Stone Soup Editors

“Welcome home, sweetie” Illustrator Claire Schultz, 13, for “Welcome Home” by Sarah Bryden, 12. Published January/February 2017. A note from William Book Contest Deadline Extended to August 21 A few of you have asked if we can extend the contest deadline because of busy summers. We can give you all a one week extension, to August 21.  If you have already submitted your work and want to keep working on it, then you may re-submit anytime prior to the deadline. The deadline will not be extended again, so keep going and do submit your work as soon as it is ready! Besides working for Stone Soup I am also a writer. Within the next two weeks I have two articles for magazines and one book chapter due. Like those of you finishing up your book for our contest, I am also working hard to meet deadlines right now. I’d like to share with you how I bring the final polish to my pieces. I am a firm believer that the best way to polish prose is to hear yourself read the text. After I consider a work “finished” I let it  sit for a couple days and then I read it aloud to myself from a paper copy. As I’m reading I make notes on the pages wherever the reading sounds rough to me. I either work on the rough passage right then or I come back to it when I have finished reading the entire piece. If you haven’t already turned in your submission (whether for the book contest or as a regular submission) here is what I suggest you do.  Aim to have your manuscript finished at least one week before the deadline. By finished I mean something that you think is good enough to turn in. Then, let that draft sit for a couple days. Don’t read it. Don’t think about it. Let your mind rest. Then, when you are ready for the final push for perfection, print out your work and go sit somewhere comfortable where you can read it out loud to yourself and note revisions. At this stage you are tweaking your work. All the big editing should already be complete. As you are reading listen to how the prose flows. You are going for perfection here. Does the dialogue all sound natural? Do you stumble over a long sentence, which suggests that it either needs breaking up or that you need more or different punctuation? Listen for sentences that when you hear them aloud just don’t strike you as quite right. You are the author. You will know what you need to do. While this is not the time to re-write whole sections of your work, this can be the time to make slight changes in word choice. This is the stage when I sometimes find myself deciding that a different word will better express what I want to say, or better conjure the image I have in my head. This final revision is very important. It can provide that final gloss that makes the difference between very good and brilliant. Update from Kenya Jane and I returned from Kenya last weekend. We gave the science books several of you sent us to Bonifiace, the headmaster of the Remot primary school in the West Gate Conservancy, near the Samburu National Reserve. To say he was excited to receive the books is an understatement. He spent an hour looking through them with us and has told us that his teachers can’t believe what you gave the school. Boniface told us that the science is the same, of course, but that the way ideas are presented in the books we brought are much more clearly laid out than in their books and will thus be a big help to their teachers and their students. Thank you all again for your help with this. Overall, it was a trip that had unexpected aspects, some of which were not positive. But, as it turned out, the “every cloud has a silver lining” expression was true for us. While what we had gone to Kenya to do did not work out, we had some very positive travel experiences and, remarkably, we found a wonderful computer programmer named Silvia Nyawira who we interviewed at the lodge where we were staying and who we hired for Stone Soup! Silvia just graduated from University in computer science. She is familiar with the programs our website uses and what she doesn’t know she will learn.  Welcome to Sylvia! We have a big list of website projects to get her started on. When she has worked through them we will then begin asking you for your website ideas. William’s weekend project Today’s project. If you are working on a book for our Book Contest, then work on that. But, if you aren’t, then I’d like to suggest something very simple for today. At some point, go outside with a writing book and pencil or pen. Find someplace to sit, and then open your writing book and start describing what you see. This is the first of two texts I’d like you to write today. Keep it short–between 50 and 250 words. Think of this text as “pure description.” What do your eyes see?  This piece should be in the styhle of science writing or journalistic writing in which the narrator does not reveal him or herself. You might think of yourself as almost mechanically recording what you might see through a camera lens. For contrast, in the second piece I want you to show us what you are seeing through the point of view of a character–it can be you writing from the first person, the “I” voice, or a character you make up, which can be an animal. In this second piece the narrator may have a point of view, and may be part of the scene being described. For example, while in the first piece you might simply say, “there is a

