“Fighter Jet” by Ethan Hu, 8 (San Diego, CA), published in Stone Soup December 2019 A note from Sarah Ainsworth As some of you may know, I don’t work for Stone Soup full-time. Most of my time I spend as a graduate student in an archival studies program—in other words, I am training to be an archivist. I’ve written about archives before, if you’d like a brief overview on the subject. As an aspiring archivist, I am partial to cool old stuff. One of my favorite tasks that I do for Stone Soup is looking back in the archives for anything that we might need—throwback posts for social media, images, people who we could interview for our former contributor series. This week, though, I want to spotlight our anthologies. They’re packed with the very best stories from the 46 years of publishing Stone Soup. While there is no shortage of impressive work being published in the magazine now (check out “Sky Blue Hijab” below, which is phenomenal!), it is such a fascinating experience to read one “friendship” story from 1986 after a story from 2003 after a story from 2016. You learned last week that we just released our science fiction anthology, but we have so many others! Holiday, family, animal, and sports, just to name a few. Speaking of our science fiction anthology, we’re currently collecting blurbs from middle-grade and young-adult authors for the back of the print copy, and we’re so heartened to learn that such talented people are impressed with the work of Stone Soup writers. Here’s a preview from a blurb we’ve received: “Hold on to your copy! When one of these young writers wins the Hugo this paperback will be quite the collector’s item.” We wholeheartedly agree! Lots of things have changed since the 1970s, but have stories written by children stayed the same? If you read an anthology, please let us know what you think. Current Contest: Personal Narrative Are you ready to submit your entry? Have you been using the amazing FREE series of tips for improving your writing, made specially for this contest? Even if you are not entering this contest, if you are a writer you should take a look at the fantastic materials developed by Young Inklings. The video series is focused on personal narrative, but a lot of the advice applies to any form of writing—and the tips for revision are great rules for life for any writer, at any age! Remember: for this contest, we are looking for excellent, innovative, moving, playful personal essays or mini-memoirs. We want to hear about any of the biggest moments in your life—the scariest, the saddest, the happiest ones—as well as about some of the smallest—your walk to school or a regular Saturday at home with your brother. Make us laugh! Make us cry! Make us feel like we know you! Read more on our contest page, and submit at the link here. Highlights from the past week online Don’t miss the latest content from our Book Reviewers and Young Bloggers at Stonesoup.com! Do you like to eat pasta? Well, our new blogger Ezra became curious about his favorite food and decided to investigate! Check out “A Brief History of Pasta” to learn more! Colored pencils From Stone Soup, December 2019 Sky Blue Hijab By Seoyon Kim, 10 (East Greenwich, RI) Illustrated by Ethan Hu, 8 (San Diego, CA) I twist the fake wedding ring on my finger nervously. It’s a cheap copper ring that I superglued a rhinestone to. Back and forth. Back and forth. It’s supposed to arouse sympathy if someone tries to kill me. It’ll convince them that I have someone back home I love and need to get back to, my colleagues had assured. Though it’s likely that I won’t be killed by an assassin. If I do get killed, it’s more likely to be by a bomb or a missile. I’m pretty sure my ring won’t convince anyone to refrain from blowing up everything in a five-mile radius. Unless it’s a magical shield ring. You never know. The countryside spreads outside the window. I peek outside, but the dizzying height quickly gets me sick, and I close the window blind. I don’t have time to get sick. Plus, the airline doesn’t seem to have any barf bags. Syria. Syria. I have to get to Syria. To the war. To the story…/MORE Stone Soup is published by Children’s Art Foundation-Stone Soup Inc., a 501(c)(3) educational nonprofit organization registered in the United States of America, EIN: 23-7317498. 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.
