Monochrome | Ashley Jun, 13 (Short Hills, NJ), published in Stone Soup November 2021 A note from William Firstly, congratulations to our Stone Soup editor, Emma Wood! Her most recent book of poems, The Real World, has just been published! Reading Emma’s poetry is a great way to get to know her better! In the same spirit that I ask you to support our young authors by buying their book, please support Emma by purchasing The Real World. You can pre-order it now. The book will be shipped to you on its official publication date. Open House Our second annual open house is on Tuesday, November 30 at 4 p.m. PST. Clicking on the date will add it to your calendar. This is your opportunity to meet our staff, ask questions, and share with people at the meeting. Everyone is welcome! Last year we had a good mix of students and adults attending. We look forward to seeing you! Until next time, Highlights from the past week online Don’t miss the latest content from our Book Reviewers and Young Bloggers at on our blog! Georgia, 12, wrote a review of Lucy Worsley’s novel The Austen Girls, which is this month’s featured novel for the Stone Soup Book Club. Mihika Sarkar Omachi, 12, published a brilliant comic strip about a trip she took to Bali with her family. From Stone Soup November 2021 The Mourning Dove By Meital Friend, 13 (Brooklyn, NY) There was a mourning dove sitting on our roof. Well, sitting might not be the right word. Most of the time, we say one word because a better word doesn’t exist. For example, if there was a word that meant there is a bomb whistling toward your family and all you can do is wait for the explosion which will ruin your life, then the nurse with purple lipstick would have said it, instead of just “I’m sorry.” And how do you receive an apology when you can never accept it, even if you pretend you can? Most of the time, people act like apologies are gifts the apologizer is giving to the person they’re apologizing to. But, looking at the shiny purple lips of the nurse, I wondered what to do with her apology. When you have a gift you don’t want, do you still have to write a thank-you note? I guessed you did. So, I just told the nurse, “It’s okay.” I think that was maybe the first lie in an avalanche of lies. Or maybe it wasn’t. But there was a mourning dove sitting on our roof. And the reason that I wasn’t sure that sitting was the right word, is that it wasn’t moving at all. Usually when people sit, they fidget, or move their head around if they’re a bird. But the mourning dove wasn’t moving at all. “Why won’t it move?” asked Aunt Jasmine, trying to pretend everything was normal despite the traces of tears on her cheeks that proved the opposite, looking up at the beautiful bird. It really was beautiful, with its gray-brown feathers with smudges of purple, and eyelids a brilliant blue green. But I didn’t want beauty. Or maybe I did. “Maybe it’s dead,” I said, in a voice that didn’t sound or feel like me. The words didn’t sound or feel like me, either. Continue reading here… Stone Soup is published by Children’s Art Foundation-Stone Soup Inc., a 501(c)(3) educational nonprofit organization registered in the United States of America, EIN: 23-7317498. Stone Soup’s advisors: Abby Austin, Mike Axelrod, Annabelle Baird, Jem Burch, Evelyn Chen, Juliet Fraser, Zoe Hall, Montanna Harling, Alicia & Joe Havilland, Lara Katz, Rebecca Kilroy, Christine Leishman, Julie Minnis, Jessica Opolko, Tara Prakash, Denise Prata, Logan Roberts, Emily Tarco, Rebecca Ramos Velasquez, Susan Wilky.
