The story by 11-year-old Nate Sheehan, “Conrad and Fate” is about prejudice based on a student’s ethnicity. This story, set in the late 1950s is about prejudice against Japanese people, something that was very strong in in the United States during and some time after World War II, which ended in 1945. If you follow the news at all, then you know that today (in 2019) there is a big rise in prejudice in the United States and in other parts of the world. People trying to come to the United States for a safer and better life are being stopped at the Mexican border. People who get caught sneaking through are being put in prison. This includes children. Adults and children are being treated badly. And in our schools, and on our streets, there is increasing intolerance for people born in other countries, or whose parents were born in other countries, especially if their skin tone is not “white.” And also an increase in prejudice against people who are not Christians. It is very easy to write an essay that talks about why prejudice against others is bad. But essays rarely convince people. Fiction can be a more effective way of arguing for things you believe in. Empathy, the ability to share and imagine the feelings of others is one of the most powerful human emotions. Empathy is what makes it possible for a writer to create convincing fictional characters. Your job as an author highlighting how it feels to be discriminated against is to make your readers identify with the character so that they can imagine what it would be like for this to happen to them. The activity In this writing activity we want you to write a story from the viewpoint of a person who is thought of as “other,” like the Japanese boy in the story “Conrad and Fate” published in the January/February 2015 issue of Stone Soup. Write about what it feels like to have to fight for acceptance because of something you have no control over–your religion, where you were born, or where your parents were born, or because of the color of your skin. Perhaps you have had personal experiences of prejudice of these kinds–I have. It has been fifty-five years since I was in middle school and bent down to pick a penny up off the concrete in front of a classroom only to discover it was glued down, and that I was surrounded by a group of boys shouting “Jew!” and laughing. This memory is fresh, like it happened yesterday. Think about your own experiences and the feelings you had at the time, and try to imagine them happening to someone else. What does it feel like to be mocked, teased, excluded, or worse, because you are not seen as a person by other students? This is a story, so show us what it feels like.
A young author talks about getting published: Tara Prakash, 11
After we featured her self-published book, The Hunting Season, in our Saturday Newsletter, we asked its young author Tara Prakash to write something for us about the process she went though. From here, it’s over to Tara. The Hunting Season by Tara Prakash, age 11 I got inspired to write The Hunting Season when I went to Wyoming and explored Yellowstone and Grand Tetons National Parks. We saw a lot of bears on that trip and I kept wondering what they were thinking about and what was in their heads.That was when The Hunting Season was born. So when I got home, I wrote on Microsoft Word a story about what I thought the bears would be thinking about, what their fears were and what events exploded excitement into them. I wrote whenever I could. Between my soccer practices and basketball games, every open time I got, I would sit at the computer and write. The plot never got boring or the long amount of time it took to write in never got to be too much. I sometimes got frustrated though, when parts of the plot didn’t match up, like a puzzle piece that didn’t fit. My parents’ friend, who is a self published author, told us about Create Space, the self publishing company. Then, my nanny and I uploaded the Word document into Create Space, and Create Space helped us format the book; we scanned my cover artwork so it would show, we wrote a summary of the book on the back, choosing the color, font, size, etc. Then, from Create Space, my dad uploaded the book to Amazon and we chose the price to set it at and I wrote my ‘About The Author’ there. After it was out to the public, my dad emailed my school teachers, my friends, my sports team coaches, and family, and family friends. Once my teacher bought it and left a five star review then lots of my friends bought it, leaving reviews and giving me compliments at school. I started the story at age nine and finished the story right as I turned ten. I turned was almost eleven when we got it onto Amazon. If there’s one thing I learned during this whole process, it’s this: Keep on writing. All writing starts with one great idea. You can find a copy of The Hunting Season on Amazon.
Giving Refugee Children a Voice
Turkish Aircraft Bombing Cyprus by Frosoula Papeptrou, age 6. This image was made shortly after the Turkish invasion of Cyprus in 1974. There are millions of children who have escaped from war zones and are now living in refugee camps, or as refugees in countries far from their homes. We, at Stone Soup, would like to begin offering space on our website, and in Stone Soup, our magazine, for writing, art, and photography by refugee children. Our goal is to build a powerful collection of creative work by kids ages 13 and under to speak on behalf of the millions of children whose lives have been upended by uncontrollable violence. We are looking for people who want to help us make this project a reality: people who have time to spend contacting organizations; people who are already working in an NGO that works with refugee children; and people who might be willing to offer some financial support for the project. If you would like to help us with this initiative, then please get in touch with Sarah Ainsworth by email. You can write to her at sarah@stonesoup.com. Thank you. William Rubel for Children’s Art Foundation & Stone Soup Magazine
