In this week’s newsletter, as it’s the first of the month, we focus on our new June 2019 issue. Click the links to read some of our brand new content, and scroll down for contest and other news, plus the latest from our bloggers. Cover: “Flight Through the Cosmos,” photograph by Hannah Parker, 13 In this week’s newsletter, as it’s the first of the month, we focus on our new June 2019 issue. Innocent Yet Dire Words by Isabel Swain A book lover dreaming of a better life uses poetry to cope The Place Where It Isn’t by Eliana Schaffer One girl’s quest for perfection Possibility by Vandana Ravi A magical place of serenity and beauty comes to life in a daydream Plus–poetry, a portfolio of Hannah Parker’s photographs, a story sequence, Letters to the Editor, and our June 2019 Honor Roll Letter from the Editor, June 2019 This is an issue about potential, possibility, and change. In Isabel Swain’s story “Innocent but Dire Words,” a young poet dreams of a better future for herself, while in Vandana Ravi’s short story, a girl dreams of simply another place. In Grace Jiang’s poems, nature comes to life again, after its seasonal death and hibernation, and in Andrew Wu’s story sequence “Nature in my Eyes,” nature changes in our eyes, as we attempt to see it from the angles and experiences of different creatures. Change is inevitable: we change, the world changes, time moves along. And, in the spaces between, in the time when it feels as if nothing is changing, we dream of the change that might happen. And yet when that change finally does occur—when yet again the rose blooms—it still feels miraculous. After reading this issue, I hope you will feel inspired to think and write about change—in the world or in you, past or future, real or imagined. Letters: We love to hear from our readers. Please post a comment on our website or write to us via Submittable or editor@stonesoup.com. Your letter might be published on our occasional Letters to the Editor page. Subscribers: read the new issue here! Contests and partnership news Contest: Write a Book! Start planning for our summer contest: book-length writing in all forms and genres by kids aged 14 and under (we have extended our usual age limit for this contest). The deadline for entries is August 15th, so you have the whole summer to work on perfecting your book, whether it is a novel, a collection of poetry or short stories, a memoir, or other prose. There will be three placed winners, and we will publish all three winning books in various forms. Visit our contest page and Submittable entry page for full details. Stone Soup’s books are getting some great reviews! Stone Soup joined LibraryThing a few months ago, and our books have been getting some great reviews from other members at LibraryThing and also on their own blogs. Visit our book pages and see what other readers are saying–and add your comments! Also, we have joined Goodreads! Are you on that social network? Please send a friend request our way! We also want to encourage you to leave a review any of the Stone Soup books you’ve read, like an Annual or a Stone Soup Book of . . . We’ve compiled a list of the ones listed on Goodreads here.Submit your creative work to Stone Soup Highlights from the past week online Don’t miss the latest content from our Book Reviewers and Young Bloggers at Stonesoup.com. “Have you ever wondered about the clothes you wear? Where they come from and what happens to them when you no longer need them? Recently, I got very interested in learning more about clothes. It all started when I went with my mother to a clothing donation box in the parking lot of a small mall near our home.” Read the rest of Mahati’s fascinating blog post about the life cycle of clothes here. Remember Abigail’s piece about Polish traditions for spring? Well, she’s back this week, this time in Japan! Read about Hanami, the cherry blossom festival, and more in the blog post “Japanese Traditions for Spring.” Shop in the Stone Soup Store Stone Soup’s advisors: Abby Austin, Mike Axelrod, Annabelle Baird, Jem Burch, Evelyn Chen, Juliet Fraser, Zoe Hall, Montanna Harling, Alicia & Joe Havilland, Lara Katz, Rebecca Kilroy, Christine Leishman, Julie Minnis, Jessica Opolko, Tara Prakash, Denise Prata, Logan Roberts, Emily Tarco, Rebecca Ramos Velasquez, Susan Wilky.
Writing Activity: Using the power of “show, don’t tell”
Writers often hear the advice: “show, don’t tell.” But what does it mean? Read and study a story from the Stone Soup archives to see the power of this technique, and then try it for yourself. Activity Eleven-year-old Ari Rubin’s story, “Lindy,” was first published in Stone Soup magazine in 1993, and it has been included in all the editions of our anthology, the Stone Soup Book of Friendship Stories, since then. To prepare for this activity, read “Lindy.” Consider the way that the story unfolds. You’ll notice that the whole story is “told” to us by a strong narrator’s voice. But he doesn’t explicitly tell us the real story underneath the story. He shows us the various events as they happened to him, so that—like him—we don’t understand Lindy’s bigger story until the very end. Then, we notice all the hints dropped along the way. We see the journey the narrator has been on, and how he got to where he is now in terms of his feelings about Lindy. This approach makes you want to read the story again. And then you see that the clues were there all along, cleverly laced in to the narrative. In “Lindy” the author brilliantly controls what he shows us, what he tells us, how, and when. This mastery of the content makes a complex emotional tale come across in an authentic voice that sounds simple and matter-of-fact. The author demonstrates how much more powerful it can be to reveal things to the reader through action and dialogue, instead of listing and explaining all the underlying thoughts and feelings in the order they happen. Read “Lindy” again with a pencil in your hand, and mark the points in the story where something happens, or a clue is dropped, that you only recognised as a clue when you read the story the second time. Now, take a look at one of your story ideas; one that you have developed enough that you know everything about your characters, where they are going in the story, and what happens in the end. Think about when you want the reader to know all those things. Think about how you might structure your story and what clues you might be able to give along the way, and where you might drop those hints. Try to identify the crucial events or moments in the story that relate to the ending, and think about what might your characters do or say or observe at those points, without the words that literally tell us ever coming out of their mouths. How can you give your readers just enough information to mean that the truth revealed right at the end has been signposted, but never explicitly given away, in the course of the story?
