Stone Soup Editors

“Fruits Like Heaven,” painting by Christian W. Wagari, 11. Published January 2018. A note from William Rubel I have a project for you today, but I want to start by addressing the adult newsletter readers. To our adult newsletter readers Amazon has a program called Amazon Smile that gives to a US charity on our behalf every time we buy something. It costs us nothing. Here is how it works: You do your shopping at smile.amazon.com and then Amazon donates half a percent (0.5%) of the total you just spent to your selected charity. If you click on the links above, then your half a percent will go to us at the Children’s Art Foundation. This is the quintessential Stone Soupproject. If just one of you starts using Amazon Smile not much good comes of it. But when every one of you starts using it, the amount we receive will be significant. Thank you. And, of course, the greatest help of all is to subscribe. William’s Weekend Project Life doesn’t always go as we expect it to. I am not one who is big on sports analogies—but in many cases, the expression “Life threw a curveball” provides a good analogy for an unexpected outcome. A curveball, for those of you who don’t know, is a baseball pitch that starts out going straight but then unexpectedly veers off to the right or the left. The story “Sketches,” which you will find below from the January 2018 issue, is a story that throws a curveball. You cannot imagine from how the story starts that it will end up where it does. This weekend, I want you to write a story that starts out seeming to go in one direction, to have one plot line, one mood, and then for the story to suddenly change directions. Write a story that take us somewhere we couldn’t have imagined at the beginning. “Sketches” opens with a routine argument between two brothers but ends up taking us somewhere else entirely. This is a common structure for stories—after all, the shift to the unexpected is almost the definition of what makes a good story. You’d be a pretty boring storyteller if the stories you tell your friends all turned out exactly as they had expected! Sleeping Beauty is another example of a story with a curveball plot. It starts out at a party celebrating the birth of a princess with the “happily ever after” plot we all expect a princess’s life to follow, and then: Bam! The evil fairy, named Carabosse in the ballet version and Maleficent in the Disney version, pushes the princess’s life in an unexpected direction, making a much more exciting story in the process. Send us your finished story when you are done. Until next week, Get ready for a summer of reading with a Stone Soup subscription The school year is coming to a close. For those of you who don’t yet have a Stone Soup subscription, this is a good time to start one. Summer vacation is a great time for reading, thinking, dreaming, and getting into projects one doesn’t have time for during the school year. Besides, you can’t get fully immersed into the inspired and inspiring worlds conjured up by Stone Soup’s writers without being a subscriber. Eleven issues a year. Available as print or digital formats. Plus, with the online format, you get over 20 years’ worth of back issues, writing and art projects, our fabulous blog writers, and more. Highlights from the past week online Don’t miss the latest content from our Book Reviewers and Young Bloggers at Stonesoup.com. Vandana reviews Wendy Mass’s Finally. The main character, Rory, is about to turn twelve. Here’s what Vandana has to say about the book: “Frank, funny, and full of surprises, Finally is a story that spins many themes together, and consequently appeals to a wide range of readers. For one, it portrays the pressure to grow up before one might be ready, which nearly every middle schooler experiences at some point in their life.” Read more here. Alex Baker, a writing instructor for the youth writing group Igniting Writing, wrote a guest post on our blog this week about some strategies to engage young writers. Some of his suggestions include games and fun writing prompts. Do you have any ideas? Let us know by leaving a comment on the post! From Stone Soup January 2018 Sketches By Saenger Breen, 12 Painting by Christian W. Wagari, 11 That morning at breakfast, Dylan sat perched on his usual seat at the table, sketching happily. I grabbed the milk and a spoon and sat down. I poured myself a heaping bowl of Cheerios, most of which spilled on the table. Dylan’s pencil scribbled away, and he periodically blew huge breaths over his paper to get rid of the shreds of eraser. Curious about what he was working so diligently at, I leaned over to get a better view. “Dylan!” I shouted. He was adding onto one of my drawings, and had already reshaped a good portion of it. Startled, Dylan looked up. “What?” “I’ve been working on that forever!” I snatched my notebook out of his hands. He’d made the people cartoon-like and unrealistic, and shaded in all the wrong places. “You totally screwed up the whole thing!” I yelled. “I didn’t screw up anything!” he said, defensively. “I’ve told you a million times not to touch my stuff, and specifically not my sketchbook!” I flipped through the pages to see if he’d ruined any other drawings. He hadn’t. I flipped back to the drawing he was working on. I examined it closely, looking for flaws to point out. The faces of the people had become less dimensional and smudgy. Dylan always drew details with tons of shading, most of which wasn’t necessary. Sometimes I’d teach him where to shade, and help him with drawing figures, but he still resorted to his box-like, over-shaded style. He’d added onto drawings before, but those were just sketches I’d whipped up in a few minutes. I’d been perfecting this one for at least a month. The paper

