Jane Levi

Why were they leaving her? Where were they going? Illustrator Angelica Devers, 12, for Face Your Fears by Jem Burch, 12. Published November/December 2015. A note from William Rubel …and first, an apology I’d like to open today’s Newsletter by thanking all of you who have stuck with us in our shift from print-only to monthly digital plus print annual, and through all the travails of our subscription systems over the last 6 months. We are painfully aware that almost everything that could go wrong has gone wrong since the changes of the early Summer. We are also aware that some of you have been having (and are still having) trouble logging in to the website, and that at the same time there have been issues with getting in touch with us due to some really unfortunate errors in the customer service information published. I am speaking with our programmer on Monday. I believe we have thought of a way to simplify the login process, without forcing everyone to go through the whole process again. I extend my deepest apologies to those of you who have been frustrated by difficulties in getting through to our fulfillment house and/or by the login process. I’ll have an update on this next week. Orphans, foundlings and the power of fiction Look at this amazing drawing!  This magnificent illustration, one of two made for Face Your Fears, captures the sadness, uncertainty, and confusion of the moment that Katherine and her infant sister were abandoned on the steps of an orphanage by her parents, who told her, “we’ll come back for you…” What strikes me about the illustration by Angelica Devers is the look on the girl’s face.Though clearly a young child, her expression shows her to be an individual in the world and clearly on her own life path — which is what each of us are, whatever our age. Jane Levi, who is one of the people who brings you Stone Soup, lives in London. A couple of years ago, she curated an exhibition at London’s Foundling Museum, which commemorates the Foundling Hospital, a historical charitable institution for abandoned children. Those of you who have read Jacqueline Wilson’s Hetty Feather series will know a lot already about these London foundlings! Some of you might also be familiar with the Messiah, a piece of music written by the German-born composer Frideric Handel (1685-1759). Handel was a patron of the Foundling Hospital. One of his gifts to the institution was the copyright to his Messiah, which at that time meant that when a musical group wanted to perform it they had to pay the Foundling Hospital for a copy. Writing orphan stories is tricky because the theme is such a cliché in children’s literature. The children who lived at the London Foundling Hospital, like the children in Jem Burch’s Stone Soup story, were children who were not exactly orphans, as their parents were not dead. The foundlings were given up by their parents, often single mothers, who could not afford to care for them. The core relationship in the story of these foundlings from long ago was the love of mothers that was so strong they broke their own hearts to give up their children to an institution known for its superior care. They gave up their children to give them a chance at a better life than the one they could offer. One of the most powerful exhibits at the Foundling Museum is the display of ‘tokens’ left by parents with their children. These were small objects like buttons, coins and scraps of fabric left by mothers with their babies, that convey their love and hope for the future of their children. I had a neighbor who adopted a boy from El Salvador from a family for whom this child was one mouth too many to feed. The family thought that it would be better for this boy to grow up in America with a new family. One of the powers of fiction writing is that you can use fiction to explore complex problems like this. What does the mother or father who gives up a child feel like? What does the child, grown up, come to think of the decision of their parents? Can you imagine being a parent giving up your child? Can you imagine being a child who has been given up for adoption? There are many ways to write a story. One form of story telling, which was one of the earliest forms of the novel, is the “epistolary” story. This is a story told through letters. The story featured in this week’s Newsletter, Kisses from Cécile is a story about letters. I think using letters as a way of telling at least part of an orphan story could be a way to offer a sense of what characters are feeling in their deepest being. Good news on print On the good news side we have worked out a way to bring back print issues (though not yet a regular print subscription). In next week’s Newsletter I will have a publication date for the January issue. By the March issue we should be able to have individual issues available in print on the first of the publication month. 2018 issues, as well as any back issues we have remaining stock of, will be for sale individually for those who wish to order them in our Stone Soup Store. We have also just received additional copies of the Stone Soup 2017 Annual, as well as the anthologies we sold out of. Keep on creating! I hope you all have made the transition back to school and work happily. For those of you who experienced the fires in Southern California last December and those of you in the Eastern United States and elsewhere experiencing the extreme cold it is probably a good time to put the finishing touches on stories and diary entries. We tend to forget important details as time passes. Of course, any of you living anywhere in the world where there have been extreme events, weather-based or otherwise — please transform the experiences into