About
Saturday Newsletter: November 13, 2021
Trace | Ashley Jun, 13 (Short Hills, NJ), published in Stone Soup November 2021 A note from Sarah Happy weekend, all! I have been fortunate to work with a few Stone Soup interns over the past few months on an alt-text project to help make our website a little more accessible. Are you familiar with alt-text, also known as alternative text? In short, alt-text is a description of an image on a website that can be helpful for those who use screen readers or for users who might have trouble getting online images to load. If you would like to delve into the concept of alternative text further, I recommend this site, one of many great resources on the internet on this subject. While writing alt-text is mostly a practice in factual description, it has me thinking about how to describe complex artwork or art that could be interpreted in many different ways. If you know anything about the kind of art we publish in Stone Soup, both in the magazine and on the blog, you may know that a lot of it can be left up to interpretation! For example, the art piece “Trace” by Ashley Jun, 13 (pictured above) from the November issue might be understood in a variety of ways. At first glance, there are two figures walking in the opposite direction from the photographer, seemingly on a beach. But when you take a closer look, you notice all the extra shapes around the figures. What do all of the edits in the photograph mean? While you don’t necessarily have to be concerned with meaning when writing alt-text, I suggest that for this exercise, you think about description more generally and feel free to incorporate deeper meaning if you’d like. How would you describe this photograph? Once you have a description down in words, I challenge you to think of two different ways that it could be described—in effect, two other ways to interpret it. Now that you have three different descriptions of this photograph, try to incorporate all three into one story. Perhaps the photograph is hanging on the wall at an art museum, and your three descriptions are the way three visitors to the museum understand the piece. Or maybe one person’s opinion evolves throughout the years on what the piece signifies. There are so many ways to make a story out of these three separate descriptions. This writing challenge is not unlike the concept of Ekphrasis, which both William and Conner have covered in their writing workshops. For extra inspiration, take a look at the summaries from their workshops plus the writing created by students during those classes! Until next week, Highlights from the past week online Don’t miss the latest content from our Book Reviewers and Young Bloggers at on our blog! Pragnya, 13, wrote a review of Anne Ursu’s stellar new novel The Troubled Girls Of Dragomir Academy. Mason Li wrote a tender poem, “Peace,” in honor of Veteran’s Day. Congratulations to the Book Contest 2021 winners & honorable mentions! We’re thrilled to announce the results of our 2021 Book Contest. It was a pleasure and an honor to read and consider all the manuscripts, and incredibly difficult to select our two winners. We are excited to share more about the books and the authors with you in the coming months! Winners Fiction Foxtale by Sarah Hunt, 14 Poetry Remember the Flowers by Enni Harlan, 14 Honorable Mention Days of Freedom, a novel by Sophene Avedissian, 13 Twenty Moons, poems by Maggie Berkson, 10 Adventures with the Robot of 1920, a novel by Srija Biswas, 13 A Lonely Lullaby, poems by Analise Braddock, 10 The Hotel Bellboy and Other Tales, stories by Steven Cavros, 10 The Legends of Atruviia, a novel by Ayesha Faruki, 13 Heart of Stars, a novel by Lillia Hamilton, 12 The Immortal Jellyfish, poems by Emma Hoff, 9 A Tale from Inside the Book, a novel by Jaslene Kwack, 14 Reunited, a novel by Olivia Lee, 10 Answering the Moon, a novel by Serena Lin, 10 This is the Song the World Needs Now And Other Poems, poems by Nova Macknik-Conde, 9, and Iago Macknik-Conde, 14 Book Zero, a novel by Leo Michelman, 11 Rainbow, a novel by Aanya Pandeya, 11 Serpent Throat and Other Stories, stories by Tayen Withrow, 11 The Poisonous Gift, a novel by Alice Xie, 13 Congratulations to our most recent Flash Contest winners! Our November Flash Contest was based on Creativity Prompt #176 (provided by Sage Millen, former Stone Soup intern), which asked participants to create a character that had everything they’d always wanted, yet still wasn’t happy. Again, we received a massive influx of submissions, all of them worthy of recognition. Interestingly, this prompt also gave rise to more poetry submissions—a welcome sight. The work we read ranged from complex dystopian narratives involving time travel to an existential search for ice cream to inspiring poetry surrounding the nature of perfection. In the end, we decided there was too much good work to limit our Honorable Mentions to just five writers, and so highlighted a sixth! As always, thank you to all who submitted, and please submit again next month! Congratulations to our Winners and Honorable Mentions, listed below. You can read the winning entries for this contest (and previous ones) at the Stone Soup website. Winners “Natalie’s Wish” by Josephine Alpert, 13 (Cambridge, MA) “Allison!” by Quinn Brenner, 11 (New York, NY) “Perfection by Sierra E., 11 (Mountain View, CA) “Gone” by Scarlet He, 10 (Scarsdale, NY) “Hole of Debt” by Emily Tang, 12 (Winterville, NC) Honorable Mentions “Realization” by Kimberly Hu, 9 (Lake Oswego, OR) “The Bird and a Boy” by Jeremy Lim, 9 (Portland, OR) “Dare to Dream” by Lui Lung, 12 (Danville, CA) “Pride” by Nova Macknik-Conde, 10 (Brooklyn, NY) “Boredom” by Liyue Sally Wang, 10 (Newton, MA) “A Month of Awakening” by Eliya Wee, 11 (Menlo Park, CA) From Stone Soup November 2021 How to Share an Apricot By Emma Catherine Hoff, 8 (Bronx, NY) I shared My apricot With a bird. It said, “Thank you.” I don’t know when the bird