Illustration by Arthur Manuelito, 12, for “How I Got Over My Dream” by Diane Dubose, 11. Published in Stone Soup, March/April 1989. A note from Sarah Ainsworth This week, a serious subject. At the Museum of Vancouver in British Columbia, Canada, I was fortunate enough to see a powerful exhibit called There is Truth Here: Creativity and Resilience in Children’s Art from Indian Residential and Day Schools. This is a chapter of North American history that doesn’t get talked about very often. In the Indian residential schools in both the United States and Canada, indigenous children who were taken from their families were forcibly assimilated to Eurocentric traditions. The goal of the schools was to take away the children’s indigenous culture and traditions. These children were not allowed to speak in their native languages or practice their traditional religions. The results of these “schools” were devastating and continue to affect indigenous communities today. This exhibit showcases the artwork that indigenous children created during their time in these institutions. It is thought-provoking and heartbreaking. The work is a reminder of the importance of creative expression as an outlet for children. Here are just a few of the pieces that stood out to me: You can see more of the works in the show, and find out more about them and the lives of the artists, at the Legacy Art Gallery in Victoria website. I am certainly no expert on this subject, but I am trying to learn more about it. I encourage you to also seek out information if you are interested. Here is a list of books on the subject of residential schools. Please, if you read one and have any thoughts, consider submitting a review to Stone Soup. Until next time, Raising funds to reach kids in marginalized communities Part of Stone Soup’s mission has always been to try our best to reach children living in marginalized communities and help them use the power of their creativity to share their worlds and experiences with others. This week’s story from the archives is one from a special Navajo issue that Stone Soup published in 1989. The stories, art, and poetry in that issue—and other work published in the late 1980s in regular issues of Stone Soup—were by children living on reservations, some of whom attended boarding schools. Those stories touch on some of the elements mentioned above, such as the children having two names (a secret Navajo one and the English one used in the outside world), and the division between their home and boarding-school lives. When we moved out of our office two years ago, we found a box of that special issue in our storeroom. Still wrapped tightly in the plastic the printer packed them in all those decades ago, they are in great condition! We held on to them, knowing that we should do something more with them than send them for recycling, but not quite sure what that something was. Now, inspired by Sarah’s visit to that exhibition, we know what we want to do with them. We want to sell them to the readers of our newsletter and dedicate all the money we raise to our programs for reaching marginalized kids, wherever they are. This is your chance to get a pristine, vintage copy of Stone Soup and help us dedicate additional funds to our programs reaching out to kids living in challenging circumstances. We have 60 copies available; at $15 per copy, if we sell them all we’ll raise $900. We promise we will devote all the money raised to finding new ways to seek out and support the harder-to-reach Stone Soup readers and contributors of today and tomorrow. You can buy your copies of the Stone Soup March/April 1989 Special Navajo Issue here in our online store. If you would rather make a donation—or if you would like to make a donation in addition to your purchase—you can do that here. Thank you, as always, for your support. We will report back in the newsletter on how much we raise, and what we achieve with the funds. Highlights from the past week online Don’t miss the latest content from our Book Reviewers and Young Bloggers at Stonesoup.com. Vandana reviews the newly released Shouting at the Rain by Lynda Mullaly Hunt. Here’s an excerpt from the review: “Strikingly, not once in the book did the author give away any character’s feelings in a single word, but painstakingly described physical actions: staring at shoes, standing straighter, bouncing on toes. More than once, I had to stop reading and consult my knowledge of human body language—what are people feeling when they avoid someone’s gaze?” Abhi reflects on the feeling of love and shares a poem on the subject: “As we all know, love truly cannot be explained well. While some people find love as a relationship between two or more, others see it differently. I personally find love to be having an awesome time with someone, and just enjoying life.” What do you think love means?   From Stone Soup March/April 1989 How I Got Over My Dream By Diane Dubose, age 11, New Mexico Illustrated by Arthur Manuelito, age 12, New Mexico One warm sunny afternoon in November I was sitting at my desk reading a library book about gorillas. I was looking at the gorillas when Kathleen, my cousin-sister, said, “Diane, why are you looking at that picture?” I said, “I’m just looking at it.” Then I said, “That gorilla looks big and scary. I only like orangutans and chimpanzees. They are small and they’re not mean.” It was three-thirty, time to go to the dorm. The students walked down the hallway heading for Dorm Two. That is where I live Monday through Friday because I am a Navajo girl and I live way out on the Navajo Reservation. I live out too far to go to a public school so I go to a boarding school. I started going to boarding school when I was very young and

