Jane Levi

“Mountain Dweller”, by Eva Stoitchkova, 11, Ontario, Canada. The cover art for the Stone Soup Annual 2018. A note from William Rubel It’s Thanksgiving in the United States this Thursday! We hope you all have a wonderful time. We have received the proof copies of this year’s Stone Soup Annual. It is so exciting to hold the whole year’s published work in our hands in one fat book! We are very excited that we will soon be able to send it out into the world and into your hands. We also loved being able to look through a year of writing and art on the pages of the magazine. You have made such wonderful work this year, all of you. Congratulations. This week I want focus particularly on the fantastic artwork by 11-year-old Eva Stoitchkova, “Mountain Dweller,” that makes the striking cover for this year’s Annual. We used another of Eva’s collages, “Forest Creature,” as the cover of our March 2018 issue, and I urge you to visit it at our website to look closely at that one too. Every time I look at Eva’s beautiful images, I’m impressed by her bold, expressive lines and the creative way she uses collage to both create and embellish the picture. She uses the underlying found images in the usual way, to add color and texture to her work, but at the same time she chooses those images to add meaning and contextual references as well. It’s both clever and beautiful, and all of us at Stone Soup are so proud to be able to share Eva’s art with you. Thank you, Eva!                     Copies of the Stone Soup Annual are available for pre-order now in the Stone Soup online store, and will ship in the first week of December. There you can also find back issues of the 2018 magazine in print. What we learned this week We attended the California Library Association conference in Santa Clara, California, last weekend. Truly great response to our renaissance! Librarians loved what they saw. Here is the takeaway idea from the conference: we should think of Stone Soup as a bridge between being a consumer of literature—a reader—and being a producer of literature—a writer and an artist. While every writer is a reader, every reader is not a writer. Childhood is the time to get into the habit of being a creative person—a writer and an artist. Stone Soup is there for kids to help them synthesize their reading and personal experiences through creative writing and art. William’s Weekend Project Which gets us to today’s project: a close-up portrait of an animal. I mean “animal” in its largest scientific sense, the kingdom Animalia. We are mammals. Flies are insects. Along with fish, birds, and other types of creatures, we are all within the group of organisms scientists classify as animals—“Animalia.” When you stare into a dog’s eyes, the dog stares back into your eyes. There is human-dog bonding through the eyes. There is no bonding between humans and flies. With most other animals it is unclear to us humans just exactly what the eyes we’re looking at are actually seeing or communicating. But eyes are so important to how we humans interact with each other that for us, a face with the eyes always captures our attention. Even when it is the face of an insect. Working from pets or domesticated animals you may have access to—dogs, cats, rabbits, goats, chickens, cows, pigs—and from animals you can usually only see up close in photographs—elephants, flies, fish, etc.—I want you to make a drawing or painting that fills the entire page just with the creature’s face. I’m thinking of a full-on, face-forward portrait that fills the entire page. Most animals display symmetry—the left and right sides of their faces mirror each other. Eye-migrating flatfish like flounder are an exception. Both of their eyes are on the same side of their head! The illustration you see in this newsletter is the face of “Mountain Dweller” created using collage by Eva Stoitchkova. Be bold. Be brave. Fill the entire space. As always, if you create something that you are happy with, send it to Emma via our submissions portal. Be bold! Until next week, Highlights from the past week online Keep up with the latest posts on our blog. In Santa Cruz, where Stone Soup is based, we have been very aware of all the fires in California over the past weeks. They are hundreds of miles away from us, but the smoke fills the atmosphere, so we are constantly thinking of those for whom it is closer to home. Our blogger Lukas Cook wrote a thoughtful piece, My Soccer Game Went Up In Smoke, on the fires, their causes and effects, this week. Don’t miss it. Have you ever seen a poetry animation before? Have you experimented with Scratch? Check out the animation that Vandana R made and posted this week. Plus, the latest review by Nina Vigil: this week, of a documentary film called Science Fair. On the basis of Nina’s review, we can’t wait to see it! Partnership news Secret Kids contest Did you know the Secret Kids Contest was mentioned in the New York Times this week? We hope that means we will get lots more entries to this fantastic competition for young, long-form authors that we are running in partnership with Mackenzie Press. All of the details are on our website–suffice to say, that if you are under the age of 18 and working on a book-length piece of writing, you should be thinking about getting it ready to submit by the end of the year to be in with a chance of winning one of the amazing prizes–a publishing contract. Miacademy We have an exciting partnership in place with Miacademy, the interactive learning site for K-8th grade. Writing from Stone Soup is being featured on their site, and Miacademy subscribers have the opportunity to submit their work to us. As part of

