“Parachuting in City Lights” (watercolor) by Sloka Ganne, 10, (Overland Park, KS) and published in the June 2021 Issue of Stone Soup A note from Jane A new month, a new issue! And this stunning watercolor is our cover, wrapping around the whole print version of the magazine. One of the things I love about our wraparound covers is how they make me focus on very particular parts of an image, which often leads me to see them very differently from the way I see the whole artwork in one. In the case of Sloka Ganne’s gorgeous Parachuting in City Lights, the front cover consists of the more somber right-hand side of the image, with its dark mountain topped with a flashing mast. We can see only the fading part of the sunset’s glimmer, and a lone parachutist. There’s a slightly lonely feeling to it. But when we turn to the back cover, there is a burst of light, and we see that the parachutist is not alone after all: there are two companions, a flock of birds, and a bright blue glow in the sky above the sunset over the brightly lit city. To my mind, the story changes. There is so much happening in this image, and while it tells one big beautiful story all on its own, it can also tell several very different, specific ones if we focus on one section over another. Divide the image up in your mind into quarters or eights, and think about the possible stories behind these smaller sections of the image: focus on the cityscape, the flock of birds and the clouds, the dark landscape, the vibrant sky. How does each one compare to the feelings evoked by the possible narratives of the other parts? Do the stories you imagine fit together, or are they a series of different vignettes (miniature scenes)? How do they relate to the story you sense in the whole? Try writing a series of short stories based on your perceptions of Sloka’s painting and see what you discover! I also urge you to read Steven Cavros’s story “The Sewer People,” an imaginative tour de force in which the trash under the city has a whole complex, politically messy life of its own. It is part cautionary tale, part political satire, part fable—almost a (dark) fairy tale. Let it inspire you to bring alive a hidden, apparently inanimate world, and see where your imagination takes you. As always, if you are happy with what you write or the art you create inspired by any of these ideas, do share them with us.Until next week, Book Contest 2021 For information on submitting to the Stone Soup Book Contest 2021, please click here. To submit your manuscript, please visit our submittable site. Highlights from the past week online Don’t miss the latest content from our Book Reviewers and Young Bloggers at Stonesoup.com! Florence, 12, wrote a review of Katherine Paterson’s classic novel, Bridge to Terabithia. Sofie, 10, wrote a poem centered on the healing power of nature amidst the pandemic. Happiness Neema, 11, a participant of the Stone Soup Refugee Project, wrote a personal narrative about her transition from Kigoma, Tanzani, to Chicago, IL. Aditi,12, reviewed Cathy Hirano’s translation of Nahoko Uehashi’s fantasy novel The Beast Player. Writing classes and Book Club Are you looking for classes to inspire, improve, and practice your writing with great teachers and a group of like-minded young writers and readers? Join us! We do charge fees for our clubs and workshops, but we try to keep them as low as possible, and we offer discounts to subscribers and scholarships to students who need them. Contact us at education@stonesoup.com with any questions. Writing Workshop: we have two writing groups for spring/summer that meet via Zoom every Saturday (except for William’s class, which does not meet for the last Saturday of the month). Come write with us and share your work with your peers. Find out more and register for a workshop at Eventbrite. To see some of the great work produced by current workshop members, read contributions published at Stonesoup.com, or join us at one of our free public readings! Book Club: a book club for writers that meets via Zoom on the last Saturday of every month. Find out more and register for book club at Eventbrite. Check out which books we are reading on our website. Young Author’s Studio Summer Camps: we are offering a wide range of classes through the summer jointly with the Society of Young Inklings. Each camp runs for two hours per day, Monday through Thursday. All details and bookings via Society of Young Inklings. From Stone Soup June 2021 The Sewer People By Steven Cavros, 9 (Hollywood, FL) Now once, long ago, on June 12, 2027, a stray banana peel found its way into the sewers of Orlando, Florida. It travelled through the sewers for twenty minutes, and then it at last came to the very bottom of the sewers, to a deep puddle. Like all the junk there, it joined itself to a sea of junk, and nine minutes later, a little human-like creature with frail limbs stood where eighteen or so bits of junk had come together. All the sewer people came from junk, of course. Hundreds, thousands of the sewer people there were—made from all the junk in the sewers—and no junk ever left the sewers as a banana peel or bit of ripped paper. The sewer people had no government, no economy, no friends. All ignored them, didn’t care for a moment that they existed, ignored them terribly, TERRIBLY. They were forgotten and lost. All the troubles of the world began when an important sewer person, Dirt, proposed a government to his small ring of friends, Junk and Meaningless. But they could not create a government without the support of the 18,000 little frail-limbed sewer people they shared the sewers with. They called a meeting, but in vain, as it ended in chaos. Another meeting, then another, was held until many sewer people approved a government. But as that meeting closed, a new problem arose:
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Saturday Newsletter: May 29 2021