“Illuminated,” photograph by Lara Katz, 14. Published April 2018. A note from William Rubel It is so easy to take a glance and then just turn the page. Photography was invented in the 1840s. Photographers have been recognized as great artists since the beginning of the art form. But it has only been in recent decades that exhibits of photography at museums have drawn crowds that match those of exhibitions of paintings. In newspapers and magazines we become accustomed to seeing photographs as documentary tools. The photograph shows us the subject that is discussed in the article. We glance, our internal voice registers, “Ah, that is what it looked like,” and we then usually focus on the accompanying text. Stone Soup is a literary magazine. The photographs that are included in Stone Soup do not illustrate the stories (though they can partner with them, and add another dimension). They stand as works of art in their own right. Photographs are not composed of words. Words slow us down. It takes a while to read a page. But we can read a photograph in an instant, literally. How many words would it take to describe your house? And then how long would it take to read the description? But it only takes a short glance at a photograph of your house to recognize it. I hope all of you read Editor Emma Wood’s thought-provoking note on reading poetry in the April 6 Newsletter. If you didn’t, then read it now. I promise you, you will find something there that you will remember for a long time. I’d like to borrow one paragraph from Emma’s note: The poet Wallace Stevens once said, ‘A poem must resist the intelligence almost successfully.’ What does this mean to you? To me, this means that a poem should operate just on the edges of reason and rational thinking. It should tell me something that I don’t quite understand. The poem should force me to spend time with it, to read and reread it, and, with each rereading, to come closer to my own understanding of it. Lara’s Katz’s photograph, which we published last year, forces you to stay with it. You cannot understand it in  a glance. As Emma puts it regarding understanding poetry, it “operate[s] just on the edges of reason and rational thinking.” What is happening to the right of the column? What do we see on the left? And what is the column part of? Is this a doorway? A gate? An arch along a walkway or in a grand building? Is that graffiti or a projection?  Is that a face at the top of the column? Eyes in the wall to the right? There is a lot in Lara’s photograph that we “don’t quite understand.” This is a photograph you can come back to for years. Where does this photograph take you? I’ll leave it at that. Once you are done, send us what you’ve written to Stone Soup.  Until next week, Highlights from the past week online Don’t miss the latest content from our Book Reviewers and Young Bloggers at Stonesoup.com. In a review written together, Ben and Jackson discuss Angie Thomas’s modern classic The Hate U Give. Read their review to find out why they think the book offers a ‘unique perspective’ of main character Starr being ‘split between two worlds.’ Have you read this book or watched the movie? Let us know what you think! Soohong reviews Coraline by Neil Gaiman (which is another book that got turned into a movie!). ‘Coraline was a very amusing and super enjoyable novel. Though it scared me so much and sometimes gave me nightmares, this would definitely be a book I would recommend to people.’ Read more of Soohong’s thoughts here. From Stone Soup April 2018 The Stone Angel By Julia Lockwood, 12 Photograph by Lara Kaz, 14 The pewter sky hung like a tapestry over the graveyard, dark clouds spilling across it. The clouds boomed and thundered like an angry beast, releasing torrents of water that drenched the gray headstones below. Lightning sliced through the air like a sword, illuminating the world for a second with its violet light. Libby liked the rain. The way it left her honey hair wet and clingy, the way the droplets slid down her cheeks like cool tears. She knelt down next to her favorite grave in the furthest corner of the cemetery. Most of her neighbors grew up in fear of the cemetery across the street, but Libby loved it. Each weekend she would place flowers on her favorite graves, and she loved calculating the ages of the people on the headstones. Libby peered at the grave in front of her. The cool stone of the memorial was cracked and crumbling, with moss climbing up it, filling in the crevasses. A smiling angel stood atop the base of the grave, holding a harp in its chubby hands. The angel’s face had been worn away by decades in the rain, giving the grave an eerie look. Engraved in the podium was the name of the girl who rested there. Here lies Ada Lee Clemmons 1896-1907 Beloved daughter, sister. May her soul rest in peace. “Pretty, isn’t it?” a sweet voice said from behind Libby. Startled, Libby turned quickly to see a girl standing behind her. The girl looked about Libby’s age, with tawny skin and soft coils of chestnut hair. Her cheeks held a slight rosy blush, probably a result of the cold of the rain. But what struck Libby as particularly striking were the girl’s eyes. They blazed blue against her darker skin, as if holding a cold fire inside them. The girl took a step closer to Libby. “It’s sad isn’t it?” She asked. “She was so young. Only eleven, only as old as I am now.” The girl turned to look at Libby, as if noticing her for the first time. “You come here a lot,” she said. It was not phrased as a question, but simply as a statement. “Y-yes.” Libby stammered.