Jane Levi

“Frozen Beauty” by Hanna Gustafson, 12. Photograph published in Stone Soup, January 2018. A note from William Rubel Thanks to all of you who have so far answered our call for donations. We are overwhelmed by your generosity and support for our work in 2018. Click here if you didn’t receive the donor drive letter, or would like to read its message again. Do you love podcasts? Podcasters! We recently agreed to work with a South African podcaster who specializes in podcasts by kids. Details will follow in a few weeks. This podcaster told us that we should start our own podcast program. I’d like to know who amongst you—kid or adult—has worked on a podcast. If you have, or if you have skills you think might be helpful to us—please send me a letter by replying to this email. If you have worked on a published podcast, then please include the URL. A project for this week(end) For the project this week, I’d like you to look at the photograph “Frozen Beauty,” by Hanna Gustafson, which we are republishing here from last January’s issue, and to read the poem by Sheila Northrup it is paired with at the bottom of the newsletter. I want you to go outside with a phone or camera and take a photograph of winter beauty where you live. Where I live, this is a tough assignment; our winter beauty looks more like what for most of you would look like spring. If you live in Arizona or Florida or Texas or in my California, your winter beauty photograph will look very different from that of a reader in Maine or Wisconsin or Alaska. The poem says, “Now it is official./ Winter is finally here.” I want you to capture in a photograph what, to you, makes winter “official” where you live. As always, if you really like what you have done and think you have nailed the assignment, please upload it to our submissions website so Emma can see it. By the way, my daughter and I are flying to Egypt today! My colleagues will take over the newsletter while I’m away. Best wishes for the holidays! Until I return, More winners in our 45th birthday promotion: every 45th subscriber gets a free subscription! Congratulations to our latest winners–including our 450th subscriber since the promotion began, who gets extra prizes! Stone Soup was 45 years old this year. We are celebrating that birthday and celebrating being back in print with an offer to our loyal readers. Can you help us meet our target of 1,000 new print subscribers by the end of the year? We are offering free subscriptions and extra prizes at various points along the way, all tied into our age, and we are more than half way there!. Every 45th subscriber receives a free subscription (3 more this week, in New York, Wisconsin, and California) The 450th and 900th subscribers receive a free subscription, plus copies of all ten of the Stone Soup books in our collection (8 anthologies and 2 Annuals). A parcel will be on its way to Portland, Oregon, next week. And, the 1,000th will receive all of that, plus a free site license for the institution (school or public library) of their choice. It’s easy to subscribe: visit this page. This particular promotion will continue until we meet our target or get to the end of the year, whichever comes first. Please share this with everyone you think would benefit from joining the readership of Stone Soup. And don’t forget, you (and anyone you share the code with) can get a 10% discount on your annual subscription using the code CHEER2018 on our subscription form.   This week on the blog This week, read Lucy Ward’s review of Noggin, by John Corey Whaley, and think, if you can, about what it might be like to wake up to find your head stuck on a different body!   Holiday shopping For holiday gifts: all print subscriptions and other book and product orders ship within two days of being received. All orders received for the remainder of the year will be sent by Priority Mail. To be sure of delivery in time for Christmas, please order by December 17, or select one of the FedEx delivery options. For last-minute shoppers: Digital subscriptions (and the digital portion of combined print/digital subscriptions) are available immediately! Print and digital subscriptions via our website, Stonesoup.com. Use code CHEER2018 on annual subscriptions and receive a 10% discount (until December 31 only) Annuals, anthologies, notebooks, and sketchbooks, via our online store, Stonesoupstore.com Published in Stone Soup, January 2018   Winter   By Sheila Northrup, 10 Illustrated with ‘Frozen Beauty’ by Hanna Gustafson, 12   Soft, white, flakes drift down, following the wind. They bring a sense of happiness to the air. The golden rays of warmth strike onto the fluffy blanket below. The harsh cold still manages to crawl inside houses. Heat vents roar and the windows give out a moan. Thick clouds soon hide the sun. Smoke floats out of the chimneys into the bitter air, while leaves and grass are out of sight. The snow is swallowing up trees. Hot chocolate is being slurped down at every house. Now it is official. Winter is finally here. Click here to read more poems and stories about winter published in Stone Soup. Our customer service contact details for anyone seeking help with a subscription: Email: stonesoup@icnfull.com (response usually within 24–48 hours) Phone: 215-458-8555 (between 7:30 a.m. and 10:00 p.m. ET, Monday through Friday; and 8:30 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. ET on Saturday and Sunday) 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. To our adult readers and supporters…  as Winston Churchill once said, “We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give.” The smallest gift from just a few