Saturday Newsletter: November 6, 2021
Two Weavers | Madeline Cleveland, 11 (Belleville, WI) published in Stone Soup November 2021 A note from Laura Happy November! I would like to start by extending our congratulations, once again, to former Stone Soup contributor, author, and activist, Sabrina Guo, who will today be reading aloud her commended poem “65 Cybele” at the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26). This is an extraordinary accomplishment, and we could not be more proud of Sabrina! There is much to report on the Refugee Project. Most importantly, THANK YOU to all who donated to the September fundraising drive. Your generous donations have made it possible for us to continue this work and provide a platform for refugee youth to showcase their abundant creative talents and share their work with the world. Our first collaborative teaching engagement is set to launch with the support of Hands On Art Workshops. Through this collaboration, I will be delivering a writing workshop on Deep Observation to young refugees in Kakuma Camp, Kenya. I look forward to sharing the results of this workshop on the Refugee Project page of our website. To see the full collection of creative works contributed thus far, visit the website here. Now to the November issue. This week I’d like to draw your attention to Sophia Hammond’s personal narrative, “The Read Aloud.” Who among us has not experienced exclusion, humiliation, a soul crushing challenge such as that described in “The Read Aloud.” Sophia’s rich, evocative description brought me right back to a braided second-grade classroom rug and all the various obstacles and joys I encountered while sitting on it! What’s especially exciting about this story is how it captures the satisfaction of overcoming a challenge and meeting it head-on. “The Read Aloud” reminds us that sometimes our salvation comes in unexpected ways through accepting the help of a stranger, or even a classmate, who we’d not yet thought to consider a friend. This weekend, I challenge you to write about a challenge! Tell us about a time you’ve faced an obstacle and how you’ve worked to overcome it. Write about frustration! Write about fear and dread. Write about the freedom that comes with accepting when things don’t come easily, and in finding the help you need to face an obstacle. As always, if you’re happy with what you’ve written, I urge you to share your story and submit it to us via Submittable! Until next time, Highlights from the past week online Don’t miss the latest content from our Book Reviewers and Young Bloggers at on our blog! Savarna, 13, wrote a glowing review of James Ponti’s novel City Spies. Check out the latest Book Club Report, which centered around When Stars Are Scattered by Victoria Jamieson and Omar Mohamed. Super reviewer April, 13, reviewed Curse of the Night Witch, first novel in the Emblem Island Duology made famous by #BookTok. From Stone Soup November 2021 The Read Aloud By Sophia Hammond, 11 (New York, NY) There I was, sitting in my second-grade classroom in the School of the Blessed Sacrament. I was in the front of the room, crisscross applesauce on the yellow square of the rainbow rug—my favorite color. I was holding my Charlotte’s Web book. I heard one of my classmates read aloud. I was silently wishing I was the one reading. I looked around the room and saw my tiny gray desk with my pink pencil case on top. Yellow was rather close to the teacher, so I could smell my teacher’s lemon perfume. My teacher’s name was Mrs. Romeo. Mrs. Romeo had long brown hair and brown eyes. She was obsessed with her cat, Obby, and would talk about him every day. She had pearly white teeth and always had a big smile on her face, but she had favorites. I was not one of them, but she liked me. This was one of my worst years at Blessed Sacrament. It was not that I did not have any friends, or that I got bullied. It was because I felt excluded from our class read-aloud. In second grade, I was not a great reader. I struggled to read chapter books. When I was in kindergarten, I was the first one in my class to read 100 books. That was a big achievement for me. In kindergarten, I felt I was the best reader in my class. Why did it go downhill from there? I wondered. Click here to continue reading “The Read Aloud”… Stone Soup is published by Children’s Art Foundation-Stone Soup Inc., a 501(c)(3) educational nonprofit organization registered in the United States of America, EIN: 23-7317498. Stone Soup’s advisors: Abby Austin, Mike Axelrod, Annabelle Baird, Jem Burch, Evelyn Chen, Juliet Fraser, Zoe Hall, Montanna Harling, Alicia & Joe Havilland, Lara Katz, Rebecca Kilroy, Christine Leishman, Julie Minnis, Jessica Opolko, Tara Prakash, Denise Prata, Logan Roberts, Emily Tarco, Rebecca Ramos Velasquez, Susan Wilky.