A note from William Rubel These are the first four volumes of the revised Stone Soup anthologies! The next four are being printed this upcoming week. What can I say? Jane Levi, who has been responsible for this project has done a spectacular job. Revised content, completely new look, every volume expanded (the poetry volume alone has 50 additional poems), and every book is now over 200 pages. They are all available right now as forthcoming titles at our online store. The official publication date is November 15, though, as you can see from the picture, half of them have already arrived, so we can start shipping those ones earlier in the week. We love libraries! This weekend Jane, my daughter Stella, and I are presenting Stone Soup at the California Library Association conference in Santa Clara, CA. We have a booth. We’re very excited! Getting back in print lets us get back to selling print subscriptions to libraries once again, and a library is one of the absolutely best places for Stone Soup. And, of course, we will be selling anthologies and copies of the Stone Soup Annual. We hope to see them in every library soon! William’s Weekend Project I want to call attention today to the poem posted on our blog this week. It is called “Searching for Han Solo” and was written by Isabella Posel. This poem speaks to me as a parent, and it speaks to who I was as a child. This poem asks questions about today’s world—where it’s headed and how can it be saved from the direction it’s going in. So, yes, this poem is about global warming, and it’s about leaders who lie. It is always disconcerting for me to go into my daughter’s middle school to see all the banners hanging in the hallways about integrity, honesty, and acting toward others as you would want others to act towards you. Every time I go to my daughter’s school and read these banners or listen to the principal speaking at the assembly about the school’s values, I wonder what is it like to be a child today when so many of our leaders offer such a profoundly bad example. I’m so happy that Isabella has contributed this poem to Stone Soup. It is really an important one, and I hope you all will read it. To make it easier, it’s included below in the former ‘Story from the Archives’ section. Isabella’s poem achieves something that is very, very difficult. And that is to turn contemporary history and politics into a work of art that transcends the moment. Note how Isabella draws on classical myths, American comics, and today’s real world as sources for her work. It’s a poem to make you think. So what I’d like you all to do today is to start poem or story that explores the big world and national issues of today in a literary way. In other words, you are not writing an essay. You are not writing an opinion piece. You are using the techniques of poetry and storytelling to draw out what you feel about the big global and national issues of your childhood, right now. I can say that when I was a child my fears were about nuclear war. That was a huge concern. But when I see all of the issues that are on the scale of nuclear war that you are having to deal with today, I just can’t imagine what is going through your heads.This is a project where you can use your literary skills to talk to your peers and to talk to us adults about how you are feeling. Isabella proposes the idea that you children are all getting ready to fix all this mess. I can say to you that I sincerely hope you will. And thank you, Isabella, for contributing your poem. So, thinking about this poem, you know the drill. If you write something that you want Emma to consider printing in Stone Soup, then go to our online submissions form and submit it under the category of poem or story. If you would like your entry to be considered as a blog post, then please submit it to the blog category, where Sarah will contact you. Blog posts are published fairly quickly upon acceptance, whereas it takes longer to publish something in the magazine because we work many months in advance. In every case, I look forward to reading what you produce. Until next week,           Partnership news Secret Kids contest This is our regular reminder to young, long-form authors that we are running a contest in partnership with Mackenzie Press: the Secret Kids Contest. All of the details are on our website–suffice to say, that if you are under the age of 18 and working on a book-length piece of writing, you should be thinking about getting it ready to submit by the end of the year to be in with a chance of winning one of the amazing prizes–a publishing contract. Miacademy We have an exciting partnership in place with Miacademy, the interactive learning site for K-8th grade. Writing from Stone Soup is being featured on their site, and Miacademy subscribers have the opportunity to submit their work to us. As part of this partnership, our friends at Miacademy are offering generous discounts to Stone Soup subscribers: 20 to 40 percent off, depending on which type of subscription you purchase. To find out more about Miacademy and explore the various services on offer, visit their website and read the information for parents. If you choose to join, simply enter the code STONESOUP2018at the checkout to receive your discount. From the Stone Soup blog, November 6, 2018 Searching for Han Solo: A Poem By Isabella Posel Riddle me this And Make My Day Who has taken all the heroes away? They are not in the papers Or on TV Not anywhere, sadly, that I can see Maybe King Arthur got lost And James

