About

Rachel Alana Fomer Stone Soup Illustrator Rachel Alana, Artist and Former Stone Soup Illustrator I’ve written recently about two Stone Soup authors who have published their own books. This week, I’d like to introduce you to Rachel Alana, who illustrated several stories for the magazine about fifteen years ago as Rachel Stanley. You can find examples of her work in these links: Hermione and Leafy The Flying Angel Diver Rachel, as she puts it, “has been drawing all [her] life.” You can see more of her work, and learn more about who Rachel is through her website and her Instagram page. I know that most Stone Soup illustrators have several years of serious drawing behind them before their first publication in the magazine. I also now that when you are ten or twelve one of the great questions that you have is, what will I become? My daughter, who will be eleven in two weeks, often asks me, “Dada, what I will be?” Of course, I have no idea, except she has said since she was six that she wants to be a scientist, and I think that is very likely. Some of you reading this will likewise become artists and writers. If you are an adult, and a former Stone Soup writer or illustrator and are still writing and doing art—whether professionally or as a hobby—please let me know by replying to this newsletter. I will be on vacation for a couple weeks, so I won’t respond until mid-August but am excited to hear from you. We are thinking of devoting a place on our Stone Soupwebsite to former contributors and former members of the Honor Roll. I chose to feature this drawing of Rachel’s because it happens to be a drawing of me! Well, not really of me, personally, but it is a drawing of a boy playing with a boat in a French park. One of my strongest childhood memories is playing with a boat in the Tuileries Garden in the summer of 1963. Every time I go to Paris I pause by that place, even when it is winter and the boats are all put away. I will say that seeing the park does make me sad, as does Rachel’s drawing, because my mother died about ten years later, and playing with those little boats with your mother on a hot summer afternoon in Paris is about as wonderful an afternoon as one will ever have. So boys playing in parks with toy boats always makes me think of her. This one of the great powers of art. To take us someplace else. Back in time. Forward in time to a place that will never really exist. Into the lives of others, or back into one’s own life, but a part of one’s life that was long ago. Going on vacation, so until mid-August! William Rubel Founder & Executive Director Poetry Issue Still Open! Send us a poem, write a poetry review! Emma, our editor, tells me that the poetry issue is filling up, but is still open. So, don’t be shy! Send Emma your poems for the special September Poetry Issue. Emma has also asked for reviews of poems. We have never published reviews of poems before, and in fact this is rare in adult literary magazines. I am repeating here what we have published about this previously, but adding an incentive for you to write poetry reviews.The first five people to submit a poetry review will receive a free copy of the 2017 Stone Soup Annual, a lovely book with everything we’ve published in 2017 (regardless of whether Emma accepts your review for publication). You can review Emma’s guidelines for poetry reviews here. Buy Stone Soup for Summer Reading Summer is still going strong. If you haven’t already, please consider buying a Stone Soupsubscription for the reader and creative child in your life. Stone Soup is available online and can also be read offline in app form or as a downloaded PDF, either printed out or on a tablet. Mid-November we will be publishing a print annual for 2017 so you will also have the opportunity to buy a year’s worth of Stone Soup in book form. With a subscription, your child will get access to our archive of Stone Soup issues online—over 2,000 pages of reading material along with the opportunity to submit his or her own creative work to the magazine for free. From Stone Soup May/June 2004 The Flying Angel By Elizabeth B. Smith, 13 Illustrated by Rachel Stanley, 12 “Why am I so dumb, Hobo?” I asked the short, jetblack gelding. I knew he couldn’t answer me, but I knew he could understand. Just two days ago, I had failed my first seventh-grade math test spectacularly, lost patience entirely at an annoying girl who I thought was my friend, and I continued to struggle with the facts of growing up. Now, staring into the eyes of someone I knew I could trust, I spilled it all out. And through everything, the glossy black eyes of my one true friend took everything in. When I ended my period of ranting, my wet eyes met his, and he looked back like always, and winked.I threw my arms around his neck, and breathed in the smell of the horse. It was a smell that you learned to appreciate in my house, whether it was lingering in the car, collecting on my welcome mat, or biding its time on the bristles of one of the many brushes that scattered my floor. If you knew me personally, you’d know (and hopefully not be offended) that I’d switch a moment with you any time, for the presence of a horse. Right now, it was one of those times, a dewy Sunday morning, where the first signs of bitter fall were creeping in. . . .more