“Shoes” (pencil)From the “Everyday Objects” Workshop (2017), run by Hands On Art, at the Kakuma Refugee Camp in Kenya, and published in the May 2021 Issue of Stone Soup A note from Tayleigh An Update on Stone Soup’s Refugee Project We are so excited to announce that the Stone Soup Refugee Project Website is now up and running! The Stone Soup Refugee Project provides a space for children and young people displaced by war, social collapse, and climate change to publish their creative work to share amongst themselves and with the world. We would like to express our heartfelt gratitude to all of the contributing programs and young people who have entrusted us with their writing and artwork and to the generous donors who have made this project possible. To explore our entire collection of creative work by young people living as refugees, please visit the Stone Soup Refugee Project website. Quarterly Reading on June 6th Are you registered for our second Quarterly Reading of the year? At this virtual event, we’ll have contributors from the April, May, and June 2021 issues of Stone Soup read their work. And, if you’re a contributor to one of these issues and you’d like to participate, you can submit your piece or an excerpt from your piece that you’d like to read to this Submittable category. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact Sarah at sarah@stonesoup.com. A Little Bit About Me Since this is my first newsletter, allow me to introduce myself! My name is Tayleigh, and I handle the customer service side of Stone Soup. I also work as a personal assistant to Stone Soup Founder and Executive Director William Rubel. On my days off from the magazine, I work at a local garden store. I graduated from the University of California, Santa Cruz in December 2020 with a BA in history, with a special focus on Italian history. La mia passione è la storia italiana! Weekend Project Returning to the subject of our Refugee Project, I wanted to highlight the striking piece Shoes, which was composed during the “Everyday Objects” Workshop (2017), run by Hands On Art at the Kakuma Refugee Camp in Kenya. What a stark yet evocative work of art! Many ideas could be read into this image, but what I see is one crisp, white shoe, its form straight, juxtaposed against its own shadow—smaller, crooked, edges blurred. Two sides to the story. What appears on the surface as sharp and clear muddles itself through reproduction, as in a reflection or a shadow. The image asks whether we lose some of the sharpness of our forms, our luster, in our shadows and reflections. Julia Marcus’s poem, “A Window in the Evening,” sheds some light on these questions. The melancholic speaker of the poem lingers on an image in the window blurred by their own breath, through which they “draw [their] name in the vapor” and “wipe it all away.” I’d like to focus on their breath, the vehicle that drives the blurry reproduction of “every sharp detail of [their] body” reproduced in shadow. Thus, the clarity lost in the speaker’s shadow is their own fault, their breath functioning as a metaphor for doubt brought on by self reflection. This poem, like Shoes, asks whether we lose some of ourselves in shadows and reflections, and answers back with another question, itself a reflection—is it our innermost self, our breath, that causes the loss? This weekend, I want you to write about someone who functions as their own worst enemy by way of excessive self reflection. In essence, their own obsession with the question of “Who am I?” should be precisely what keeps them from finding out. As always, if you like what you’ve written, please send it to us at Stone Soup for consideration either in the magazine or on the blog. Till next time, Book Contest 2021 For information on submitting to the Stone Soup Book Contest 2021, please click here. To submit your manuscript, please visit our submittable site. Highlights from the past week online Don’t miss the latest content from our Book Reviewers and Young Bloggers at Stonesoup.com! Aditi, 12, wrote a review of Jennifer A. Nielsen’s “inspiring and motivating” 2019 novel Words on Fire. Young Blogger Janani Devendran posted the first installment in their mini comic, Web Wars. Nora, 13, wrote a review of Newbery award-winning author Lois Lowry’s (author of The Giver) 2011 historical fiction novel Like the Willow Tree. Idan, 11, wrote a personal narrative, “No Peconic in Pandemic,” about his experiences dealing with the fallout from COVID-19. Elias, 9, wrote a poem inspired by his experiences with the pandemic. Writing classes and Book Club Are you looking for classes to inspire, improve, and practice your writing with great teachers and a group of like-minded young writers and readers? Join us! We do charge fees for our clubs and workshops, but we try to keep them as low as possible, and we offer discounts to subscribers and scholarships to students who need them. Contact us at education@stonesoup.com with any questions. Writing Workshop: we have two writing groups for spring/summer that meet via Zoom every Saturday (except for William’s class, which does not meet for the last Saturday of the month). Come write with us and share your work with your peers. Find out more and register for a workshop at Eventbrite. To see some of the great work produced by current workshop members, read contributions published at Stonesoup.com, or join us at one of our free public readings! Book Club: a book club for writers that meets via Zoom on the last Saturday of every month. Find out more and register for book club at Eventbrite. Check out which books we are reading on our website. Young Author’s Studio Summer Camps: we are offering a wide range of classes through the summer jointly with the Society of Young Inklings. Each camp runs for two hours per day, Monday through Thursday. All details and bookings via Society of Young Inklings. From Stone Soup October 2020 A Window in the Evening By Julia Marcus, 13 (Culver City, CA) I press my face against the glass, blowing circles of air onto its cool surface. I step back, looking at the filmy, blurred image that faintly appears
