About

“Among the Asparagus” by Ula Pomian, 13 (Ontario, Canada) Published in the July/August 2017 issue of Stone Soup A note from Jane This year’s double summer issue is a special poetry issue, composed of the two wonderful poetry collections by our 2019 book contest second-placed authors, Analise Braddock (The Golden Elephant) and Tatiana Rebecca Shrayer (Searching for Bow and Arrows). Last summer, our special issue was a collection of reviews: book reviews, poetry reviews, and a movie review. In that issue, there were two reviews of the same book, A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett, which is a book I too loved from the first time I read it when I was a girl. You might not expect to read two reviews of the same thing in Stone Soup, but it’s actually incredibly interesting to see two different reviewers’ thoughts side by side. Both loved the book, and both wrote beautifully-crafted reviews of it—each in their own way. Ava Horton’s review is personal. We meet her as her younger self reading the book for the first time, and she gives us insights into the book by powerfully communicating the impact it had on her. Vandana Ravi’s review opens with two dramatic questions that get to the heart of the book and its messages, then moves on to highlight elegantly the interweaving of the book’s themes. Both of these reviews are below—and I‘m sure they will make you want to read the book for yourself, if you haven’t already! Reading these reviews and thinking about my own love of the book made me wish I had written something about it when I first read it. I can (and will!) re-read it now, but I’d love to know what my younger self thought of it at the time. We all read so many books, watch so many movies and TV series, see so many works of art. So, this weekend, why not start a new review journal: every time you read a book, watch a TV series or a movie or a theater performance, see an exhibit or a work of art, write a short review of it (and the date) in that journal. You’ll be building up a valuable collection of your experiences of other people’s creative work and your responses to it. Start today with a review of the most recent thing you’ve read or sen, and then write a review every time you have an experience with a piece of creative work—whether you liked or enjoyed it or not. It might be just a few lines, or it might be a whole page of ideas it gave you. It’s your journal: you decide! This is your chance to reflect and think about why you feel as you do about works of art, and as your journal builds, you will see how your feelings change over time, and start to make connections among the different creative works you experience. And, you’ll have the future fun of seeing what you thought of something the first time you experienced it! I want to close today, as William did last week, by sending you all to the Stone Soup website, Stonesoup.com. Follow the links to the fabulous work that has been posted this week. If you are not a subscriber, please, please subscribe—and tell your friends and colleagues to do so as well. Subscription dollars are what make our work possible. The work our print magazine features is magnificent—worth re-reading—and the magazine itself is a pleasure to hold in your hands. Until next week, Winners from Weekly Flash Contest #17 Weekly Flash Contest #17: Write about a character waiting for something, but don’t reveal what they’re waiting for until the end. The week commencing July 20 (Daily Creativity prompt #86) was our seventeenth week of flash contests, with all the prompts for the week set by former contributor Anna Rowell. Thanks, Anna, for setting some great challenges and helping us judge our massive pile of entries! Congratulations to our winners and honorable mentions, listed below. You can read the winning entries for this week (and previous weeks) on the Flash Contest Winners’ Roll page at the Stone Soup website. Winners “From the Other Side of the Road” by Amruta Krishnan Srinivasan, 9 “Waiting for a Comet” by Madeline Sornson, 13 “Stalling” by Sophia Do, 12 “Wait for It…” by Ian Xie, 12 “Rain” by Kyler Min, 9 Honorable Mentions “Something Worth Waiting For” by Mila Zhao, 6 “The Waiting Game” by Elsa N. Ahern, 10 “The Woman” by April Yu, 12 “The Waiting Hill” by Liam Hancock, 12 “Cats of War and Peace” by Sneha Jiju, 12 Also, look out on our COVID-19 blog next week for “The Goal” by Ziva Ye, 9, which both responds to the contest prompt and tells a great story related to the current pandemic–from a very unexpected perspective! Highlights from the past week online Don’t miss the latest content from our Book Reviewers and Young Bloggers at Stonesoup.com! Eleanor’s poem “Anxiety” conveys the uneasy feeling of living during the pandemic, though she ends on a positive note. Read the update from last week’s Writing Workshop, which was led by Anya. Participants were encouraged to think about music in their writing. Aviva, 9, writes about this year’s unusual preparations for back-to-school in “Six Feet Away From Our Teacher, Six Thousand Away From Normal.” In “Fighter,” Olivia, 10, composes a poem that tells of the fight waged by healthcare workers against coronavirus. If you were a fruit or vegetable, what do you think you would be? Trevor, 11, thinks he would be a cucumber. Read his blog post to learn why, and leave a comment! In “The End of the World,” Lucas wrestles with a difficult topic that you may be thinking about more often lately. From the July/August 2019 issue of Stone Soup A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett Two Reviews     Ava Horton, 13 Review by Ava Horton, 13 (Gresham, OR) I consider myself privileged. I have a wonderful family, live in a big house in the suburbs, and I go