“Something white fluttered through the trees” Illustrator Gabby Heller, 12, for “The Scream in the Night” by Shyla DeLand, 13 Published September/October 2015. A note from Sarah Ainsworth I want to talk about one of my favorite genres: mystery. I’ve always found something irresistible in the way that mysteries are so often structured around a question. In the most basic stories, this question may be: who did it? But it can get much more complicated than that. In From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, the question could be framed as: is the beautiful new sculpture at the Metropolitan Museum of Art really a Leonardo da Vinci original? (Nina just reviewed the book for our July/August issue). Another example is The Westing Game, reviewed on the blog last year by Ananda, which can be boiled down to: what happened to Samuel Westing? The best mystery stories require a considerable amount of planning. Ananda described reading The Westing Game as “watching two grandmasters play chess.” The book’s careful plot development is no coincidence. Like writing any story, a mystery could greatly benefit from some brainstorming before putting your pen to paper. Here are some questions to consider: What will the central question be? Who will be the main characters? Who will be the suspects? What will the answer to the question be? Or, in simpler terms, who did it? What kind of clues will you leave readers throughout the story? Once you have the plot all nailed down, you can get into the specifics of tone, setting, and any other details you’d like to include. There have been lots of great mystery stories published in Stone Soup over the years. Check out “The Haunted Mansion” by Lyla Lawless, “Mystery at the Marsh” by Marie Chapman. Have fun! If you write something, please feel free to submit it! P.S. If you’re lacking inspiration for a story, sometimes it helps to think of a title first to guide you. When I was in sixth grade, I thought of the title “Murder Burger” and ended up writing a whole novel based on that. Unfortunately, I did not submit it to Stone Soup! Highlights from the past week online Don’t miss the latest content from our Book Reviewers and Young Bloggers at Stonesoup.com. Another dramatic season of basketball has come and gone. Plenty of us watch the games on the edge of our seats without truly understanding the process of exactly how and why our teams advance (or don’t advance) to the playoffs. This week on the blog, 11-year-old Himank Chhaya breaks down how the NBA season works.  Contest and partnership news Contest: write a book! How are your books coming along? You still have more than a month to polish up your work to enter into our contest for book-length writing in all forms and genres by kids aged 14 and under. (We have extended our usual age limit for this contest.) The deadline for entries is August 15, so you have five-and-a-half weeks left to work on perfecting your book, whether it is a novel, a collection of poetry or short stories, a memoir, or other prose. There will be three placed winners, and we will publish all three winning books in various forms. Visit our Submittable entry page for full details. I nodded and stared up at the owl, my mystery solved From Stone Soup September/October 2015 The Scream in the Night By Shyla DeLand, 13 Illustrated by Gabby Heller, 12   It was a hot summer night when I first heard the scream. I sat up fast, the blankets tangled around my feet in a sweaty mass of itchy acrylic. My heart was pounding so hard that for a moment I wondered if it had only been a nightmare. But the sound lingered in my ears, steadily ringing, and I decided that it had been a real scream. I turned to my window and leaned towards it, so close that the screen was brushing my nose. The moon was bright, glowing yellow in the sky, leaving traces of thin light on the trees. I squinted into the darkness, one hand fumbling for my glasses. Something white uttered through the trees, dancing along just far enough away that I couldn’t tell what it was. My hand closed over my glasses and I slipped them on. The white thing disappeared; I caught a glimpse of it one last time before the green and black trees hid it away. I lay down again but didn’t take my glasses off or try at all to go back to sleep. Instead, I closed my eyes and tried to recreate the image in my mind. I kept picturing that whiteness, fluttering like a flag in the wind. But it didn’t make any sense. No animals that I could think of were white and none fluttered. I shook my head, puzzled, and tried to turn my thoughts to another subject. . . ./more 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.

