonely, empty house does everything it can to attract new occupants Once upon a time there was a lonely house. It had not always been lonely. The house had become very unmodern after all the years. On one fine morning the house thought, Why don’t I become modern? After thinking this, the house changed its inside and changed its outside to be more modern. Rustic Cottage The next day many people were looking and thinking, Maybe we should buy the “new” house. Finally, a couple called the Fans bought the house, and they had two kids. They thought the house was great and loved it. But they had to leave because Mrs. Fan got a job. As the house watched their car speed off, it thought, Maybe I need to become more high tech than the other houses? So once again, the house upgraded its inside and upgraded its outside to become more high tech than the others. This time, a couple called the Meadows bought it. The Meadows had three kids. They also loved the house. But after two years they had to go on an important business trip and found a new house there. So, the house thought, What is all this worth? Every time I change, a family comes and then goes. So, what’s the point? And then after this thought, it changed back into the old unmodern house that it had been. And after a long wait, vines started creeping up and growing flowers. Birds started to make nests on the roof. But the house looked beautiful no matter what. Then after some time, an old couple bought it and lived in it forever.
Home
Knitted square with embroidery
Arrival
Meadow At dawn, I ran to the edge of Olive Border. All I see is the field of flowing gold and the morning fog coming in over Charlotte’s Hill like a tidal wave. The shrubs alongside Gracious Court sway in the eye-opening breeze, pointing to the horizon. I waited for what seemed like hours. Like I was waiting for a fish to bite the bait in the middle of a storm. Like waiting no longer meant anything compared to the soul-wrecking suspense awaiting Father’s arrival. Mother had warned me not to go out too early in case I caught a cold but I had insisted that I would be the second loveliest, welcoming sight he saw after the village. I was about to turn, settling on the fact that Mother was right and Father would be home much later, when I saw Macho the donkey on Charlotte’s Hill, then to my delight the familiar figure in my heart appeared right by his side, arms open wide. “Anna Maria, I’m home!”
Meadow
Acrylic
Under the New Mexico Sky
It is the year 1826, and Narna dreams of a better life away from her demanding father “En las cimas de las montañas al norte . . . on the peaks of the mountains to the north . . . crecen flores pequeñas . . . small flowers grow . . . bajo el mismo cielo que nosotros conocemos . . . underneath the very sky we know . . .” The lullaby was soft and comforting. It echoed through the dry, dusty room. “I still can’t sleep,” Narna complained. “It must be your thoughts. What are you thinking? Tell me,” Lana urged softly. Narna groaned, but reluctantly mumbled: “Mamá. I’m thinking about Mamá. It’s just not fair. Why must Papá treat her practically like a servant!” “She does work so hard.” * * * It’s the year 1826, and Narna and her sister Lana are whispering to each other underneath the cracking roof of their adobe house in the Mexican territory of New Mexico. Narna and Lana are very different. Narna, a tall ten-year-old, has straight, dark hair and narrow eyes. She is practical, but always thinking about all the “shouldn’t be’s” of their poor family and community. Lana is a small, meek, daydreamy seven-year-old with wispy light curls and misty gray eyes. But one difference that Narna thinks the biggest is that Lana is blind. Blind not from birth, but from a sickness four long years ago. Narna had never thought of them being similar after that. * * * “Pablo, stop crying!” Narna demanded, plucking their chubby baby brother from his cot and marching him into the open kitchen. She dropped him gently on the woven rug on the floor, surrounded him with toy blocks, and ordered him to sit and play. Narna had never liked babies. In her mind, they sat around crying and drooling and took an unnecessary portion of food. She supposed Pablo sensed this was what his big sister thought of him, which was why he chose the exact moments when he and Narna were alone together to throw his biggest of tantrums. Narna turned away, and blinked back tears. It broke her heart to see her parents fighting. Narna took a piece of cold cornbread and poured herself a tin cup of milk. She took the breakfast out onto the veranda and scanned the landscape with