“Peering Out” by Delaney Slote, 12 Published in the July/August 2018 issue A note from William Call for Bloggers Are there ongoing protests in your city related to the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement? How about public art? We’re asking for blog submissions related to BLM in your town. You can submit art, writing, music, or whatever you’re inspired to create. We’re also looking for readers who live in Portland, OR to write about what is going on there. If you have anything you’d like to say about the situation, please submit it to our blog category. To our readers in Portland—please stay safe. Book Contest Warning! Warning! Deadline of August 10 approaching for Stone Soup’s Second Annual Book Contest! I know that a good number of you are on top of the deadline, and some of you have even submitted your manuscripts already. Congratulations! As a writer who is often running late, I can tell you that the ability to write to the deadline is a life skill that is (almost) as essential to the craft of writing as writing itself. Art and Poetry Peering Out, the featured artwork in today’s newsletter, is by Delaney Slote. What a difference time makes! In the Summer of 2018, when we first published this photograph, it made us at Stone Soup smile. Two girls looking out the window into the sunny outdoors planning an excursion. It is a photograph that suggests possibilities. At least it did in 2018. If this had been sent to us today, we would have read it as the opposite: As two girls looking out at a world shut down, one in which they are not quite prisoners but also very much not free. A world in which looking out the window reminds them of the danger we are all in, and what we have lost. This is a great lesson in how the meaning we find in art shifts with our experiences. I want you to keep this photograph in mind as you grow older. There is no question that at some point in school you will be assigned to read a book that you find totally boring but that has an outsized reputation as a brilliant work of art. This happened to me once with a novel by Charles Dickens I was assigned in high school: David Copperfield. What an utterly stupid book, I thought! And then, forty years later, I re-read it for a book that I was writing. I was amazed! What a deep and profound book that novel that I thought stupid really was. As a reader I had needed more experience, like having been divorced, to find the heart of the story. There needed to be a different William, not a sixteen-year-old William but a William that had more to bring to the book. Delany’s photograph is magnificently composed. Look at the arcs made by the girls’ arms. Pay attention to the shapes defined by the way their arms and bodies divide up the space. The part of the photograph I like the most is how the girls are together but separate, but also linked by how they are holding onto the curtain. They will both be feeling the pull of the other. Friends, sisters, cousins, sharing a moment together. Last year, there were two second place winners in our book contest, both poets: Analise Braddock and Tatiana Rebecca Shrayer. For those of you who subscribe to Stone Soup, you will have received both of their books in your Summer Special Poetry Issue. This week, we are featuring a poem by Analise in the newsletter. In a future newsletter, we will feature a poem by Tatiana. Their books are both available in the July/August edition of Stone Soup, which you can buy via our online store, and they are each available as individual ebooks, which you can also purchase for $4.99 at our store (and/or at Amazon). Please scroll down to the bottom of the Newsletter to read Analise’s “The Heart of the Earth” from her book The Golden Elephant. This poem is so powerful. So perfect. I just want you to read it. Please read it aloud. Thank you, Analise. I want to close today by sending you all to the Stone Soup website, Stonesoup.com. Follow the links to the fabulous work that has been posted this week. If you are not a subscriber, please, please subscribe—and tell your friends and colleagues to do so as well. Subscription dollars are what makes our work possible. The work our print magazine features is magnificent—worth re-reading—and the magazine itself is a pleasure to hold in your hand. Until next week, Winners from Weekly Flash Contest #16 Weekly Flash Contest #16: Write an unsettling poem. The week commencing July 13 (Daily Creativity prompt #81) was our sixteenth week of flash contests, with a sinister challenge set by contributor and writing workshop member Liam Hancock, 13. It seems everyone had plenty of scary stuff to get out of their systems: We had an absolute record number of entries this week. More than 70, in fact! Well done, Liam, for setting such a terrifically inspiring challenge, and thank you for all your work helping us read and judge our huge pile. It was really fun working with you. We were looking for the creepiest, most unsettling poems for our winners’ list, and we certainly found them! While all our winners had slightly different subjects, all of them built tension through their poems to a frankly terrifying end. And they showed us that while sinister, creepy, eerie things often come at night, these feelings can be evoked in broad daylight too. The honorable mentions were equally varied, moving between suspense, nightmares, death, unexplained disappearances, and even managing to make a butterfly into something sinister. 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 “In the Light of the Red Moon” by Katherine Bergsieker, 12, Denver, CO “Something Peculiar” by Fern Hadley, 11, Cary,