The Hunting Season, a novel By Tara Prakash Buy from Amazon.com A Note from William Rubel Firstly, if you haven’t kept up, please read about changes in Stone Soup at this post. If you are a Stone Soup subscriber, please also see the Stone Soup News section, below. And now for the main message of today’s newsletter: Tara Prakash, a longtime Stone Soup reader and Stone Soup honor roll writer, has written a novel, The Hunting Season. As a book author myself, I can assure you, nothing makes the work of writing more rewarding than people buying your book. I encourage each of you to buy Hunting Season. It is available at Amazon.com. I am buying Tara’s book for my daughter as a present for her eleventh birthday. We will be on a camping trip in the high Sierras then—the perfect place for my daughter to read this book rich with bears, wolves, and nature. When you go to Amazon you will be able to read large excerpts from the book. I want to include here the prologue which provides the setting for the novel:”A golden leaf fell on the cold steady ground. Trees, bursting to life, stood strong in Wyoming, Grand Tetons and Yellowstone National Park. Maple trees showed continued brightness in the middle of the gloom and ferns flamed scarlet. The birches and aspens glowed yellow, holding a cheerfulness of their own. As winter exploded into spring, flowers bloomed and grass turned lime green. The clouds shadowed down on the corn fields, making them forced to droop. Black Berries grew from the trees, fresh as ever. Rain droplets splintered over Wyoming, hardly ever having a sunny day. Birds chirped their high-pitched voices and foxes growled their low rusty growl. Bison ran on their chubby legs and Elk ate the misty wet grass. Jays screamed at the squirrels and the bears howled with the wind. And boy did they not know, death was soon to come.” I’d like to point out the fantastic depth and energy that Tara brings to setting the scene. Note how she uses original language like “splintered” and “rusty.” This is written from the heart. It is brilliant. Just look at these two sentences: “The birches and aspens glowed yellow, holding a cheerfulness of their own. As winter exploded into spring, flowers bloomed and grass turned lime green.” Her description here of the changing season is bursting with its own energy. It conveys the excitement and dynamism of nature. Buy her book. And why not also do some descriptive writing of your own? If you are in Stone Soup’s age range (age 13 and under) then please submit descriptive nature stories—and they can be short, even a page or less—through our regular submissions channel via the button below. This is summer, the perfect time to go outdoors, find a beautiful spot, and write. I would like to encourage you try to get an adult in your life—a parent or a grandparent, for instance—to sit with you and also to write. Parallel works—one by you, the young writer, and one by your adult—should be sent to me by replying to this newsletter. Joint child/adult submissions will probably not be included in Stone Soup, but I might find a way of publishing a few of them on the website. I am in London today—one reason this newsletter is a day late, for the second week in a row. Soon after I return to California next week, I am going on a camping trip with my daughter. Thus, I will not be replying to emails generated by the newsletter until mid-August. Until Next Week, William Founder and Executive Director Stone Soup Announcements and News As regular readers know, our last print issue was the May/June issue. We have sent letters to all subscribers helping you convert to digital subscriptions. The system we set up was, admittedly, a little clunky. We will be sending a revised procedure to those of you who did not open the first letter. For those of you who have registered as digital subscribers, I’d like you to please explore our iOS and Android app. Download from the respective App stores and then follow the instructions you find within the app. Once you register the device (and you are entitled to up to 5 devices), you will have all of the back issues going back twenty years. The app is the best way to enjoy reading Stone Soup offline. Please explore the app with your child. Experiment in how to download material for offline reading. The app in offline mode is ideal for vacations or for “offline time.” I know some of you have been taken aback by the conversion to digital. Fortunately, the vast majority of letters were supportive. For those of you still on the fence, let me put it this way: I was twenty when I thought of the idea of making Stone Soup; I now have a social security card in my wallet and grey hair. When Stone Soup was started there were no personal computers. The internet was literally two decades away! Two decades! For those of you who remember back then, before email and websites, our (paper) mailboxes were full. Times have changed. I am asking you to help us make Stone Soup the magazine for our 21st century children. If you have more questions, please read what I have posted about the change here. We are now a digital magazine with a print annual, and we are looking forward to rolling out a number of exciting changes in the coming months. From Stone Soup July/August 2017 A Horse Named Seamus By Kate Bailey, 11 Illustrated by Elena Delzer, 12 Horses, horses, horses. There were so many horses! Valery wondered which one would be hers as she gazed over the crowd of them. She had waited so long for this day. Today was her tenth birthday, and her parents had finally given in to Valery’s pleas to let her adopt a horse. There was a local horse carnival in town, so Valery and her mom