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“Flower” by Grace Williams, 13 Published in the December 2020 issue of Stone Soup A note from William Well! December is truly underway. And an odd December it certainly is! The previous two years I spent Christmas and New Year’s in Egypt. This year, my daughter and I are devoting ourselves to house, garden, and being creative. As it does seem that life will be back to at least near normal next year, this is an opportunity to use the enforced quiet to create something special that you would not normally feel you have the time to do. At the beginning of the pandemic last March, we noted that Isaac Newton (1643–1727) did some of his best work in a year that he was hiding from a pandemic. Lets all of us take this holiday in lockdown as an opportunity to be creative. You are invited to a reading! A week from today, December 18, you are all invited to our first Stone Soup reading. This first event is by students in the Saturday writing workshop. Please register for the reading through EventBrite. It starts at 9 a.m. PST. Good news from China! Longtime newsletter readers may remember what we had told you that the Stone Soup anthologies would be published in China in the spring of 2020. That did not happen. We have just heard from our publisher that everything is now back on track. The books will be published in the first half of 2021. This is super super good news. Our Chinese publisher is a trend setter. We anticipate many good things will come from the association. Holiday orders: I encourage you to keep Stone Soup in mind for holiday gifts. Subscriptions, of course, both print and digital. The Stone Soup anthologies make good gifts to any young person you know who likes to read. And, the Stone Soup Annual—so large this year we recommend the digital edition as being most practical—is the gift of gifts for all avid Stone Soup readers. Order Stone Soup subscriptions here and order books at our Stone Soup Store. This weekend’s project: I’d like you to look to the evocative pairing of a photograph of buds with water droplets (dew, heavy mist, rain), and a poem about dew from the current issue of Stone Soup, as inspiration for pairing a photograph and text. Grace Williams’s deeply colored photograph definitely reminds me of early morning walks when I used to take my daughter to day care. In the spring, foliage was often laden with dew drops glistening in the morning sun. For publication in Stone Soup, Editor Emma Wood paired this photograph with Esther Hay’s poetic portrait of a walk on a dewy morning. What I’d like you to do is to take a photograph to pair with something you write. I’d like your photograph to capture something evanescent—something that is present but fleeting, like dew, or steam on a bathroom mirror, or steam rising from a pot on a stove, or a wisp of smoke from a fire. Write something short—it can be very short—a short poem or a paragraph-length piece of prose—that ties into the photograph. It could be a description. But no people, no action. It could be a reverie—a thought or dream triggered by the image. Grace’s photograph has strong colors. Let the photograph you take inspire you to choose visual language in your piece. As always, if you are happy with what you create, please submit it to Stone Soup so Emma can consider it for publication. Until next week, Highlights from the past week online Don’t miss the latest content from our Book Reviewers and Young Bloggers at Stonesoup.com! Read an update from our latest book club meeting, where author Kelly Barnhill joined us to talk about The Girl Who Drank the Moon! We published an illustration by Paris, 7, that he created in response to our Creativity Prompt #119: Draw a Bicycle—From Memory. Some more great art: Aaron, a new blogger, created some wonderful digital art pieces that we published on the blog. Check them out! News from the Stone Soup Open House and Annual Drive Have you booked your free place at our Writing Workshop’s public reading next weekend? On Saturday December 19, the last session of 2020 for this year’s phenomenally talented Stone Soup Writing Workshop, we are going public: you are all invited to join us on Zoom and hear readings from our young writers of work they have produced during this year’s classes. Don’t miss this chance to hear these creative voices of the future–live and (almost) in person!It’s free, but you do need to book a place – just visit Eventbrite for full details and to sign up here.   From Stone Soup December 2020 The Dew Drop   By Esther Hay, 8 (Ancaster, Canada) Illustrated by Grace Williams, 13 (Katonah, NY) I wake up, I walk out the door. The dew smells like flowers. As I walk, I feel the morning mist brush against my tired face. I see the daisies so bright and blue. As I touch them the dew falls off and onto my foot, chilling me to the bone. As I walk through the forest the dew falls off the trees and keeps me cold. As I walk home the trees shake in the breeze, all the dew falls onto my face. Now I am as cold as winter, as cold as a polar bear.   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.

