Stone Soup Editors

“Fawn in a Clearing.” Chalk drawing by Meredith Rohrer, 10, published June 2019, illustrating “The Four Seasons” by Grace Jiang, 11. A note from Jane Levi Summer journals Last summer, William challenged our readers—adults and kids alike—to keep a summer journal. Let’s make it an annual tradition! William suggested lots of approaches: It could be a record of what you are doing, your impressions of any new experiences you are having during your break from school routines, or a place to capture your dreams. It could be the book where you think thoughts and develop them by writing them down or where you write notes on what you are reading. Perhaps it is a sketchbook. Maybe it’s a place to work on poems, fragments of writing, or even whole stories. Sometimes it could just be a central place for a to-do list, or notes to jog your memory, and a note of a new favorite recipe. It might be, like my own notebook, a combination of all those things! It’s your journal—it can be whatever you want it to be. Our message is: use the summer to make a resolution to start a journal, or enrich it if you already have one. You can use any kind of book or notebook for your journal. You probably have something already lurking around your house. Or perhaps you’ll find an inexpensive book in a local stationery store—or a fancier one at a bookstore, museum store, or somewhere you go on a  summer outing. We have a few blank and lined notebooks and sketchbooks in the Stone Soup Online Store, currently at half-price (from only $2.50) to encourage you to get started! Like last summer, if you would be willing to share a few pages with us and with your fellow Stone Soup readers, send us a photo or a scan of a few pages and we’ll feature them on our website. Submit your photos via our Bloggers category on Submittable, and use the words “Summer Journal” in your title. We look forward to learning more about what all of you are up to this summer! Store problem fixed We discovered today that our online store’s credit card processing wasn’t working properly, and we have fixed it. If you tried to purchase a subscription within the last week or so and couldn’t get the transaction through, please try again. Everything is now up and running—including our new print subscriptions delivered worldwide. We will start mailing the July/August print issues next week, so get your subscriptions set up now! This week’s featured art and poetry This week’s featured art and poem are teasers designed to encourage you to read our June 2019 issue. We loved Meredith’s beautifully worked chalk drawing of a fawn in a clearing, with shafts of light filtered through unseen trees. The fawn seems to have just noticed that we are looking at it—ears pricked, neck curved, a sidelong look. What will it do next? Will it run away? Or can we imagine it might trot toward us to feed from our outstretched hand? This apparently simple artwork really stimulates the imagination. What does it make you think and feel? Emma paired the fawn with Grace Jiang’s evocative poem about the seasons, which carries us from fall though winter, spring, and summer, and back to fall again from a woodland animal’s perspective. Perhaps, like Grace, you’ll have time over the summer to think about the natural world around you and the behavior of the animals in it as they, like you, enjoy the season and prepare for what is coming next. Happy summer, and happy journaling. As always, we cannot wait to see what you make. Contest reminder: write a book! Summer is prime time to work on your entry for our summer contest: 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 two whole months to keep working 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 contest page and Submittable entry page for full details. 25% discount on Stone Soup books through the end of June Summer vacation is a great time for reading, and our series of themed anthologies (the Stone Soup Books of…) are a great place to start. Don’t just take our word for it: we’ve been getting some great reviews at Good Reads, LibraryThing and Amazon! We’re offering a discount code for all of the Stone Soup Books of… that is valid through June 30 in our online store. Enter the code READSUMMER19 for 25% off your purchases. Highlights from the past week online Don’t miss the latest content from our Book Reviewers and Young Bloggers at Stonesoup.com. Haeon Lee offers listeners a transporting clarinet trio that explores the sonic chaos of life in New York City and how it relates to the tranquility of an open sky above. Titled “Right Beneath the Clouds,” Haeon describes her inspiration thus: “Skyscrapers, bridges, Central Park, and construction outlined the melody of my piece, given to the clarinet. Shadows and overlaps between these structures formed the cello and piano parts for the first movement.” Read more and listen here. Check out Summer and Yelia’s “Balancing Technology” podcast, where they interview their school’s tech specialist and librarian on the complexities of children’s relationships with technology. They discuss technology’s impact on social development, the benefits of access to such a versatile resource, and the importance of moderation and boundary-setting. From Stone Soup June 2019 The Four Seasons By Grace Jiang, 11 Art by Meredith Rohrer, 10   A golden leaf falls on Little Deer’s nose, he jumps around playfully, “Fall has come! Fall has come!” he calls. His father bellows, “We must go find more food or the cold white sheet will bury it all!” Little Fox jumps around in the white powder, that once had millions of flowers in it. Now it is cold and wet. He whines to his mother, “I must go play with Brown Bear!” His mother whispers, “You must wait till spring.” Spring has come! Little Horse is only a month old,