Saturday Newsletter: March 30, 2019
“Jenna would love it here, Adrian found herself thinking” Illustration by Ashley Burke, 13, for “The Baseball” by Katie Russell, 13. Published in Stone Soup, September/October 2006 & in The Stone Soup Book of Sports Stories (2018). A note from Jane Levi This week’s featured story is actually one of a pair of stories, both published in Stone Soup more than 10 years ago, about the same character—a girl called Adrian—and telling the story of the same event—a baseball game in the park—from different perspectives. In “The Baseball,” we learn about Adrian’s inner life and the story of her family, especially her troubled older sister, who gave her the baseball of the title. The other, “Adrian,” tells the story of the appearance of this new girl, Adrian, in the baseball game being played by a group of friends. In that story, we learn about the girls in the group, their response to Adrian’s arrival in their game, and how wrong we can be when we jump to conclusions based on superficial, surface appearances.* Originally, we published these two stories in the order the author sent them to us: “Adrian” first, “The Baseball” second. Presented in this order, Adrian is the titular hero from the beginning, but she is actually as much of a mystery to us, the readers, as she is to the group of baseball-playing girls. We are left at the end of that first story wondering where she came from, how she got to be so good at baseball, and whether she will become friends with the rest of the girls. It is only in the second installment that we start to understand who Adrian is, what she is going through, what baseball means to her, and how she came to that baseball game on that particular afternoon. Re-read some of your favorite books and you will see how often authors use this device—switching perspective—to help their readers develop intimacy with the hero of the story, and how frequently they will imply who the hero actually is by giving you insight into their minds earlier in the story, or more often. When we chose these two stories for The Stone Soup Book of Sports Stories, we had to think really carefully about which order to present them in. It was an interesting dilemma, because the story works both ways, but the reader’s perspective on the wider tale changes with each part. Sequentially in time, the second story actually comes first, and in it we learn more about the lead character than the other characters know. We almost reversed them in the collection, but in the end kept the original publication order. Reading them again now, I still wonder whether we should have flipped them around and subtly changed readers’ experiences of the stories. When you write stories with several characters, how do you decide what to reveal about them, and at which stage of the story? When you read these two specific stories in a different order, does it change the way you feel about the story? If these stories were chapters in a book about Adrian, which order would you put them in? If you think you would have made a different editorial decision for The Stone Soup Book of Sports Stories, please write and tell us why! Happy reading, *The other girls made some harsh judgments about Adrian, based on her clothes, which are described (and illustrated) in the 2004 story “Adrian.” In the 2006 illustration for “The Baseball,” her green nail polish is shown because it is mentioned in that story, but the illustrator invented the rest of her clothes. Our spring contest and partnership news Write for a podcast: Closing date April 15 Our current contest, in partnership with the By Kids, for Kids Story Time podcast, to write a short story about climate change or other environmental theme. Your work could become a dramatized reading, broadcast on the podcast, and be published in an issue of Stone Soup! All the details about entries and prizes are on our website contest pages. Summer writing mentorship program for 9th-graders and up: Application deadline April 15 We’ve partnered with The Adroit Journal, a literary magazine for teens. The applications for their Summer Mentorship program, which takes place from June to August, are open now. This program pairs young writers in grades 9 through 12 with an experienced writer who helps them learn more about the creative process. We know this is for an audience older than ours, but if you are a former reader or contributor, or know any teenagers who are aspiring writers, encourage them to apply! Highlights from the past week online Don’t miss the latest content from our Book Reviewers and Young Bloggers at Stonesoup.com! Mirembe, 12, reviews Kid Beowulf: The Rise of El Cid, the third graphic novel in a series by Alexis E. Fajardo. Here’s the start of the review: “Attention! Calling all young readers! Are you an adventurous middle grade reader (ages 8 to 11) who would love to travel throughout the middle ages? Do you find medieval battles thrilling? Do you want to fight for justice? If so Alexis Fajardo’s graphic novel Kid Beowulf: The Rise of El Cid might be perfect for you.” Read more of Mirembe’s thoughts on the blog. (Plus—keep an eye out for an interview of the author we’ll be publishing soon!) From Stone Soup, September/October 2006, & The Stone Soup Book of Sports Stories (2018) The Baseball By Katie Russell, 13 Illustrated by Ashley Burke, 13 Adrian stared at the ball in her hand. It was old, obviously well-used and well-loved. Dirt and grass had been ground into it, its once shining whiteness now a muddy, undetermined brown. The laces had been worn down, rough and rusty red. When Adrian held the ball, her hand could feel familiar bumps and dents that had come from years of use. Adrian could remember when her sister, Jenna, had first handed her the ball and taught her how to play baseball. The ball had been new then, just-bought-from-the-store new. Its creamy outside had promised exciting adventures that the two would face. Adrian loved the ball. It had been years since Adrian last