Cracks and Fissures by Sage Millen, 12 (Vancouver, Canada) Published in Stone Soup December 2020 A note from Jane It’s always a good week when a new issue of Stone Soup comes out, and there is so much great work in the December issue—all 48 pages of it! One of the things I love about the story we are featuring from the December issue this week is its title, “The Serenity of the Simple Inquiry.” It perfectly describes the perspective of the questioner, Miss Lavender. But for the main character, the whole experience is the opposite. The inquiry is far from simple, and she does not feel serene. It is an unanswerable question that makes her feel annoyed and unsettled every time she thinks about it. She doesn’t want to think about it. She even avoids the teacher who asked it. But she can’t help wondering about it. I remember lots of times in my life when I didn’t know—or didn’t want to say—the answer to a question like, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” For some of us, or at certain times, those kinds of simple-on-the-surface but deeply penetrating questions can be really hard to deal with, while the person asking the question doesn’t realize or doesn’t understand why it is so hard for us to answer. Ella’s character says, as she struggles again to find an answer, “I felt like a vacuum cleaner had just sucked up my long-lost teddy bear or something. I was devastated.” That’s a great line, and it makes me laugh, but it also takes me straight to that truly awful feeling of being put on the spot and not knowing what on earth to say. It’s a sign of great writing if you can generate two such conflicting emotions at the same time. Sage Millen’s beautiful photograph makes a lovely partner for this story. The colors and the scene are serene but evoke those same opposing moods. It’s beautiful, and we can see clearly what it is: a landscape from the air. But the more deeply we delve into the image, the more complex it becomes. What are those fields, those straight lines? Are those rivers or dry canyons, and do they link with one another? Is the light and color from sunlight with clouds throwing shadows on the ground, or is night falling? Is it warm or cold? For this weekend’s activity, think about some of the “simple” but difficult questions you have been asked in your life. Have you ever been stuck for an answer, or felt worried that you couldn’t answer? Perhaps you have given one answer and later on changed your mind. Try using that experience as inspiration for a story, or write a personal narrative about it. And as always, send us any writing you are pleased with. We always love to read what you write. Join us on Zoom for the Writing Workshop end-of-year reading! Saturday, December 19, at 9 a.m. PST For our last session of the year, the Stone Soup Writing Workshop is holding a public reading via Zoom. Members of the workshop will be reading some of their favorite writing from the workshops, live. Friends, family members, teachers, and Stone Soup fans are welcome. You shouldn’t miss this event if you can make it—come and hear the amazing work these young authors have been doing in 2020, in their own voices! Book in via Eventbrite to get all the details. It’s free, though donations are always welcome. Until next week, Highlights from the past week online Don’t miss the latest content from our Book Reviewers and Young Bloggers at Stonesoup.com! Fatehbir, 9, wrote a quiet but powerful poem called “I Express Myself.” How do you express yourself? We published a tutorial from Florence on “How to Draw Anime Art.” Nora, 12, reviewed The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien, considered by many to be a classic. Find out why she thinks it’s a book for all ages. “Talk” by Dylan, 5, is a poem that conveys so many different emotions in its few lines. “Although I can’t put out a forest fire, or completely get rid of pollution, or stop ice caps from melting, I can do little things with lots of love,” Elise writes in her story “Pecky’s Bravery Saves the Forest.” Akhil, 11, was pleasantly surprised by Victoria Jamieson’s graphic novel Roller Girl. Read why Akhil enjoyed it in his review. News from the Stone Soup Open House and Annual Drive Open House On Giving Tuesday, December 1, we held our first-ever Stone Soup Open House via Zoom. What a great event and a wonderful group of people! We were joined by Stone Soup authors and artists, their parents, some former contributors, members of our board, and Editor Emerita Gerry Mandel. The Stone Soup team gave updates on all the projects and community building we have been doing this year, and we heard from students and adults about their experiences through the year and their feelings about Stone Soup. It was a warm, friendly, and for us quite overwhelming experience. Thank you so much to everyone who came and made it such a special evening. We will definitely do it again, and look forward to welcoming even more of you next time. Annual Drive One of the purposes of Tuesday’s event was fundraising. We have already received many incredibly generous donations, and one parent has offered a $10,000 50% match. We are heading toward that target: we have received nearly $10,000 so far, which wins us $5,000 of that match. Every single dollar makes a difference to us, and no amount is too small. Just click the “Become a Stone Soup Patron” button below or the “Donate” button at Stonesoup.com. Canon PowerShot SX600 From Stone Soup December 2020 The Serenity of the Simple Inquiry By Ella Yamamura, 11 (Cary, NC) Illustrated by Sage Millen, 12 (Vancouver, Canada) We sat in a circle, everybody facing my second-grade teacher, Ms. Lavender. She handed everyone a slip of paper. “Now everybody,” Ms. Lavender began, “I would like for you to answer the questions that I’ll ask you—you may say them aloud if