Saturday Newsletter: November 30, 2019
Dandelions by Alicia Xin, 13 (Scarsdale, NY), published in Stone Soup November 2019 A note from William Rubel Did you know we have a special offer running all Thanksgiving weekend? 25% off annual print subscriptions! Visit Stonesoup.com, click the Subscribe button, and get a year of stone soup delivered to your home for just $67.50. It will go back to the usual price of $89.99 at midnight on Monday, so please consider doing your Holiday shopping now! Thanksgiving! My best wishes to all of you on this Thanksgiving weekend. I am writing to you from Guanajuato, Mexico, where I came with my daughter for the Thanksgiving school break. It is a lovely town! I cannot recommend visiting more highly. News! Our latest anthology has just been published! The Stone Soup Book of Science Fiction, edited by Jane Levi, is now available at our online store. It is 222 pages and includes the best science fiction we have published over the past 45 years, including some fantastic recent material. Copies are in stock, and shipping next week. With the addition of this brand new volume we now have nine anthologies for sale. This is over 1,800 pages of amazing writing by Stone Soup authors. Besides science fiction, titles include anthologies on the themes of friendship, sports, animals, fantasy, historical fiction, family, festivals and holidays, and a volume of poetry. Other publishing news: The Stone Soup Annual 2019 is at the printer and will be available to ship in time to get copies to you for the holidays. It frightens me to write it—but the 2019 Annual is 458 pages! And, that is a Yikes! It is a big book. It is a heavy book. It is a colorful book. It is a great book. The Annual includes all 11 published issues of Stone Soup plus an issue’s worth of some of the great blog posts published during the year. I’d like to thank Sarah Ainsworth and Jane Levi for their hard work putting this year’s volume together. We put in the work to publish the best writing and art by kids in a quality format so that can read it and be inspired. But, only you can actually be sure that our Stone Souppublications end up in the hands of kids. Thank you. A Brilliant Poem: Weekend Poetry Project William Chui’s poem, “Playroom,” published in the current issue of Stone Soup does something that is very hard to do. It is an elegant evocation of the mundane–the everyday around the house–and at the same time achieves one of poetry’s ultimate goals: to help us see beyond the surfaces of everyday life to deeper feelings. To deep insights. My favorite sound: Lego pieces falling onto the smooth, polished hardwood, little souls trapped inside and unable to help themselves. As you read William’s poem, please listen to the beauty of his language. Let his images form in your minds’ eye. Smell the scents, touch the fabric. This is a poem that reads like prose. The lines don’t rhyme. The cadence is prose-like. And yet, and yet, it is not prose. William creates a density of imagery, of voices, of feelings, of thoughts that is one of poetry’s hallmarks. And the moist lemon and herb tea, as savory as a summer salad. The steam rising from the tea links us to a warm summer day and then the “savory” which William uses to describe a a good tasting summer salad is also an herb with a strong smell which brings us back to the scent of the steam rising from the tea cup. And this is only one way one is drawn into this sentence. Within the few lines of William’s poem there is, indeed, a novelful of experience, thoughtful observation and deep feeling. Thank you, William! After reading William’s poem several times, and I recommend reading it aloud, I want you to put it down and go about your day. Then, sometime later today or tomorrow, sit down in a favorite spot—which could be lying on your bed!—and let your thoughts flow. The only way I want you to control them is that I want you to put them on paper in the form a poem. Let the act of creating a poem force you to really focus your imagery, focus your words so that with only a sentence or two you can suggest so much more. As always, if you like what you achieve, please submit it to Stone Soup so Emma can consider it for the magazine. Until next week, The brand new Stone Soup Book of Science Fiction Available in the Stone Soup online store now! We are thrilled to announce the publication of another book in our series of themed anthologies: The Stone Soup Book of Science Fiction. It’s a brand new collection, with some brand new work, as well as some old favourites from our archive. You can read all about it and check out the list of authors and contributors here,where you can also pre-order your copies (it will be ready to mail out next week). Congratulations to all our authors–we are so proud of all of you, and we love this new book! P.S. for all the Sci Fi authors in this collection: remember to use your special code to get a 50% discount on all copies you buy! If you don’t have the coupon code, write to us and we’ll remind you. Current Contest: Personal Narrative The way we approach fiction, nonfiction, and poetry, as both readers and writers, is drastically different. For this reason, we’re happy to announce that Stone Soup is partnering with Society of Young Inklings in our very first nonfiction contest and that, in 2020, we will begin to publish all nonfiction under its very own label in the magazine. What makes this contest extra special is our partnership with Society of Young Inklings (SYI): we are very excited to share that their team of professional writers has designed a mentorship experience for both the youth and the educators who take part in this contest. Check out the details on our website here, including links to
Saturday Newsletter: November 23, 2019
