“What I saw in the classroom surprised me” Illustrator Elenia Henry, 11, for Rain Tears by Isabella Widrow, 11. Published May/June 2014. A note from William Rubel I can’t tell whether Elenia’s drawing of a classroom is from life or from memory. Whichever it was, this is an exceedingly well observed drawing. Look at the stacked chairs, the detail on the instrument, the grille in the door, the writing and art on the walls. There is “sense of place” times one hundred in this work! It’s so well done. Whether you are a kid or a grownup, there is nothing like making a drawing of what you are looking at. What you do with a camera and what you do with a pencil are very different things. Drawing forces you to simplify and focus on what is important to you. I encourage all of you this weekend–young and old–to go somewhere, even if it is only out of your own door, and draw. If there are children in your household, then go out and draw together. My daughter and I draw together when we are on camping trips. What I find interesting looking at my drawings from those trips is how clear it is what I most wanted remember about the scene. Looking at a photograph it isn’t always clear what had most interested you about the scene. Drawing forces you to focus on what is important to you. And, of course, when you draw from life the memory of creating the drawing gets mixed in with the work. If you really will go out today or tomorrow and draw I know you will find that drawing will remind of this Memorial Day weekend in a very special way. By way of equipment, all you need are a few pieces of typing paper, a pencil, a pencil sharpener, and a clipboard to place on your lap. Updates from behind the scenes It’s been some time since I’ve talked about what is going on behind the scenes. At this week’s staff meeting we reviewed the new Stone Soup home page. This is the first phase in revising the website. It is really beautiful and increases site functionality. I am sure you will all be pleased by it. While it is never safe to promise I am pretty confident it will be up before the end of the month. You can pre-order the 371 page full color Stone Soup Annual 2017 now at amazon.com/stonesoup. As we’ve mentioned in previous Newsletters, and noted also, below, we will be going to St. Louis next week to a teachers convention. If our internet connection is strong enough within the convention hall then we will do some live streaming. We’ll let you know. Until next week, William Meet us in St Louis Calling all teachers! Will you be at the NCTE conference in St Louis, MI, next week? We will! Do stop by to talk to us at booth no. 434. We’d love to see you there, and hear about all the creative projects that have surprised and delighted you in your classrooms, and think with you of ways Stone Soup can help your students flourish. If the internet connection is strong enough in the Exhibition Hall we will live stream. If we can make it happen we will announce a live streaming time in next week’s Newsletter. Stone Soup Annual 2017 – pre-order now at our online store We mentioned it last week, but we are so proud of it we hope you will forgive us if we mention it again–the first Stone Soup Annual, 2017, is now available for pre-order at our store. We are thrilled to see how many of you have already snapped up their copies. Thank you! All of the authors, artists and honor roll recipients from 2017, along with a selection of our young bloggers and musicians, will have their work printed in this year’s Annual. It occurred to us that you might want some extra copies of your work in print, so we have a discount doc for you and your families. If you haven’t heard yet what that code is, write to us at subscriptions@stonesoup.com so we can let you in on the magic words. From Stone Soup July/August 2006 Revenge is Bittersweet By Molly O’Neill, 13 Illustrated by Laura Gould, 13 It was a perfect shot. I was standing across the driveway from the basketball hoop—just beyond where the three-point line would have been—and Matt, who was rebounding, gave me a nice crisp bounce pass. I bent my knees and sent the ball arching beautifully towards the basket. Everything about the shot was perfect—the timing, the follow-through, and the soft swish of the ball falling through the net. And for once even Matt didn’t have any wisecracks to make. He just caught the ball and turned around to make a lay-up, which was about the highest compliment I could get from my older brother because I knew he would have tried the shot if he thought he had a chance at making it. Just then Carla’s dad pulled his silver Saab into the driveway Matt tossed me the ball. “You’ll do great,” he said. I hopped into the back seat of the car. Carla stopped listening to her MP3 player and said, “Nice shot.” “Thanks.” I grinned. Carla knew how to give a compliment, how to make a casual remark into the most beautiful music. That was part of the reason I had talked her into trying out for basketball. She was my best friend, and I wanted her at the tryouts even if she didn’t make the team. Carla and I were different… /more
About
Saturday Newsletter: November 4, 2017