“I am already breaking away, but not quite as rapidly as I would like.” Illustration by Olga Todorova, 12, for “Flying” by Margaret Bryan, 12. Published in Stone Soup March/April 2007 and The Stone Soup Book of Sports Stories (2018) A note from Emma Wood I am a runner. I usually run at least five miles six days a week, rain or shine, whether I have time or I don’t. I make the time. Or it’s more like that time doesn’t “count” to me—I have to run, so I find a way to do so. I recently ran my sixth marathon, but I didn’t really think of myself as a runner until I was training for my fourth marathon, in the spring of 2018. At some point during those four months leading up to the marathon, in the middle of what runners call a “training cycle,” I realized that running no longer felt like a chore. Ever. It was, in fact, usually the best part of my day. I love being outside in the beautiful Santa Cruz landscape, either running on trails through the forest or by the ocean. I love that it allows me to step away from my computer, from my work, from my mind, from myself, and simply be. I love running alone and with friends; I love having friends to run with; I love running with my dog, seeing her joy at simply running and trying to mirror it myself. Most of all, I love that it serves as a constant, humbling reminder that every day, I am starting over again—that it doesn’t matter how far or how fast I had run last week or last month. It is always about showing up and putting in the miles. In this way, running reminds me of writing. One of my writing teachers in college and a famous poet, Jorie Graham, once said to me, “Your next book isn’t going to write the next one for you.” I wrote her words on an index card, which I have taken with me and tacked to my bulletin board every time I’ve moved since then. Though I don’t have a published book yet, I do have a couple of manuscripts that I have been submitting and trying to publish. It is gratifying to finish a project after months after writing—just like it is gratifying to finish a marathon after months of training. But the last marathon won’t run the next one for you: you still have to lace up and put in the miles every day; every mile, whether it was hard or easy, makes you a stronger runner and brings you closer to your goal. With writing, too: you have to sit down and put in the words. Every word you write brings you one word closer to your goal. Even if you end up cutting it from the piece in revision, the writing is making you a better writer. I encourage you to try to sit down and write at least six days a week this summer. Maybe you want to write for 10 minutes. Maybe you want to write one page a day. Regardless the goal, remember it is about showing up, putting in the time, and doing the work. Anyone can be a runner, and anyone can be a writer. But you have to be willing to work. Until next time, Big news for our overseas readers – print copies now delivered worldwide! At last, we’ve done it: we are set up to deliver print issues of Stone Soup magazine all over the world! And in the process, we have managed to reduce the price for our Canadian subscribers. Whether you are in the UK, China, Singapore, Australia, New Zealand, India, Korea, or anywhere in the Americas or Europe, if you have a mailbox, we can deliver Stone Soup to it. The prices are quoted in US dollars, with shipping included, by region: $89.99 a year for the USA and the UK, $119.99 for Europe and Canada, and  $129.99 a year for Asia, Australia, India and the rest of the world. Visit our online store to see all the options, and to buy your subscription today! Highlights from the past week online Don’t miss the latest content from our Book Reviewers and Young Bloggers at Stonesoup.com. Do you play the popular video game Fornite? On Monday we published a piece that discusses whether or the not the phenomenon is to dying down. See what Daniel has to say here. Lukas reflects on happiness in his post from this week: “As I thought back, I realized that in all the times where I had fun, had joy, there were people surrounding me.” Is this true for you too? Leave a comment and tell us what you think. Tara reviews the classic Ramona Quimby series of books. Why does she enjoy them so much? “Maybe it’s because author Beverly Cleary developed the characters so well in our minds, it’s as if they are your best friend. Maybe it’s because the adventures Ramona gets into are so relatable and funny.” Read more of Tara’s thoughts here. Contest and partnership news Contest: Write a Book! Why not use Emma’s writing tips to finish your entry for our summer contest? We are looking 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 15th, so you have the whole summer 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 contest page and Submittable entry page for full details. From Stone Soup March/April 2007 Flying By Margaret Bryan, 12 Illustrated by Olga Todorova,12 STARTING LINE I roll my head from side to side in an attempt to be nonchalant. My teammates look at me questioningly, and then ask, “Can we go now?” impatiently I