disapproval. Everything was dry and dusty, and Narna wished she could see beautiful, lush trees with trimmed branches in neat lines in place of the ugly, prickly cactuses scattered around. She took a nibble at her cornbread and kicked the dry, cracking earth. She stepped off the veranda and turned to look at their adobe house. Tufts of brown grass poked up through the veranda. The windows were just square holes in the walls. Many of the rooms had openings with awnings, letting the fresh air come in so the house did not get stuffy. Then Narna heard arguing voices from the side of the house. She set down her breakfast, which she had hardly touched, and hurried over to see what all the fuss was about. When she got around the corner, she saw her parents. Her papá was sitting atop a tall brown stallion, and her mamá was standing nearby, staring up at him while clutching a washcloth. “Ah, Francisca!” her papá was saying. “That hole in the roof of my bedroom! It’s been there for weeks! Why haven’t you mended it?” “Why, Diego, you haven’t asked me to,” her mamá said calmly. “Well, Francisca! That is hardly an excuse! I thought I would not have to demand a woman to fix a mere hole in my bedroom roof! It seems only practical that you would not have to be asked.” “Diego, I don’t believe that—” “I don’t want to hear it! Now, you shall go to my bedroom and fix that hole. What if it rains tonight? Now, you wouldn’t want me getting soaked!” “I think that it’s—” “This business has been settled!” Narna’s papá boomed, before riding importantly away. Sitting in Nature Narna turned away and blinked back tears. It broke her heart to see her parents fighting. And her mamá did not have the choice of leaving her papá. All their money came from him. The house was his, all the horses were his, and the few workers who lived on their property were his. Only papá could choose to leave mamá. Narna ran back to the veranda and sat stoutly down on the veranda step. She snatched up a nearby stick and drew scribbles in the dirt with it. She didn’t realize how hard she was pushing until the stick snapped. She groaned, sat back on her heels, and pulled her rebozo over her shoulders. “What’s troubling you, Narna?” Lana asked, coming up from the stream with a large basket of clean, scrubbed clothes. Even though Lana was blind, she could wash clothes in the shallow stream. Only getting to the stream was tricky, because of the narrow path, but their mamá had tied a rope from a little post near the adobe house to a tree down near the little stream. Lana would hold the basket of clothes in one hand and the rope in the other. It would guide her down, and now she could make it to the stream and back easily. Narna looked her little sister in the eye, even though Narna knew she could not see her, and Lana looked back. “Mamá and Papá were arguing again,” Narna told her. She looked down at the ground where she had scribbled with her stick. “It isn’t right. It isn’t fair!” Lana came and sat with her, and Narna guided her down onto the step. She didn’t say a word, but even Lana’s understanding and sympathetic sigh was comforting. “I must go to Pablo,” Lana finally said, so Narna helped
Sitting in Nature
Pastels
Editor’s Note
What is home? A sanctuary, a place of rest, a feeling, a family, a specific house or town or state or sky. Home is the way you feel when you feel “at home”—relaxed, comfortable, open. It is in our homes where we are most physically vulnerable—taking showers, getting dressed, going to the bathroom, eating—and also where we are most emotionally vulnerable as well—where we yell and cry and hug, celebrate and grieve. In many ways (and especially in a pandemic and post-pandemic world), home is where life happens. The art and writing in this issue circles the idea of home—what makes a home home—and also celebrates the idea of home, and the joy of the homecoming. There is nothing like returning home after a long trip—or of finding one’s new home. From my home to yours,
Horse in Dreamland
Oil pastel
Stone Soup Honor Roll: October 2022
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. ART Brianna Collins, 10 Enzo Moscola, 13 MEMOIR Cameron Arias, 12 Ruby Harrison, 11 Elizabeth Hryshchuk, 11 Romy Moseley, 11 Dan Pelleg, 11 Lexi Roper, 12 Angela Yan, 12 POETRY Janelle Adamson, 8 Damyan Drofych, 7 Shivanshi Dutt, 13 Paraskeva Krisko, 9 Ava Luangkesorn, 7 Hannah Thomas, 11 PLAYS Shaivi Moparthi, 13 STORIES Emanuel A. Francis, 10 Gigi Hulbert, 12 Miya Lin, 11 Gavin Liu, 12 Sabrina Lu, 12 Quinn Smith, 11 Anushka Trivedi, 11 Grace Vincent, 10 Noah Xia, 9
Highlight from Stonesoup.com
