Stone Soup Editors

“Among the Asparagus” by Ula Pomian, 13 (Ontario, Canada) Published in the July/August 2017 issue of Stone Soup A note from Jane This year’s double summer issue is a special poetry issue, composed of the two wonderful poetry collections by our 2019 book contest second-placed authors, Analise Braddock (The Golden Elephant) and Tatiana Rebecca Shrayer (Searching for Bow and Arrows). Last summer, our special issue was a collection of reviews: book reviews, poetry reviews, and a movie review. In that issue, there were two reviews of the same book, A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett, which is a book I too loved from the first time I read it when I was a girl. You might not expect to read two reviews of the same thing in Stone Soup, but it’s actually incredibly interesting to see two different reviewers’ thoughts side by side. Both loved the book, and both wrote beautifully-crafted reviews of it—each in their own way. Ava Horton’s review is personal. We meet her as her younger self reading the book for the first time, and she gives us insights into the book by powerfully communicating the impact it had on her. Vandana Ravi’s review opens with two dramatic questions that get to the heart of the book and its messages, then moves on to highlight elegantly the interweaving of the book’s themes. Both of these reviews are below—and I‘m sure they will make you want to read the book for yourself, if you haven’t already! Reading these reviews and thinking about my own love of the book made me wish I had written something about it when I first read it. I can (and will!) re-read it now, but I’d love to know what my younger self thought of it at the time. We all read so many books, watch so many movies and TV series, see so many works of art. So, this weekend, why not start a new review journal: every time you read a book, watch a TV series or a movie or a theater performance, see an exhibit or a work of art, write a short review of it (and the date) in that journal. You’ll be building up a valuable collection of your experiences of other people’s creative work and your responses to it. Start today with a review of the most recent thing you’ve read or sen, and then write a review every time you have an experience with a piece of creative work—whether you liked or enjoyed it or not. It might be just a few lines, or it might be a whole page of ideas it gave you. It’s your journal: you decide! This is your chance to reflect and think about why you feel as you do about works of art, and as your journal builds, you will see how your feelings change over time, and start to make connections among the different creative works you experience. And, you’ll have the future fun of seeing what you thought of something the first time you experienced it! I want to close today, as William did last week, by sending you all to the Stone Soup website, Stonesoup.com. Follow the links to the fabulous work that has been posted this week. If you are not a subscriber, please, please subscribe—and tell your friends and colleagues to do so as well. Subscription dollars are what make our work possible. The work our print magazine features is magnificent—worth re-reading—and the magazine itself is a pleasure to hold in your hands. Until next week, Winners from Weekly Flash Contest #17 Weekly Flash Contest #17: Write about a character waiting for something, but don’t reveal what they’re waiting for until the end. The week commencing July 20 (Daily Creativity prompt #86) was our seventeenth week of flash contests, with all the prompts for the week set by former contributor Anna Rowell. Thanks, Anna, for setting some great challenges and helping us judge our massive pile of entries! Congratulations to our winners and honorable mentions, listed below. You can read the winning entries for this week (and previous weeks) on the Flash Contest Winners’ Roll page at the Stone Soup website. Winners “From the Other Side of the Road” by Amruta Krishnan Srinivasan, 9 “Waiting for a Comet” by Madeline Sornson, 13 “Stalling” by Sophia Do, 12 “Wait for It…” by Ian Xie, 12 “Rain” by Kyler Min, 9 Honorable Mentions “Something Worth Waiting For” by Mila Zhao, 6 “The Waiting Game” by Elsa N. Ahern, 10 “The Woman” by April Yu, 12 “The Waiting Hill” by Liam Hancock, 12 “Cats of War and Peace” by Sneha Jiju, 12 Also, look out on our COVID-19 blog next week for “The Goal” by Ziva Ye, 9, which both responds to the contest prompt and tells a great story related to the current pandemic–from a very unexpected perspective! Highlights from the past week online Don’t miss the latest content from our Book Reviewers and Young Bloggers at Stonesoup.com! Eleanor’s poem “Anxiety” conveys the uneasy feeling of living during the pandemic, though she ends on a positive note. Read the update from last week’s Writing Workshop, which was led by Anya. Participants were encouraged to think about music in their writing. Aviva, 9, writes about this year’s unusual preparations for back-to-school in “Six Feet Away From Our Teacher, Six Thousand Away From Normal.” In “Fighter,” Olivia, 10, composes a poem that tells of the fight waged by healthcare workers against coronavirus. If you were a fruit or vegetable, what do you think you would be? Trevor, 11, thinks he would be a cucumber. Read his blog post to learn why, and leave a comment! In “The End of the World,” Lucas wrestles with a difficult topic that you may be thinking about more often lately. From the July/August 2019 issue of Stone Soup A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett Two Reviews     Ava Horton, 13 Review by Ava Horton, 13 (Gresham, OR) I consider myself privileged. I have a wonderful family, live in a big house in the suburbs, and I go