Stone Soup Annual 2018: Detail from “My Chinese Dream” by Li Lingfei, Shanghai, China (published in Stone Soup, March 2018), and “Preface” by Emma Wood. A note from William Rubel The Stone Soup Annual 2018 is 411 pages and weighs 1.75 pounds! It’s in full color and includes every piece of writing, every illustration, from all 11 issues published this year, plus an issue’s worth of the best blog material and book reviews published online in 2018. The story that we have posted in this newsletter today, “Zachary, Sophie,” was first published in the March issue. When you purchase the Annual,you will get this story and hundreds of pages more of fantastic, evocative literature, all by kids. A basic review of the story? Beyond brilliant. But rather than my providing a summary and my own analysis, please read the story below. If you like it, if you also think it’s brilliant, then please order the Annual for Christmas. We still have copies in stock. I’d like to once again talk about recent Stone Soup blog posts. That is because we at Stone Soup are so happy with what is being written. We want you all to read the fabulous writing we are publishing in the blog genre, and we want you to write blogs for us too. The blogs are open to both Stone Soup-aged writers and to adults. So far, more kids have answered our blogging call than grown-ups. So, if you are a teacher, homeschooler, or just someone who has something to say that would be appropriate for Stone Soup readers, please send us a sample post. Go to the submit page and scroll down to the blog category to upload your sample. “Forts of Play,” by Keshav Ravi, takes me right back to my childhood. Like him, I was also a fort child. Sheets, blankets, furniture, and clothespins were the tools of my fort-building trade. Keshav takes me right back (almost 60 years) to my childhood house in Washington, DC. I can see those forts and remember crawling around on the floor in my buildings. Keshav’s blog post is a jewel. It is beautifully written and elegantly conveys the hours of pleasure his forts afford him. My personal thanks to Keshav for reminding me of my childhood. This is Stone Soup at its best: powerful writing by kids. For a simple project today, whether you are a child or adult reader of this newsletter, sit down and write a few paragraphs about something in your childhood, the one you’re experiencing now if you’re child, or the one you recollect if you are not. Write about something that resonates with you in the way that Keshav’s fort resonates with him. Another blog post from the last couple of weeks that also speaks to my own life is the post, “Sad Books,” by Maya V. I am also someone who finds it difficult—even impossible—to read books that are overwhelmingly sad. In Maya’s words: “But, when the main character is continuously morose, the book keeps referring to whatever tragic thing has happened, and the book only talks about this dismal thing, after giving it many chances, I decide it’s not worth it to anguish myself over a book.” Wow! This is exactly how I feel! This is the first time I have seen this feeling expressed in writing, and I have never met anyone who is as disturbed by sad books as I am. There are absolutely books that I cannot read. There are movies I cannot see. There are plays, like Shakespeare’s Othello, that leave me utterly destroyed at the end. Thank you, Maya, for expressing your thoughts about sad books so clearly and articulately. Your words speak directly to at least this reader’s experience with emotionally distressing literature. All of you! Please read our blogs—and leave comments—and become a blogger. The genre is flexible. You can write what you like. Until next week, More winners in our 45th birthday promotion: every 45th subscriber gets a refund! Stone Soup was 45 years old this year. We are celebrating that birthday and celebrating being back in print with an offer to our loyal readers. Can you help us meet our target of 1,000 new print subscribers by the end of the year? We are offering free subscriptions and extra prizes at various points along the way, all tied into our age. Every 45th subscriber will receive a free subscription (1 announced last week, and 3 more this week!) The 450th and 900th subscribers will receive a free subscription, plus copies of all ten of the Stone Soup books in our collection (8 anthologies and 2 Annuals). And, the 1,000th will receive all of that, plus a free site license for the institution (school or public library) of their choice. It’s easy to subscribe: visit this page. This particular promotion will continue until we meet our target or get to the end of the year, whichever comes first. Please share this with everyone you think would benefit from joining the readership of Stone Soup. And don’t forget, you can get a 10 percent discount on your annual subscription using the code CHEER2018 on our subscription form. This week on the blog This week, we have a new book review by Faith, of Pictures of Hollis Woods by Patricia Reilly Giff. Let us know in the comments whether you read this book too, and how you felt about it. Shipping News! For holiday gifts: all print subscriptions and other book and product orders ship within two days of being received. From today, we are no longer shipping US orders using media mail: all orders received for the remainder of the year will be sent by Priority Mail. To be sure of delivery in time for Christmas, please order by December 17, or select one of the FedEx delivery options. Print and digital subscriptions via our website, Stonesoup.com Annuals, anthologies, notebooks, and sketchbooks, via our online store, Stonesoupstore.com Published in Stone Soup, March 2018 Zachary, Sophie By Kate Choi, 11 Illustrated with ‘The Gift of Music’ by Delaney Slote, 10 The first day of seventh grade our