A note from William Rubel Submissions! Wow! Many of you were certainly busy over the holidays. We received a spate of submissions in the first couple of days of the New Year. Thank you! The January issue of Stone Soup is the first issue of our 46th volume year! The issue has been completely redesigned by our wonderful London designer, Joe Ewart. The all-new design brings a fresh look to Stone Soup in PDF and print formats. Subscribers have access to the PDF of every issue from the first of the month. I like to read my Stone Soups on my iPad in iBooks. This issue, and all issues for the year, will be part of the 2018 print annual. Subscribers can download the PDF from our homepage, and non subscribers can read a couple of articles online to get a taste of what they are missing. I am sure you will all enjoy the art, poetry and stories in the issue as much as I have. For the Newsletter, I’d like to share with you this month’s Editor’s Note from Emma Wood: I write to you before a crackling fire. It is officially winter in the Santa Cruz mountains, which, for us, means rain, not snow. But I grew up in the Northeast, and so I am dreaming of snow this time of year. And these poems and stories reflect that: many of them are full of the white flakes, bitter winds, and ice. A few, however, reflect the winter we enjoy in California – crisp but still beautiful, a kind of paradise. As for the art: while there are a few wintry images, I worked to bring a splash of color to the short, dark days. Enjoy (perhaps with some hot chocolate!) In the north, this month is all about the weather! For those of you living through this weekend’s extreme weather events in the US (that the meteorologists are calling a “winter bomb”) please take photographs, draw pictures, write stories, write poems, compose music, dance, make a documentary film — use the experience as a source for your creativity. And, of course, please do the same if your climate is completely different at this time of year! Wherever you are, if you make something you think is really really really great that you’d like to share with Emma, then do send it to Stone Soup. New design As this is our first redesigned issue in ages I want to talk a little more about the design. Here is the opening contents page. Our designer worked to combine type and color in the pages in truly original ways, that carry through from cover to contents to the pages of work themselves. He thought through every part of the pages; every caption, every layout, and every credit line. We hope you think it is as elegant and beautiful as we do. Thank you, Joe. Book Club! Good things keep happening from the NCTE conference we went to in November. Jane Levi and I just had a constructive conversation with the publisher Harper Collins about working with us to create a book club. Harper Collins is willing to send advance copies of books to Stone Soup Book Club members — these are books that are about to be published but are not yet on sale — as well as to send us classics from their back list — like Charlotte’s Web. We are also talking with Harper Collins about setting up author interviews or discussions that club members could participate in. If any of you are in book clubs already and have some ideas for a Stone Soup Book Club – like what you ‘d like to get out of such a club, and what kinds of book you’d love to read and review and discuss – let me know by replying to this email. And, at last, the books we collected at the NCTE convention for you to review have been sent out to many of you who requested books. Thank you for being so patient! They will be arriving this week–and if you don’t get one this time, please don’t worry, there will be more soon. Until next week, William She cuts me off. “It’s Rowen. And I’m busy. Good luck.” This week’s story from the archive… from Stone Soup September/October 2015 First Impression By Eloise Wendt, 12 Illustrated by Phoebe Wagoner, 12 The white moving truck with faded blue letters pulls into the driveway behind us. I stare ahead at the one-story house that is now ours. Unbelievable. I look down, into my folded hands. The never-ending car trip seems like a bundle of candy right now. Will things keep getting worse? “Bay,” my mom says gently. I look out the window, oblivious to her coaxing voice. Diandra lets out a snicker. Fine. Let my only sister think I’m an idiot. Works for me. I close my eyes, remembering California. The waves rolling in, the sun beaming down. I take a glance at the harsh reality. Snow falling. Short houses. Lakes, not oceans. Why Minnesota? Mom deserves the silent treatment. She caused the divorce. She caused the move. Diandra doesn’t care, Mom doesn’t care, and Dad’s all the way on the other side of the world, deciding to live his life in Australia. Why didn’t he take me with him? Why did Mom have to package me up and ship me to the opposite of California with her? I unbuckle my seatbelt and get out of the car. I hold out a finger and let a snowflake land on it. The delicate thing melts at my touch. Shivering, I tug my scarf tighter. Diandra hops out of the car, swinging her backpack after her. Only a few more years, I remind myself as she whips her dazzling blond hair around herself. Just a few more years before Diandra can drive off, searching for boys or something. Mom is out next, turning off the car, the old engine