‘It was Lindy. She was helping my dad wash his car.’ Illustration by Kristin Trayer, 11, for “Lindy'” by Ari Rubin, 11. Published in Stone Soup, May/June 1993 and The Stone Soup Book of Friendship Stories, 2018. A Note from Jane Levi Writers are always looking for advice and ideas about how to make their writing better. One piece of advice I’ve heard and read often is “show, don’t tell.” I understood the general idea that it’s more powerful to reveal things to the reader through action and dialogue, instead of listing and explaining all the underlying thoughts and feelings in the order they happen. But I’ve sometimes worried that this approach might make my writing a bit too flowery or overly descriptive. Then, when I was working on the revised version of The Stone Soup Book of Friendship Stories, I read this week’s story: “Lindy.” This story was written by 11-year-old Ari Rubin and published in Stone Soup 26 years ago! Suddenly, reading this apparently simple and sparingly told story, “show, don’t tell” made a lot more sense. The whole story is “told” to us by a strong narrator’s voice. But he doesn’t explicitly tell us the real story underneath the story. He shows us the various events as they happened to him, so that—like him—we don’t understand Lindy’s bigger story until the very end. Then, we notice all the hints dropped along the way. We see the journey the narrator has been on, and how he got to where he is now in terms of his feelings about Lindy. This approach makes you want to read the story again. And then you see that the clues were there, cleverly laced in to the narrative. I love this story. It makes me cry every time I read it. But don’t let that put you off! It might just be me being sentimental! I am sure that however your emotions respond to “Lindy,” you’ll be excited to see how the author brilliantly controls what he shows us, what he tells us, how, and when, to make a complex emotional tale so simple and matter-of-fact. If you read something you love in Stone Soup, then do write and tell us about it, or leave a comment on our website. And, of course, if you are inspired by “Lindy” (or anything else in Stone Soup) to write or make something you want to share, please send that to us too! Until next time, Contests and partnership news Congratulations to our podcast contest winners! This week we announced the winners in our writing for podcast contest. Congratulations to Olivia Park, 12 (1st place), Claire Nagle, 12 (2nd Place), Tara Prakash, 12 (3rd place), and our two honorable mentions: Gemma Yin, 11, and Sabrina Guo, 13. You can read more about the winners and their prizes here. Announcing our Summer Book-Writing Contest We are thrilled to announce a summer 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 the whole summer 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 contest page and Submittable entry page for full details. Highlights from the past week online Don’t miss the latest content from our Book Reviewers and Young Bloggers at Stonesoup.com. Abhi, one of our frequent contributors, recently won a national award for his short film. We’ve published it on our YouTube channel and featured it on our blog. The short film is called “An Unusual Sunday.” Watch it here. On Thursday we published a piece by blogger Maya Viswanathan called “My Fancy Cake.” Maya describes the experience of designing the cake for her Bat Mitzvah. Should she go with her gut feeling about the colors for the cake, or follow the advice of others? To find out, read her piece. From Stone Soup May/June 1993 Lindy By Ari Rubin, 11 Illustrated by Kristin Trayer, 11 I used to cringe each time our doorbell rang. Nine times out of ten the person on the other side of the door was Lindy, the girl from a few houses down the street. “Can you play today?” she’d ask. “No, I’m doing homework,” I’d say, even if I wasn’t. “Can I help your mom with the baby?” she would ask next. Before I could say no, there was my mom inviting her inside again. “Where’s the baby?” Lindy asked. She asked that same question every time she walked inside the house. And the answer was always the same. “He’s in the family room,” my mom would say, smiling as she watched me silently mouthing the words along with her. My baby brother, Kelly, liked Lindy. He liked her a little too much, if you asked me. He’d squeal and laugh when she made silly faces at him or tickled his feet. To make matters worse, whenever Lindy played with Kelly, she’d take out every one of his toys. You can guess who would have to put them away later on. While she was busy with Kelly and my mom, I’d sneak out of the room. But no matter where I went, Lindy soon found me. It was as though she had radar. “I’m bored,” she’d say. Why don’t you go home, then? I thought to myself, but I never could say it out loud. Most of the time she would just stand there and stare at me until I asked her to play Nintendo. She would talk and talk all through the game, especially when it was my turn to play. She talked so much that it ruined my concentration. I lost a lot of lives that way. If she had not been such a pest, I might have liked her visits. After all, she was quite