From the Stone Soup Blog A Review of The Girl Who Fell Beneath the Sea Every year, May is celebrated as AAPI Month in honor of the Asian American and Pacific Islanders who have contributed to the world. With popular reading platforms like Goodreads publishing lists of AAPI authors, the month has been a lovely whirlwind of new #ownvoices books topping my to-be-read list. Through it all, the one that has completely taken my breath away is a Korean-coded fantasy debut to the beat of Miyazaki’s Spirited Away. The gorgeous cover of Axie Oh’s The Girl Who Fell Beneath the Sea depicts Mina, a young girl whose role has never yet been the protagonist. The loveliest girl in her village is Shim Cheong, but Cheong’s beauty is as much of a blessing as it is a curse—every year, a girl bride is sacrificed to the Sea God in hopes of satiating the deadly storms that sweep the land. Legend says that only the Sea God’s true bride will calm the floods forever. Beautiful Cheong is set to be the annual sacrifice, but there is one problem: she loves Mina’s brother. To save her brother’s beloved, Mina jumps into the sea as a sacrifice instead, becoming the reckless heroine of her own story. In the watery depths, she enters the Spirit Realm, where spirits and creatures and gods abound. But nothing is as it seems. As Mina tries to figure out why the Sea God is causing so many storms in the human world, her soul is stolen. From there, Mina must venture through a world of magic and lost stories and vengeful gods to seek answers about the Sea God, lest she become a spirit forever. This book painted one of the lushest, most breathtaking settings I have ever had the pleasure to immerse myself in. Axie Oh brought the fascinating world of the Spirit Realm to life with such a detailed hand that I could feel the flurry of spirits, smell vendors’ candies and desserts, see the gilded palaces and gardens. I loved the Korean culture incorporated into the book, from the twist on the tale of Shim Cheong to the Red String of Fate. There was something about the aesthetic of the book that felt wholly comforting. Perhaps what I adored most were the themes. At first, I wasn’t sure how I felt about Mina; she seemed like yet another perfect Mary Sue heroine, the clean-cut, selfless kind of girl about as real as a unicorn. As the book progressed, though, I began to see her flaws: her fear, her doubt, but her unwavering filial piety triumphing nevertheless. Mina stayed strong because of and for her family, which I deeply admired; it was steeped in the book’s Asian roots and ideologies, untarnished by romance or ulterior motives. Flashbacks to her grandmother’s wonder and storytelling ability were wonderfully written and executed. Even when Mina was struggling, she sought to comfort others and wove stories like her grandmother’s that were more magical than anything in the Spirit Realm. Mina was wise beyond her years and wielded her vulnerabilities like knives, which is the bravest thing of all. You can read the rest of April’s review on our website. 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/.
Night
As I lay in my bed in the dark of the night when the world silently sleeps, the trees rest and the sun grows dim and the gleaming light of the moon casts a shine over the night-stained pond. The poor old whip-poor-will rests from his journey to bask in the light of the stars and the Moon-woman brushes past with a sudden sort of solemnness, dabbing the tips of the grass with a silvery frost and leaving a diamond-like dewdrop in the center of every flower. The night is a gift to be enjoyed. Windowpanes greet the stray leaves rapping against them. The wind paints an invisible picture through the air whistling its way through, raindrops adorning the leaves of the white oak tree like star-studded ornaments, the frozen silver drops clinking together like chimes on a porch falling victim to the wind. The pattering like little footsteps. The night is a song to be listened to. The wind carries the subtle smell of fresh grass, of the just-wet mud, and the aromatic wildflowers adorning the side of the field like jewels on a crown, and the sleeping willow—the freshness of soft, sleeping nature. The night is a fragrance whose scent is rarely recognized, but it is the sweetest smell for those who realize it. The round, glass orb of the moon, shrouded by wispy gray clouds, too shy to show its face. The clouds, like gentle, lavender-grey tufts of cotton candy, inviting you to fly amongst them. The stars, like pieces of hope chipped off of dreams themselves. You let the night slowly, and silently, rock you to sleep, and fall into the sound of the rain.