She noticed my tears and said softly, “Look at the sky” Illustrator Hoang-Mai Davis,12, for The Snowflake Lady by Katie Woodward,12. Published January/February 2006. A note from William Rubel What a year! What year for Stone Soup and what a year for the world! I can say that team at Stone Soup is looking forward to 2018 with real optimism. We have turned the corner on the print to digital conversion and are looking forward to a creative 2018 in which delve deeper into music and multi-media art forms and begin to develop creative projects that merge writing, art, music, and theater in ways that may not have been done before. But, more on that later in the post (and later in the new year). I’d like to start by thanking all of you who stuck with us through the transition, and all of our new subscribers. We were doing a lot of improvising this year to keep Stone Soup going. We at Stone Soup are looking forward to a calmer 2018! The 2018 print annual has already sold about 100 copies. We have also redesigned Stone Soup (to be revealed next week, with our January issue) so that your 2018 issues and Annual will have a beautiful new look. Past, present and future I had asked you all to think about family food traditions during this holiday season and send us one. Sarah Cymrot, one of our fabulous Stone Soup bloggers, posted an entry on her family’s tradition of making Monkey Bread. She talks about a recent death in her family, and how important it was for them to follow through on the Monkey Bread tradition, as usual. Traditions are anchoring. We can see how important they are through the comments you’ve left responding to Sarah’s piece. Thank you.I’d also like to welcome a new blogger to our growing roster of bloggers (if you are interested in blogging let us know). Dylan Gibson gives a short introduction to animationusing an iPhone app called Framecast. I don’t personally know this program. If you have an iOS device — and iPhone or iPad — I’d check it out. Welcome, Dylan! And thank you. I would like to see Stone Soup publish an animated story in 2018. The fact is that animated stories are hard to make. It takes real dedication. If you get the bug, master the technique and then use it to tell a meaningful story. But first, you have to learn how to make the dog walk (and draw a dog as cute as Dylan’s)! What I want to talk about today as the main portion of the newsletter is based on an article in today’s New York Times. It is an article about the opera singer, Maria Callas. Whether or not you are interested in opera I would urge all of you to click on the link I just gave you and look at the article. Within the article there are ten links to excerpts of Maria Callas singing. Now, remember that this is a NEWSPAPER. That is news-paper. But, obviously, you cannot make an actual article printed on paper sing. Please begin thinking in 2018 about Stone Soup as a place for you to experiment with new ways of being creative. Never before in history has it been possible to combine music with words outside of movies or the theater. I want you to begin sending us stories that incorporate music, animation, drama — let your own imagination roam. Keep the New York Times article on Maria Callas in mind. As a creative writer you are no longer limited to pure writing. Thank you all again for your loyalty to Stone Soup. We are trying our best to support creativity. When you support us through subscribing and through buying the Annual you help us realize our mission. On behalf of Emma Wood, Jane Levi, Sarah Ainsworth, Emma Birches, and myself, our best wishes for the New Year. Until next week, William Your subscriptions are what makes this project happen Sales are reviving. But, to be frank, more would be better. We are selling digital subscriptions for roughly $2.00 per month. This gives subscribers access to over 5,000 pages of creative work by kids, in addition to the current issues as print-ready PDFs. We are running Stone Soup right now as a bare bones operation — I am not receiving a salary. Every subscription helps get us back on our feet. The best deal is the digital/print combination which gives you access to the website, and pre-orders the 2018 Annual (published next December). Please help us by spreading the word and encouraging your friends, neighbours, schools and friends to join us! The dog grabbed the boy’s arm in his mouth and dragged him out of the water From Stone Soup, January/February 2001 The Ultimate Challenge: To Come Home Alive By Tara Stroll, 13 Illustrated by Jane Westrick, 13 Peter Bradbury stepped outside into the ten-degrees-below-zero Canadian air. The winter would get much colder. The bundled-up, seventeen-year-old boy was not cold. He had grown up in this weather. He was tall, lean, dirty, unshaven, strong, and tough. He had been born in the woods. With much difficulty, he trudged through the three-foot-deep snow over to a rack that his snowshoes were on. The frame was made from wood and the webbing was made from animal skin. They had to be kept outside the whole winter. The temperature change of bringing them in the house was not good for them. Wearing the snowshoes, he walked on top of the snow with ease over to a small doghouse. Curled up inside was a young malamute. He was a grayish brown with black ears and patches of white on his face. “Come on, Chocolate. We’re going to check the trapline.” The dog got up. Peter was wearing many layers to stay warm. He had a pack on his back. Chocolate had a thick coat of hair; he was always dressed for the weather. Peter put another pack on Chocolate’s back. “We’re ready to go.” The dog followed Peter into the woods. Peter Bradbury’s trapline was fifteen miles long. At the other