A note from William Thanksgiving best from everyone at Stone Soup! It is a calm Thanksgiving this year, but to be honest, I am enjoying the weekend with my daughter and my garden. Open House! You are all invited to our first-ever Stone Soup open house on Tuesday, December 1, at 4 p.m. Pacific / 7 p.m. Eastern. For the first time, the whole Stone Soup community—adults and kids—comes together Tuesday for our open house. It’s a free event, but you do need to register through EventBrite. Please register. The whole Stone Soup team is looking forward to meeting you!This first open house is about you meeting us and also you meeting each other. It is the first of more community-wide events that we have planned into 2021. But more on that at the meeting. All of us at Stone Soup will be at the meeting, along with our board of directors. We will introduce ourselves, and those of us who work on Stone Soup will briefly talk about our accomplishments in 2020 and our plans for 2021. We will keep our remarks short as we want there to be plenty of time for the adults and kids attending get to know each other. Bring questions to ask. If Stone Soup has meant a lot to you, then you may want to be prepared to talk about you and Stone Soup. This open house is taking place in the context of Giving Tuesday. One parent has just joined us as a Stone Soup patron and given us a $10,000 50% match. So, one purpose of the meeting is to answer questions about giving to Stone Soup, to help us bring in new patrons to achieve this match—and our larger fundraising goal for the year. The best way to prepare for the open house is to watch the interview between Anya Geist and Lena Aloise that is posted at the top of this newsletter. Anya is a former Stone Soup author and artist, as well as a brilliant photographer—and now that she is in high school, a Stone Soup intern. Meanwhile, Lena is one of Stone Soup’s current stars. She is an Honor Roll winner, Flash Contest winner, and a creative force at the Saturday Writing Workshop. Anya and Lena are both good examples of what Stone Soup is about: introducing young people to the best of their peers, standing back, and watching them bloom. William’s Weekend Writing Project Take inspiration from Lena’s piece for a recent writing workshop on nature writing, “The Plum Tree,” for Thanksgiving weekend’s writing project. You can read it below. Lena’s prose is exquisite. The paragraph that starts with “There was a plum tree up on the hill, surveying her lower domain with a watchful, protective eye . . .” includes prose that is so beautiful it gives me goose bumps. Two of the most remarkable aspects of Lena’s story are how she so quickly establishes a caring relationship between the two characters, and between us and the tree. Note how effectively Lena uses personification—the literary device whereby you give nonhuman creatures, in this case a tree, some human ways of being. When Lena speaks of the tree’s “boughs reaching towards . . .” she animates the tree. She gives it life. Gives it a sense of purpose. Also, I think because we can imagine ourselves making the same gesture as the tree—reaching—Lena draws us into imagining we are one with this very alien being. Another example: Lena writes, “The tree sat there, calmly, waiting for the worst.” Effortlessly, we are drawn into the story’s imaginative space. We are standing there with this thinking, feeling tree, waiting “for the worst.” For your nature writing this weekend, I’d like you to spend some time quietly observing a piece of nature. Which, given the circumstances, can be observing a pet. Let your imagination do its work so that the characters in your story, whether a dog, or a tree, or wind, take on the warmth of life. And as always, if you are happy with your work, consider sending it to Emma, our editor, to consider. Until next week—on Tuesday, we hope, as well as next Saturday in the newsletter! Highlights from the past week online Don’t miss the latest content from our Book Reviewers and Young Bloggers at Stonesoup.com! Jane, 12, wrote a poem about the way COVID has stolen the sense of normalcy. We published a travelogue documenting Mahati’s pre-pandemic trip to Whittier, Alaska. Learn more about the unique community by reading Mahati’s post. Nora, 12, reviewed The Land of Stories by Chris Colfer. Find out why Nora enjoys the fairy-tale-with-a-twist book series so much. “How cool would it be to live inside a book?” Pragnya asks at the start of her review for Kind of a Big Deal by Shannon Hale. Read what Pragnya thinks of the book where the main character finds herself lost within the books she reads. Becca traces her experiences of Yom Kippur throughout her life, ending with this year’s very unusual celebration. Read Becca’s post to learn what her take-away is. Lena Aloise, 11Harvard, MA From the Stone Soup blog November 2020 The Plum Tree By Lena Aloise, 11 (Harvard, MA)   He was happiest early in the daytime, when the sky was painted over crimson and violet, when the crisp breeze flushed his cheeks a rosy red, when the birds sang their soft melody, whimsically conversing. Nowadays, there was nothing that brought him more pleasure than such a beautiful silence and he was content to be alone, for the most part. Human company depressed him. There was a plum tree up on the hill, surveying her lower domain with a watchful, protective eye. She sat on her throne of grasses, boughs reaching towards an infinite expanse of sky, bearing leaves of olive green and sagging under the weight of her indigo fruits. She bore the look of not a queen, but a mother, like the ones he had only read about in story books. He could not help feeling a twinge of jealousy, looking upon the spherical children that she loved so dearly. Why could not someone hold him with such tenderness? It brought him