“Spirit to Healthy Living” by Parinita Chandrashekar, 12 (Bridgewater, NJ), published in Stone Soup November 2019. A note from Emma Wood This week, I discovered this Twitter account, Kids Write Jokes. As the title implies, it only tweets jokes written by kids! A lot of the jokes on the site are like this: not traditionally funny but also very funny precisely for that reason. It’s a weird contradiction. I encourage you to peruse them and think about what you find funny—and why. I think you will find it’s really hard to either predict or explain what will make you laugh. And what makes you laugh might not make your mom or your brother laugh! We all have our own unique sense of humor. I am often reminded of this when I am the only one laughing in a silent room. The story I have chosen to highlight this week is “The Missing Hair” by Oliver Giller, 10, and it is a funny story. Not only is the premise of the story perfectly absurd—the protagonist employs a detective to find his missing hair—it is told with a seriousness that makes it even funnier. I realized as I read it initially how rarely I read funny stories in the Stone Soup submissions. And it is even rarer to find funny stories that feel right for Stone Soup! I think this is partly because humor is so individual and partly because there is a gap between what adults consider funny and what kids find funny (as evinced by the jokes above!), and then also because it is hard to be funny in writing and in visual art. So this weekend I have a challenge for you: try to be funny in your work. Maybe this simply means approaching your art with a new lightness and playfulness. Or maybe this means telling jokes. Or maybe it means setting up a funny premise that you then proceed to take very seriously like Oliver does in his story. As always, send us the result! On another note, we are attempting to gather testimonials and comments from Stone Soup readers to use in our efforts to spread the word about Stone Soup and expand our readership. Whether you are a kid, a parent, a teacher, a librarian, or anyone else who reads or engages with Stone Soup, we want to hear from you! What is your favorite thing about Stone Soup? Has any single piece from the magazine—story, poem, or art—had a particular impact on you? Feel free to answer these questions or tell us anything else you would like about your experience with the magazine—you can submit a letter to the editor or reply to an email with some comments. Until next week, Current Contest: Personal Narrative The way we approach fiction, nonfiction, and poetry, as both readers and writers, is drastically different. For this reason, we’re happy to announce that Stone Soup is partnering with Society of Young Inklings in our very first nonfiction contest and that, in 2020, we will begin to publish all nonfiction under its very own label in the magazine. What makes this contest extra special is our partnership with Society of Young Inklings (SYI): we are very excited to share that their team of professional writers has designed a mentorship experience for both the youth and the educators who take part in this contest. Check out the details on our website here, including links to SYI’s video series to help in writing a personal narrative. Contest deadline is December 15th! It’s that time of year again! This year, we’ve published so much incredible, thought-provoking creative work by children ages 13 and under. Just browse our website and you’ll see what we mean. As is now traditional, Stone Soup is publishing the Stone Soup Annual 2019 composed of all 11 issues from the calendar year, plus some extra highlights from the blog—and a beautiful wraparound cover design by Avery Multer, age 12. It’s a fantastic, 400+ page book that will give you and the young people in your life hours of great reading and inspiring art to browse. It makes a terrific gift. It’s going to print within the next week or two, and copies will start mailing in the first week of December. We are offering 20% off all preorders received before November 24. That means that when you preorder, you’ll get the Annual for just $28.00—a reduction of $6.99. Support the young writers and artists of Stone Soup. Preorder your copies of the Annual today. P.S. for Stone Soup contributors: remember to use your special code to get a 50% discount on all copies you buy! Highlights from the past week online Don’t miss the latest content from our Book Reviewers and Young Bloggers at Stonesoup.com! Have you read (or watched) the classic fantasy series The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien? On the blog this week, Daniel takes us through the different kinds of creatures and magic in The Lord of the Rings. Do you want to learn about dwarves, elves, and wizards? Read Daniel’s post to find out more. Do you have a hard time with chemistry? Well, our blogger Lucinda Chu wants to challenge you. Read the first post in her new series, in which she identifies a fun fact about each element on the periodic table. Find it interesting? Leave a comment! Oliver Giller, 10Providence, RI From Stone Soup, November 2019 The Missing Hair By Oliver Giller, 10 (Providence, RI) Once, when I was counting the hairs on my head, I noticed that one hair was missing. You see, usually, I had 2,476 hairs on my head, but when I counted them this time, there were only 2,475 hairs on my head. Someone had stolen my hair. I went to the police station for help, but they said that I was crazy. Then I went to the FBI, but they said that they had much more important cases on their hands. Personally, I don’t understand how vandalism in the White House could be more important than my missing hair, but it wasn’t my choice. Finally, I realized that the