“The car rounded a bend, and there was the city, stretched out before us.” Illustrator Thomas Buchanan, 13,  for ‘Firework City’ by Jem Burch, 13, Published July/August 2013. A note from Jane Levi Happy Fourth of July weekend to our American subscribers! We have a story about July 4 fireworks for you this week, accompanied by a really wonderful illustration with beautiful use of color and perspective. It’s filled with so much detail (spot the license plate!), and I love the way you can see the excited kids in the back of the car through the rear window. If you didn’t see any fireworks this week, then we hope you enjoy these ones! New website and subscription system Our big news this week is that a new version of our website has gone live, with a brand new subscription-ordering system. Stonesoup.com still has all the same great content, but it has a fresh new look and feel, which we hope you will like as much as we do. This is the very first step in a series of improvements to our website, and we know there are a lot of basic things to iron out. But we also have a lot of plans for future improvements. We always welcome your ideas, and we’ll carefully consider any that you send us. You can reply to this newsletter, or send a message to us at stonesoup@stonesoup.com. Our new ordering system is an important step for us because we want everyone to have a subscription to Stone Soup! We have made it much, much easier to order a Stone Soup subscription (monthly or annual, print + digital or digital only) and made sure that all the details you need are right there on our website. For now, back issues of the print magazine and our books are still in our old online store (which you can get to via the pink button below), but those will also be moving in to the new store over the summer. We’ll keep you posted. Existing subscribers will need to reset their passwords. If you click the login button on the top menu, then enter your old user ID (which is your email address), you will be able to follow the prompts to reset your password. Summer Journals How are your summer journals going? I have to confess that I have not stuck to my resolution to keep one—yet. But I am going to join William in Kenya next week, and there will be no more excuses once I am there! We’ll give you all an update about that trip when we are back, especially with news from Remot Primary, the school that we wrote about a few weeks ago. We were so delighted that several of you were able to send us some really magnificent science books to deliver to them, and we know the headmaster, his staff, and the kids will be thrilled. Thank you so much. Have a wonderful holiday weekend, a great summer wherever you are, and keep on creating and sending us anything you’re especially pleased with using the submit button below and on our website. Highlights from the past week online Don’t miss the latest content from our Book Reviewers and Young Bloggers at Stonesoup.com. Because of the website updates, no new blog posts for this week. Stay tuned for exciting posts scheduled for next week, and in the meantime, check out our social media! Our Instagram, Twitter and Facebook will keep you updated with the latest from Stone Soup, plus feature fun throwbacks and links to websites and resources for young writers. Remember to tag us or use the hashtag #stonesoupmagazine if you post about Stone Soup on social media! We love seeing your photos and reading your thoughts. Contest and partnership news Contest: write a book! How are your books coming along? You still have more than a month to polish up your work to enter into our contest for book-length writing in all forms and genres by kids aged 14 and under. (We have extended our usual age limit for this contest.) The deadline for entries is August 15, so you have five-and-a-half weeks left to work on perfecting your book, whether it is a novel, a collection of poetry or short stories, a memoir, or other prose. There will be three placed winners, and we will publish all three winning books in various forms. Visit our Submittable entry page for full details. From Stone Soup July/August 2017 Firework City By Jem Burch, 13 Illustrated by Thomas Buchanan, 13 I took a seat in the metal rocking chair outside my grandparents’ loft, gently swaying back and forth. Through the metal bars of the railing, I saw the grand old church below, small yellow lights illuminating the stained-glass windows. A light breeze blew; stars twinkled high above; the church parking lot was empty and silent, save for the single, glossy bulk of a black car lurking in the shadows. But all around there was noise—the booming explosion of fireworks bursting through the cracks in the wall, echoing in my ears like the distant rumble of thunder in a summer storm. I sighed, staring at the horizon where a dark cloud of smoke pulsated from the light of the fireworks I could not see. It seemed as though we weren’t going to have a true Fourth of July this year. “Liam, time to go,” Dad called, and I stood up, casting one last wistful glance at the disappointingly blank skyline. We bid a quick farewell to my grandparents, wishing them a happy Fourth, and then trooped down the staircase to the ground floor. No one spoke. Everyone seemed to understand that we had missed the celebration. As we were getting in the car, my younger sister Amy asked aloud, “Where are the fireworks?” “You see those buildings?” Mom said. “If they weren’t there, we might be able to see them. They’re over by the freeway.” The car pulled out into the street, and we started home. “I’m going to take