A note from William Rubel We did it! Or, to be more accurate, Jane Levi, our rock of competence, has shepherded this project to completion. The Stone Soup 2017 annual is being published in response to so many of you saying how much you miss print and how important having Stone Soup in print form is to you. The Stone Soup Annual is 350 pages. It is a magnificent book. Full colour, every issue for the year, plus bonus material from the website. We selected a high quality paper in keeping with Stone Soup’s long-standing production values. The book weighs over one pound! What you will get are the print issues from the first half of the year and the digital issues from the second half of the year all bound together in one volume: eight issues covering January to December 2017. Also in the volume you will find work by winners of our contests, selected posts from our young bloggers, and music written by our Stone Soup composers. The issues inside the volume are formatted exactly as the Stone Soup print issues have been for years. The cover and new material are designed by one of London’s most sought after designers of art museum catalogues. We will also be using a new design from Joe Ewart for our monthly issues starting in January 2018. Joe brings a freshness and energy to his design that I know you will all appreciate, and which I think you will agree lives up to the quality of our contributors’ work. This is a book that is a pleasure to hold and to look at as well as to read. The Stone Soup Annual is finalised and at the printer. In publishing terms, it is “forthcoming”. We are expecting delivery of our piles of books in early December, ready to ship out. Later in the year we will have a new subscription system in place so you will be able to order a digital subscription plus the print Annual as a bundle for next year. In the meantime, you need to order the print Annual 2017 separately. Please go to our online store, Stonesoupstore.com, and order your copies. I’d like to close by encouraging you to listen to “Let This be the World”, a lovely song without words sung by Kathleen Werth, also the artist responsible for the magnificent cover of our first Stone Soup Annual, 2017. Until next week, William Bloggers There are several new blog posts up from our new young bloggers, so do please visit our website to read them and comment. We’ve been delighted by the response they’ve had so far. If you are a young writer and have something you want to say on our blog, let me know. The November Issue is online now – don’t miss it! We wrote to everyone on Wednesday announcing the November issue of Stone Soup. If you haven’t had a chance yet to read it, do make some time to go to our website this weekend and enjoy the fantastic selection of stories, poems and artworks we’ve chosen for you this month. Congratulations to all our talented contributors! Also, if you didn’t get our email about the new issue, please check your spam folder and make sure you have told your system you want to receive email from us (assuming you do!). We won’t ever bother you with email you don’t want (you can unsubscribe any time at the bottom of our emails), but we certainly don’t want you to miss out on any new material, especially when it’s the current issue off your magazine. From Stone Soup May/June 2004 The Lone Wolf By Preston Craig, 10 Illustrated by J. Palmer, 13 Alexis Jamison looked thoughtfully at the young gray wolf anxiously pacing the enclosure. “You’ve got green eyes. That’s odd. Did you know that most gray wolves have gold eyes, or yellow even?” Alexis Jamison looked thoughtfully at the young gray wolf anxiously pacing the enclosure. “You’ve got green eyes. That’s odd. Did you know that most gray wolves have gold eyes, or yellow even?” The wolf whined fearfully, a pup’s apprehensive sound, and Alex looked helplessly at it. “I can’t do anything yet,” she continued bitterly. “You’re going to be released, don’t you know that? What’s your name, anyway?” She looked at the piece of paper tacked lopsidedly to the fence, her father’s practically illegible handwriting spelling out the words: Lupus. Gray wolf. Approximately two years old. “Lupus, is that your name then?” Alex said interestedly. “Good name for a gray wolf.” Lupus whined again. “Oh, Lupus,” she murmured, her voice breaking. She jumped to her feet, put a hand against the fence briefly, then tore herself away and strode toward her house, trying hard to keep from turning back to Lupus. The cool Alaskan air bit at Alex as she walked across the field of dying grass. She was used to wolves; there were plenty here at the gray wolf release center her father had begun four years ago. She had come here every summer since her parents split up when she was six. Alex had learned everything there was to know about endangered gray wolves from her father, and was already able to help him with his work. She didn’t usually let herself get attached to any of the wolves, knowing they were eventually going to be released and she’d never see them again, but she was curiously interested in Lupus… /more
November issue published online today!
‘Fall’ by Keira Zhang Free Xexilya, a girl who can’t speak, forms an unusual bond with a mountain cat Sea Creature A mysterious jellyfish haunts Judy’s dreams Plus: A Review of Margi Preus’s Heart of a Samurai Letter from the Editor, November 2017 In the classic book Frankenstein, the monster isn’t actually named Frankenstein. Frankenstein is the doctor; the monster is never given a name. Throughout the novel, he’s alternately “the monster,” “the creature,” or, simply, “it.” But what is a creature, exactly? The word (which, like most words, came to us through Latin), means “a thing created,” but we tend to use it to refer solely to animals—even though us humans are also created, by our parents and perhaps by a greater being beyond them. In this issue, I found myself collecting stories, poems, and images about creatures—birds, butterflies, mountain cats, and jellyfish.And, in the process, I realized that we seem to turn to animals in our deepest, darkest moments, when we are contemplating the loss of someone we loved very much or wondering what our purpose is. This is an issue to match the season, with its short days and long, black nights. — Emma Wood Log in now at stonesoup.com to read your November issue! We are thrilled to share the November 2017 issue with all of you, our subscribers. Log into your account now to read all the stories, poems and reviews published this month, and enjoy some stunning art from our contributors. Remember, you can also download a PDF copy to print at home or upload to your offline device; or download our app and sign in to read it there. If you need any help getting access to the full range of material in this month’s issue, contact us at subscriptions@stonesoup.com and we’ll be able to help you get signed in.