A Wish for a Brighter Tomorrow (IbisPaint on IPad)By Chloe Mancini, 9 A note from Jane Book Contest countdown has commenced! We can’t wait to receive your manuscripts, and we’re sure many of you are taking this part of the summer to work hard on your books—maybe revising, adding some finishing touches, or even adding a whole new section or group of poems. The deadline is midnight PDT on Monday, August 10. Happy writing! One of the things that has brightened up the past few months for me has been working on the Stone Soup COVID-19 blog. You have sent us poems, stories, journal entries, commentaries, cartoons, photographs, and artwork. Some are hopeful, some are sad; some are reflective, others issue a challenge; many are beautiful, and some even make us laugh! It’s so interesting to look back and see what our contributors were thinking and saying about this situation three or four months ago, and what they are saying today—some things have changed, and a lot has stayed the same, and everyone’s feelings are shifting around all the time. But the fact that you are all using this time to create and reflect is really inspiring. We hope you will continue to send us your work and read it on the blog every day, as well as enjoy all the great work in the magazine. Chloe Mancini’s artwork, above, is a terrific example of the power of many of the pieces on our COVID-19 blog. It takes real skill to make digital artwork like this, where you actually sense the emotion of the subject. We all know that feeling when your eyes are just brimming over with tears. I really feel for this girl as she stands in the moonlight wishing on a glowworm (or at least that’s how I read it!), and I sincerely join her in her wish for a brighter tomorrow! Andrew Li’s story, below, is another of this week’s special pieces from the blog. What a creative leap it is to take the perspective of a surgical mask as a way of reflecting on the current situation! We have spent a lot of time talking about perspective and characterisation in our Daily Creativity prompts and at our writing workshop, and this is  a really lovely example of taking a quirky perspective in order to look at a known situation in a new way. For this weekend’s activity, I suggest we follow Andrew’s lead and look at the world from the perspective of an inanimate object. It doesn’t have to be anything to do with COVID-19! I think I might try writing something from the perspective of one of my kittens’ toys (Kimchi, now almost 4 months old). When she isn’t jumping on my keyboard or tracing the tracks of my mouse pointer on my screen with her paw, she can chase a ribbon for hours. If that piece of red satin had feelings, I’m sure it would be both exhausted and upset to have been (slightly) shredded by those claws . . . Have some fun with this exercise, and if you are happy with what you write, please send it to us! Until next time, Winners from Weekly Flash Contest #15 Weekly Flash Contest #14: Write a story or poem inspired by a Renoir painting. Our entrants wrote a story or poem inspired by Renoir’s painting this week. We received more entires than we expected and, as always, enjoyed reading all of the writings that were submitted. It was fun to see how differently many of you approached imagining going into the scene in the painting: the judges read everything from mystery stories to poems written from the perspective of the lamps in the trees (a couple of our Highly Commended choices)! One of our winning writers this week also sent an updated version of the painting, apparently made for her by Renoir himself, to go with her story (thanks, Ruby!). Winners “The Brendon Disappointment” by Lucy Berberich, 11, Oxford, OH “Paris in a Painting” by Fern Hadley, 11, Cary, NC “Let There Be Cake!” by James Hou, 10, Short Hills, NJ “Summer Day” by Samuel McMullin, 10, Portland, ME “A Taste of Bal du Moulin de la Galette” & its illustration, Travelling back to Moulin de la Galette, by Ruby Xu, 10, Annandale, VA Honorable Mentions “Lost Lisette in a Crowd” by Joyce Hong, 10, Oakville, ON “Allia T. and the Case of the Disappearing Violinist” by Naomi Kap, 11 “An Atypical Guest at the Moulin de la Galette” by Amruta Krishnan Srinivasan, 9, San Jose, CA “Mama’s Mask” by Michela You, 11, Lexington, MA “The Journal Entry of a Pessimistic Person” by Charlotte Zhang, 11, Portland, OR 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. Highlights from the past week online Don’t miss the latest content from our Book Reviewers and Young Bloggers at Stonesoup.com! Amruta, 9, answered the Daily Creativity prompt where we asked you to imagine COVID-19 as a supervillain. Take a look at her illustration on the blog. Callum’s poem “Static” plays with the two meanings of the word. Read the poem and Callum’s explanation of his time in quarantine. Read Anya’s update from the 12th and 13th meetings of the Stone Soup Book Club. Most recently, the book club has been discussing Amal Unbound by Aisha Saeed, and the next book on the list is Harbor Me by Jacqueline Woodson. Daniel, 10, reviewed Kwame Alexander’s The Crossover. Read what Daniel thinks about the book that deals with family, grief, and basketball. Saanvi, 8, wrote an adventure story with an evil Captain Corona as the villain. Can you guess what the character represents? Have you ever been to Portugal? Vivaan continues his travelogue series with a post about his visit to the European country. Check out the post to read about Vivaan’s experiences and see some photographs of notable sights. We published an artwork by Chloe, 9, titled A Wish for a Better Tomorrow. What kind of emotions does the piece evoke for you? Read some of