“Excuse me, may I please have those two doves?” Illustrator Olivia Zhou, 12 for My Father’s Doves by Jenny Li, 11. Published May/June 2013. A note from William Rubel Reminder! Midnight, September 30. That is the absolute final deadline for recipes for the December food issue! Get cooking! Get writing! Enough said. It is a Stone Soup first! As we highlighted in last week’s blog round-up, Stone Soup blogger Lukas Cooke interviewed Patricia Newman, author of Plastic Ahoy!, a book on plastic pollution in the oceans. Those of you who follow Lukas’ blog know that he writes about nature and the environment–the perfect Stone Soup author to interview Ms. Newman. I’d like to congratulate Lukas. You did a really good job! I have been interviewed many times for press and for radio. Everything hinges on the quality of the questions one is asked. You asked good questions. Newsletter readers, if you missed it last week, please check out the interview this week–and leave a comment if you are so inclined. Lukas is not the only Stone Soup blogger writing about nature. Mia W. published an essay this week, ‘The Atlantic Net Pen Collapse’, that talks about the escape from a fish farm of an immense number of Atlantic salmon into the Salish Sea. Where is the Salish sea? Mia describes it as “a vast body of water, stretching from southwest British Columbia, Canada, to the northwest portion of Washington State, USA.” An informative, well-written essay, with a bibliography, I highly recommend it. The writing by Lukas and Mia, and other bloggers who are posting nonfiction, is broadening our Stone Soup world. Thank you, Mia and Lukas! I know that many of you write both fiction and nonfiction. While we are keeping fiction writing the main focus of Stone Soup magazine (although there is some great nonfiction in our September Science issue), the website is where we are now offering you an opportunity to write about absolutely anything that interests you. Join Mia and Lukas to write about the natural world, or Vandana R to write about books, or Leo T. Smith who writes about sports–and the list goes on, with wonderful writers on every issue under the sun. Have an interest? Love to write? Want to share your thoughts? If you are under the age of fourteen OR if you are involved in teaching writing, art, or music to kids then become a Stone Soup blogger! Write something up and upload it to the blog section of our online submission form so we can take a look. Now. For the rest of you! Again, this is regardless of your age, if you are not going to sit down and start working on what you hope will be your first Stone Soup blog entry, then I want you find some time this weekend to sit down and start writing about something that are you are really interested in right now, like today. For me, today, it is pit firing. After years and years of thinking, wouldn’t it be nice to fire pottery in the backyard?, but never doing it, I bought some clay, and with my daughter made two bowls where we hope our finches will make nests, two cooking pots, and two cookie stamps. I made sure the pottery was bone dry by putting it in a low oven this morning, and then I went for it: Cleared some ground in my backyard; built a small fire; when the fire had burned down put the pottery on the embers; and then piled wood over the pots–and lit it! I added a little more wood when the fire was roaring to ensure the pottery would get hot enough to fire; let it all die down; and after the heap was reasonably cool, I uncovered the pieces from the ashes. Miracle! Pottery! That is what I’d write about. You? Until next week         This week’s story and art from the archives We do encourage you to click through to read the whole of this week’s featured story (as we hope you do every week!). 12-year-old Olivia Zhou’s lovely, detailed drawings, with their calm, understated color-palette complement the beautifully expressed evocation of the past, love and longing in 11-year-old Jenny Li’s story ‘My Father’s Doves’–which is about the father and the doves of the title, and so much more. Remember, subscribers have full, unlimited access to the whole archive on the Stone Soup website. Non-subscribers can read a limited number of stories, poems and posts. Highlights from the past week online Don’t miss the latest content from our Book Reviewers and Young Bloggers at stonesoup.com! As mentioned above, we published Mia W’s nature and environment piece this week, ‘The Atlantic Net Pen Collapse’. Maybe I could use the doves to send a note to my father From Stone Soup May/June 2013 My Father’s Doves By Jenny Li, 11 Illustrated by Olivia Zhou, 12 Running to the market, my father clutched the bagful of coins to his chest. On the leather bag was sewn “,” horse, in Chinese, the only gift that his father had given him before the war. He hurried across town, walking under the wood sign with the words “Tai City” etched on it and following the path, which he knew by heart. He finally arrived at the center of town, full of street vendors selling fruits and other goods, with gray-uniformed soldiers at every corner. The coins were clanking against each other inside the bag as if clamoring to break free. My father lowered his eyes from the glaring of the men and shuffled to the doves’ area. He spilled the coins onto his calloused, rough hands and spoke to the salesperson. “Excuse me,” he said in a steady voice, “may I please have those two doves?” My father pointed to the two slender spotted doves perched inside an angular metal cage—the doves which he had admired for so long. The man glared suspiciously at him. “Do you have the money?” “Yes, sir,” replied my father, trying to look