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A note from William Website redesign: It has been a long time coming! For some reason, web design work seems to take forever plus a day. Our new homepage design just went up! Please visit. The site is now much better at showcasing the writing and art in the magazine and on the blogs. The second and third phases of the redesign are in process. An improved system of navigation and more beautiful interior pages comes next, followed by a portal for the Refugee Project. Our Saturday Writing Workshop and Book Club for Writers is open for registration. This session, Saturdays at 9 a.m. Pacific, runs through December 16. You can sign up for one or more classes through EventBrite.   Weekend creativity project: Next week, at the Saturday Writing Workshop, I will be talking about personification. Personification is when you attribute human qualities to inanimate objects. A good example of personification is the recent blog post “Life of a Pencil” by Amruta Krishnan Srinivasan, 9. Imagining you are a pencil, or an eraser, is a common school writing prompt. Amruta’s story goes far beyond anything I have seen anyone do with this idea. Amruta actually makes me care about this pencil! I am going to be following my class on personification with a class on nature writing using personification techniques. So, for this weekend, I would like you sit down with—or at least near—something that means a lot to you. Something to which you have a strong emotional attachment. This could be a stuffed animal, or a tree whose branches you may see projected in shadow against your window. Or something else entirely. Let the spirit of whatever it is that you choose to write about enter your imagination. As always, if you like what you write, then submit it to Stone Soup so editor Emma Wood can read it. Lastly, I know that Jane wrote to you about Three Days till EOC a couple weeks ago, the novel by Abhi Sukhdial, winner of our 2019 Stone Soup Long Form Book Contest. And, I know she gave you the link to Anya Geist’s interview with Abhi. Anya and Abhi are both Stone Soup stars. As an author, all I can say is: support authors, support Abhi! So, if you haven’t already, buy his book! And, if you haven’t seen the interview, please click on the video below. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-susnKavHLY&feature=youtu.be&utm_source=Stone+Soup+Master+List&utm_campaign=66c62ffb19-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2020_09_24_07_00&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_b184558ef7-66c62ffb19-&mc_cid=66c62ffb19&mc_eid=[UNIQID] Until next week, Stay Tuned for Next Month’s Flash Contest Every month we hold a flash contest based on one of our weekly creativity prompts. Take a look at this month’s prompt and the winner here. And keep an eye out for next month’s contest! 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 about our Book Club meeting, which was our twentieth (!) meeting. We discussed The War I Finally Won, by Kimberly Brubaker Bradley. Shravya, 11, wrote a poem about her life in quarantine, with lots of sensory details about baking, writing a book, and more. Julia, 13, reviewed Enna Burning by Shannon Hale. Julia explains why she was so captivated by the main character and enjoyed the writing style. Amruta, 9, writes about “The Life of a Pencil” now that she has lately been neglecting it in favor of her laptop. Pragnya, 12, reviewed The Lost Girl by Anne Ursu, which is about twin sisters. Pragnya starts the review with this compelling line: “The Lost Girl is the kind of book you’d want to write but thought you wouldn’t do well enough.” Colored pencil From Stone Soup October 2020 My Life as a Tree By Aiden Chen, 11 (Edmonton, Canada) Illustration by Cecilia Yang, 12 (San Jose, CA) I flew through the brisk, cool air of the morning as a tiny seed, wondering where I would land. With a dull thud that echoed in my ears, I crashed onto the soft, crumbly dirt. The dirt was cool and soothing, and I fell asleep with nothing to do. After a year, I could finally get a clear view of where I had been lodged. Beside me, there was a peaceful lake with muddy brown water. All around me, there was a crowd of towering trees. Even the shrubs were taller than me. I looked around and saw the roots and stems of shrubs. Looking up, I saw their leaves. I looked higher and saw tree trunks. Looking even higher, layers of tree branches and leaves were present, with sunlight occasionally filtering through. Sometimes, small animals from the lake would scamper over the leaf litter on the forest floor. Everything was peaceful, and no bad events happened to me until five years later. . . . /MORE 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.