A note from William Rubel This week the newsletter coincides with the release of our new December issue: our second annual food issue! It is filled with evocations of food in all its possible guises, and some fully tested (delicious) recipes that you might want to try over the holidays. There is so much to like about this issue that it’s hard to know what to call out. I’ll focus on the photography and mention Ula Pomian’s photograph, “In the Land of Bananas”. As with all of Ula’s work, you can see that she has a very clear point of view. Brilliant! The wrap-around cover photograph, “Snow in Clouds”, by Hannah Parker, also the photographer of our much-loved June cover (“Red Fern”, the goat), is beautiful with a complexity that makes this an image you can come back to many times. I urge you to click the link to see the whole picture. The image is of snow falling through bare tree branches at night. But I could also see the clouds at the top of the photo as interstellar gas clouds, with the snowflakes being stars. Thank you, Hannah. I’m not going to try to improve on Editor Emma’s introduction to the complete issue: During the holidays, when cookies, cake, and hot chocolate seem to be everywhere, we tend to think of food as a comfort and as a delight. We don’t often talk publicly about the many anxieties surrounding food, about the allergies, intolerances, and religious or ethical dietary choices that can make it difficult to enjoy a meal with one’s friends and family. In this year’s food issue, some of our young writers explore this darker side of eating, alongside its joys. We also have six delicious recipes to share with you, and hope you will enjoy sharing your kitchen with each other and with Stone Soup this holiday! Print subscribers should be receiving their issues now (they were mailed in mid-November: ours arrived yesterday), and digital subscribers can log in now to read the full issue. And you can always order additional print copies in the Stone Soup online store. Don’t miss it. Joaquin Garcia-Magallanes mailing out the first copies of the Stone Soup Annual 2018. Shipping News! The 2018 Annual, along with the new fully revised, expanded, and redesigned Stone Soup Books of… are all shipping out to those who preordered them, as I write. All products are mailed out within two days of your order. One of the pleasures of a small business is that you develop personal relationships with suppliers. The Annual and other books and products in our online store are shipped by my now longtime friend Martha Macambridge. Martha and her team have been mailing Stone Soup on and off over the last 40 years! The photo shows one of her assistants, Joaquin Garcia-Magallanes, stuffing the 2018 Annual into envelopes earlier this week. Thank you, Joaquin! For holiday gifts: All print subscriptions and other book and product orders ship within two days of being received. Print and digital subscriptions, monthly or annual, via our website and fulfilment house Annuals, anthologies, notebooks, and sketchbooks in the Stone Soup online store Food For Thought This week, I’d like to focus on one of our regular bloggers and Stone Soup author Sabrina Guo, who just posted an extraordinary essay. Sabrina, as those of you who follow her blog posts know, often writes about Syrian war refugees. In this post she really outdid herself. She actually set up Skype calls with Laura Doggett, who runs a photography and filmmaking collective with Jordan refugee camps. Through Laura she spoke with a couple of young women caught up in the Syrian War. In her own introduction to her blog post Sabrina writes, “Through speaking with them, I began to see the importance of storytelling as a way of connecting and forming bonds with others.” In a profound way, this is what Stone Soup is about. Storytelling as a way of making sense of your own life and of making connections and bonds with others. I don’t want to summarize what Sabrina wrote—please read it yourselves here: “Amplifying Voices with Another Kind of Girl Collective”. It’s an important piece of work. Inspired by Sabrina’s work, we have decided to have a special Stone Soup issue in 2019 featuring the creative work of children caught up in war, wherever they are in the world. We will plan the issue in more detail in the early part of 2019, and we will reach out to those of you who may want to help with the issue. In addition to the special issue, we will create a dedicated space on our website where the voices of children caught up in wars can be heard. Donations made for our refugee project will be dedicated to this important work. Until next week, The first free subscriptions have already been awarded in our 45th birthday promotion! Congratulations and thank you to K. Newlands! Stone Soup was 45 years old this year. We are celebrating that birthday and celebrating being back in print with an offer to our loyal readers. Can you help us meet our target of 1,000 new print subscribers by the end of the year? We are offering free subscriptions and extra prizes at various points along the way, all tied into our age. Every 45th subscriber will receive a free subscription (and we are so close to the next threshold, it could be you this weekend!) The 450th and 900th subscribers will receive a free subscription, plus copies of all ten of the Stone Soup books in our collection (8 anthologies and 2 Annuals). And, the 1,000th will receive all of that, plus a free site license for the institution–school or public library–of their choice. It’s easy to subscribe: visit this page. This particular promotion will continue until we meet our target or get to the end of the year, whichever comes first. Please share this with everyone you think would benefit from joining the readership of Stone Soup. Partnership news Miacademy We have an exciting partnership in place with Miacademy,