Saturday Newsletter: March 22, 2021
A note from Sage Summer School News: Registration is open! And, the age ranges for Emma’s (poetry, memoir, and story writing), Conner’s (playwriting) and Jane’s (creative food writing) classes have all been lowered from 11–14 to 9–14. You can register for these classes and more here. Hello, readers of Stone Soup! I’m Sage, a current Stone Soup intern, and I am writing today to remind you that Stone Soup publishes original musical compositions on its blog, and to encourage you—whether or not you have experience composing—to consider trying to make and record your own song. When I was nine, I decided to write a group of songs as a present for my cousin’s birthday. I had composed little pieces here and there before, but this was probably the first time I had actually set out to create my own music. It was an amazing experience! I assembled a group of family and friends: my brother, his violin teacher, and my mom’s cousin. They played various instruments while I played the piano and sang. I loved being able to “conduct”—directing everyone when and what to play. Even though composing music can seem intimidating, I encourage all of you to try! And if it’s possible, I would highly recommend collaborating with other people when you compose music. It’s so much fun, and there are so many more options and possibilities for your songs. A few things to keep in mind as you sit down to compose: Songs don’t have to have lyrics to convey messages or tell stories. In fact, sometimes purely instrumental songs give a sense of emotion better than words ever could. The theme music in movies is often wordless, and yet it can evoke fear, glory, sadness, and many other feelings. For instance, the theme song to the movie Jaws totally makes listeners on edge and fearful. The music sets the scene for a villain to appear and pounce on the protagonist—a kind of foreshadowing without any writing involved! When you’re composing music, try to think about the goal of your song. What do you want your listeners to take away from it? Do you want to write an eye-opening song or just a fun, danceable tune? Of course, sometimes you just want to mess around with notes and melodies—and that’s perfectly fine too, especially if you’re new to this! But if you’re really trying to impact somebody with your song, keep your ultimate goal in the back of your mind. If you want to compose a piece but don’t know where to begin, something I find really helpful is a theme. For example, when I was writing the songs for my cousin, I had to write them about topics she would find interesting, such as herself and our family. Her birthday also served as a deadline to keep me motivated. Finally, COVID-19 has limited us in many ways, but it has also made us more aware of ways to virtually connect. This is a great time to compose music with a friend who lives somewhere distant! If you’re a writer, team up with somebody who plays an instrument—you could write lyrics, and they could write the melody! Again, collaborating on compositions is such a fun way to socialize. There are so many different types and styles of music; I truly believe there is something for everyone. Hopefully, you feel inspired to start or continue creating your own music and share it with the world. And remember, if you like what you create, we encourage you to submit your work to the Stone Soup Blog. Have fun composing! Book Contest 2021 For information on submitting to the Stone Soup Book Contest 2021, please click here. To submit your manuscript, please visit our submittable site. Highlights from the past week online Don’t miss the latest content from our Book Reviewers and Young Bloggers at Stonesoup.com! Young Blogger Leah Musak wrote a stunning poem, “Broken America Must Rise.” Young Blogger Madeline Cleveland reviewed Ivan Doig’s 2006 historical fiction novel, The Whistling Season. Young Blogger Dylan Scrivener wrote a beautiful story composed mostly of dialogue, “Tig and Lomster.” Aditi, 12, wrote a poem about hope for a new beginning. Tarin, 13, drew a beautiful depiction of COVID’s impact.Writing classes and Book Club Writing classes and Book Club Are you looking for classes to inspire, improve, and practice your writing with great teachers and a group of like-minded young writers and readers? Join us! We do charge fees for our clubs and workshops, but we try to keep them as low as possible, and we offer discounts to subscribers and scholarships to students who need them. Contact us at education@stonesoup.com with any questions. Writing Workshop: we have two writing groups for spring/summer that meet via Zoom every Saturday except for William’s class that does not meet for the last Saturday of the month. Come write with us and share your work with your peers. Find out more and register for a workshop at Eventbrite. To see some of the great work produced by current workshop members, read contributions published at Stonesoup.com, or join us at one of our free public readings! Book Club: a book club for writers that meets via Zoom on the last Saturday of every month. Find out more and register for book club at Eventbrite. Check out which books we are reading on our website. Young Author’s Studio Summer Camps: we are offering a wide range of classes through the summer jointly with the Society of Young Inklings. Each camp runs for two hours per day, Monday through Thursday. All details and bookings via Society of Young Inklings. From Stone Soup November 2020 The Mental Mind Music By Eli Nimchonok, 6 (Toronto, Ontario, Canada) The mind is birthed in the day but in the night it is silent Every day the mind has a memory and removes the math When the mind music comes you hum. Read work from our current issue. 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.