“Rainbow Lake” by Sage Millen, 12 (Vancouver, Canada). Published in Stone Soup September 2020. A note from Sarah I want to start off this newsletter by highlighting Sage Millen’s breathtaking photograph from this month’s issue. I encourage you to spend some time taking in the mesmerizing, almost otherworldly landscape that Sage has captured. Then I also want to remind you that if you’re interested in helping out with our new Publicity and Outreach Community, we’d love to have you! You can fill out the Google Form here to let us know your contact information and how you can help. I’ve been working the past few months on developing the Stone Soup podcast, which is very exciting. Hopefully it will be released soon for everyone to hear! This work has meant that I’ve had the pleasure of revisiting a lot of the stories and poetry read aloud on our Soundcloud account. Reading aloud is not as easy as it may seem. It’s a skill that requires a lot of practice. For your weekend project, I suggest that you take a piece of writing—maybe something you’ve written or a piece that you really enjoy—and read it aloud a few times. Try not to rush yourself. Read it deliberately and carefully, keeping in mind a listener who may be hearing it for the first time. Think also about what kind of inflections suit the story or poem. If there’s dialogue, do you give each character a different voice? A different accent? Or do you want to maintain the same tone throughout the story? These are things you can consider when reading a story aloud, and it changes the way we understand and interpret a piece. Listening to audiobooks might give you a better idea of different ways that reading aloud can be done. Make a note of which elements of audiobooks you like, and think about how you could incorporate them into your own reading-aloud technique. You can record yourself reading—or not, if you don’t yet feel comfortable. If you’re feeling ambitious, maybe you can organize a Zoom reading between your friends, family, or classmates. Let us know how it goes! Until next week, Stay Tuned for Next Month’s Flash Contest Every month we hold a flash contest based on one of our weekly creativity prompts. Take a look at this month’s prompt and the winner here. And keep an eye out for next month’s contest! Highlights from the past week online Don’t miss the latest content from our Book Reviewers and Young Bloggers at Stonesoup.com! In a diary-style post, Prisha describes her experience marching in a Black Lives Matter protest. She talks about what it was like and what she learned in “Spread Love Not Hate.” Olivia, 10, reviewed the book King of Shadows by Susan Cooper. Read Olivia’s review to find out what she thought of the book and why she says it was about so much more than acting. Read an update from the writing workshop from last Saturday, where we learned about dragonfly narratives from two guest facilitators. Leila Lakhal, 12Seattle, WA From Stone Soup September 2020 Our Blanket By Leila Lakhal, 12 (Seattle, WA) Everyone has their own opinion. But it is not okay To say to me that I am wrong. That I am bad. That I have no place here. Because I just said that I am Muslim. We are not terrorists. Not the Awful people the media depicts us as. Every group has people who don’t follow the rules. The Islam I know teaches me: Don’t harm a hair on their head. No matter who they are. No matter what they say. But it is not okay to tell me that I have to say sorry. Sorry, sorry, sorry. Saying sorry for all those rule breakers that gave you a false image. Tear that image away. Underneath you will see something beautiful. . . . /MORE 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.

“A Man’s Friend” by Hanna Gustafson, 13 (South Burlington, VT)Published in Stone Soup September 2020 A note from William First of all, thanks to all of you who signed up for the Saturday Writing Workshop and Book Club. The shift from a free class on Fridays to a paid class on Saturdays went without a hitch. Last week, the first Saturday class, had 42 students! In terms of geography, they ranged from Saudi Arabia to the West Coast. It really is the miracle of Zoom. This Saturday, 9am Pacific, the class was taught by guest teachers, Denise Donnio and Jennifer Rinterknecht. Their workshop, “Dragonfly Narratives,” was fabulous. They were Zooming from Strasbourg, France, where they teach. You can still sign up for the workshops at EventBrite. Registration is week-by-week from now through December 16, which will be a performance reading via Zoom for all of you. The last week of each month is the Book Club for Writers session, so that is what you could join next week. We need your help! Please consider joining our new Outreach and Marketing Committee. This is a call for adults, but if you are a student, and think that you have some  ideas and skills that could help us bring Stone Soup to more people, then you are free to attend the organizational meeting, as well. Addressing our adult Newsletter readers more directly, if you have the skills and the time, please join the organizing meeting. The first meeting is Saturday, October 2, at 11 am Pacific. It is a Zoom meeting. You will receive the link when you express interest in coming. We need a ton of help! Stone Soup has always been strong on good programs, and weak on marketing. Please fill out this questionnaire. Thank you! We need help with marketing and promotion to a wide range of audiences, and through a wide range of media. Obviously, we will need to focus. What we focus on will, in part, depend on the skills you bring.  In addition to help with marketing ideas, and with the nitty-gritty of carrying some of them out, we also need help managing this committee. So, if you don’t have marketing skills and are a brilliant organizer and people person, and have the time, then please come to the meeting on October 2. Please visit our website to look at the new blog posts that are linked, below, and to explore. Blog authors always appreciate comments, so if you like what you read, please take the time to let the author know. We give everyone a few free views per month, and unlimited viewing if you take out a digital or print subscription, starting at $4.99. It does take money to run Stone Soup, so all subscriptions are appreciated. Thank you. For this Saturday’s project I’d like to refer you to the 117 writing prompts that are posted on our website. There are so many fabulous prompts written by Stone Soup staff and by Stone Soup writers that I am sure that you will find something to inspire you this weekend. As always, if you are super happy with what you do, please submit it to Stone Soup so editor Emma Wood can consider it for the magazine. Until next week, Monthly Flash Contest Deadline tomorrow, Sunday September 13 Congratulations to this month’s Flash Contest winners! Flash Contest #23: Create a piece of flash fiction written from the perspective of the first object you saw when you woke up this morning. Your narrative should be no longer than 250 words. For our first monthly version of our regular Flash Contest we decided to request a piece of flash fiction from an unusual perspective: that of a random object. Given that we asked for the perspective of the first thing the writer saw when they woke up in the morning, we gained a lot of insight into the inner lives of lamps, pets, curtains, toys, clothing, bedding, books and magazines, desk items like pens and pencils, and many other stalwarts of the bedroom. It was so much fun to read the various lively and perceptive voices you gave to these inanimate (or non-human) objects. Many of them seem to take a very dim view of the humans they have their silent eyes on most of the day (or night), especially all the things they witness that they would rather not see . . . Congratulations to our Winners and Honorable Mentions, listed below. You can read the winning entries for this week (and previous weeks) at the Stone Soup website. Winners “The Silent Stalker” by Chloe Chan, 12, Bellevue, WA “Worst Fear” by Scarlet He, 9, Scarsdale, NY “Travails and Humiliations of a Cotton Shirt” by Iago Macknik-Conde, 13, Brooklyn, NY “Wanted” by Daniel Wei, 13, Weddington, NC “Woes of a Blanket” by Lacole Yang, 13, Irvine CA Honorable Mention “Story of the Bed” by Vaishali Andukuri, 10, Oakland, NJ “Day of a Pencil Box” by Judah Davidoff, 9, Brunswick, MD “The Proud Life of a Blanket” by Lucy Kershen, 13, Norman, OK “The Life of a Lamp” by Chloe Mancini, 9, Glenside, PA “New and Improved” by Sanvi Patel, 11, Midland, MI “Morning from the Eyes of a Doll” by Joycelyn Zhang, 10, Oakland, CA Remember: the next monthly flash contest will be based on the first weekly prompt of October! Highlights from the past week online Don’t miss the latest content from our Book Reviewers and Young Bloggers at Stonesoup.com! We published a pandemic-themed poem from Luca, 12, called “The Invasion.” Simran, 9, wrote a powerful poem about Black Lives Matter called “Why are we so silent?” Does your room represent you? Julia Marcus, 11, writes a poem about her room and how it is “embedded with her personality.” “The Tyrant Virus” by Benjamin, 11, is a hopeful poem about the pandemic. Read about last Saturday’s writing workshop here and join us next time! Here’s a link to our Eventbrite page. Check out Pragnya’s review of Gordon Korman’s book The Unteachables, which she says is full of “twists and