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The Little Princess Acrylic painting by Rebecca Wu, 9 (Medina, WA) Published in Stone Soup June 2020, illustrating Part Three of Elana: A Novella by Hannah Nami Gajcowski, 9 (Bellevue, WA) A note from William New June issue: don’t miss the latest issue—which includes the final of the three parts of Elana, the novella that won third place in last year’s book contest. This final instalment of Hannah Nami Gajcowski’s novel is highlighted below. Congratulations, Hannah! I have been enjoying reading your work. Black Lives Matter. As readers, writers, artists, as citizens of the world, we cannot ignore what is happening in the United States right now. Many of us are at home self-isolating, and for this, and reasons that are obvious looking at news videos, are not directly taking part in demonstrations even though our hearts are with the demonstrators. For students all the way up to middle school age, we recommend that you look at the website for Illustoria. Illustoria and Stone Soup share common goals with respect to creative young people. They have good projects this week to help you safely participate in social action. The post that I include a link to here is a letter-writing campaign. Real letters. Real stamps. Real mail. It seems old fashioned. It is. And yet, over time, letter-writing campaigns have proven effective forms political protest. Summer school programs. Our Society of Young Inklings and Stone Soup summer writing workshops are now full with waitlists—except for the newest class that we opened for our own Stone Soup’s Laura Moran. Laura’s class has space for more students. It a class that is very different from what creative writing classes for young writers are usually about. So! If you want a challenge, if you want to be stretched as a writer in ways you may not have previously been stretched, sign up for her class. As with the other workshops, the cost is $200. Laura is a cultural anthropologist. In this class you will write about your COVID-19 experiences using the techniques that social scientists use when doing field research. This is an unusual, innovative class. Laura is a wonderful teacher. You cannot go wrong taking Laura’s class. Registration is through the Society of Young Inklings. Friday Writing Workshop. The Friday writing workshop is open to young writers ages 8 through 14. The new time is 9 a.m. PDT. It will run at this time on Fridays through July and it will then shift to Saturday for the duration of the 2020/21 school year. The work these students are producing is extraordinary. This workshop is free—it is a service provided by Stone Soup. We are posting written work by the students on our blog, which we encourage you to read (see link below). We are also working on posting stories read aloud by the class on our YouTube channel. In the meantime, please trust me. This is a class not to be missed. It is made up of a very strong group of young writers. I am usually the instructor, although sometimes we have guest instructors drawn from the students in the group. Get your Zoom invitation by signing up for the Daily Creativity Prompts—link at the bottom of the page. Saturday writing project. With so much terrible happening around us, I suggest this weekend that we all take a few moments to explore a completely different mental space. I want you to go outside—wear a mask if going anyplace public—and sit where there is a spot of nature. Whether that is in your yard, a park, or even some weeds growing through a crack in the sidewalk, I want you to sit, be quiet with yourself, and see what you see. A line of ants. A bee. A hover fly. A cloud passing over casting its shadow. Focus. Pull your mind away from the pandemic, from political and social unrest, from the fact that school just ended (or is just about to), and focus on what you are seeing. I don’t mean stare. I mean look and open your mind and imagination to the world around you. And write what comes to you in that time. As always, if you like what you write, then please submit it to Stone Soup so Emma, when she returns from maternity leave, will be able to consider it for publication. Until next week, Winners from Weekly Flash Contest #8 Weekly Flash Contest #9: Write a mystery story.  The week commencing May 25 (Daily Creativity prompt #46) was our ninth week of flash contests, with another record number of entries. It was also the second contest based on Stone Soup contributor and reader Anya Geist’s writing prompt, which meant that we got to work with her again to judge the contest. Anya’s prompt inspired a really terrific batch of entries, and all the judges were impressed with the diverse ways in which the entrants approached the idea of writing “a mystery.” Thank you, Anya, for wise judging and for setting a great writing challenge! 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. Don’t miss out on these posts: the writing is really great!Winners Isabel Bashaw, 10, Enumclaw, WA Nick Buckley, 12, Needham, MA Liam Hancock, 12, Danville, CA Enni Harlan, 13, Los Angeles, CA Michelle Su, 13, Sudbury, MA Honorable Mention Amelia Barth, 10, Elgin, IL Amelia Pozzo, 11, Arnold, MO Mihika Sakharpe, 11, Frisco, TX Sophia Stravitsch, 10, Katy, TX Michela You, 11, Lexington, MA Highlights from the past week online Don’t miss the latest content from our Book Reviewers and Young Bloggers at Stonesoup.com! We published another cartoon by Natya, 12, about how things have changed because of COVID-19. In this case, Natya illustrates how graduation ceremonies have changed. Kat, 10, wrote a song called “I’m Fine,” which we’ve posted to the blog and our Soundcloud page. Take a listen and let us know in the comment sections what feelings the songs evokes for you. With his poem about the pandemic called

Margot Smiling. Editor Emma’s baby daughter Margot (and her bunny) A note from William Top Stone Soup news! Margot is smiling! What a more wonderful story can there be than that? I remember those early months with my daughter, Stella, when I would just sit and watch her. I was mesmerized. A life awakening. They are small, but powerful! I know that Margot will already have Stone Soup Editor Emma, her father Conner, and that little pink rabbit fully tied to her orbit. Thank you, Emma, for sharing Margot’s picture with your extended Stone Soup family. I am asking all of you a favor. Please read and share “A Child’s View of the Death of George Floyd,” by Amara DeLong. This is an extraordinary reflection on the murder of Mr. Floyd.  Amara’s piece is that rare kind of writing that is created in response to an emergency: It is literary, it is well thought out, it makes you think, it won’t become dated. Amara is nine years old. This is profound writing by a young person. This is what Stone Soup is about–whatever your age, Amara has something important to say and she says it well. Amara, we thank you sincerely for sending your work to us and making us think so deeply. Amara calls the murder of Mr. Floyd a lynching and refers back to the groundbreaking work on lynching done by Ida B. Wells in the early 20th century. I learned a lot about Ida Wells last week when my daughter brought her up in the context of an eighth-grade homework assignment. If you don’t know who Ida Wells is, then please read her Wiki entry.  Summer Writing Camp The joint Stone Soup & Society of Young Inklings Summer writing camps are open for enrollment. The program is administered through the fabulous Society of Young Inklings. Naomi Kinsman Downing, the Society’s founder, is teaching several of the workshops. She read Stone Soup as a child, so we feel very good about our association with Naomi and her organization. She helped us with our first personal narrative fiction contest last fall. We were so impressed with her that we are collaborating with her on this summer program. Classes have already met their minimum enrollment numbers, so don’t delay too long before registering! For those of you who are interested in our now second annual long-form fiction contest, one of the summer workshops is in writing long-form fiction. This is also a specialty of the Society of Young Inklings, so I recommend this class for those of you who are already working on your novels. Our own Laura Mason, a Stone Soup parent, writer, and my colleague who runs the Wednesday Book Club is also teaching one of the Summer classes through our joint Stone Soup & Society of Young Inklings program. Nothing like the class she is offering has been done for young students before, ever! Here is what she says about it: “I’m Laura and I’ll be offering a new Stone Soup summer camp! Some of you know me from Book Club. I’m also a cultural anthropologist. In the camp, Anthropology at Home: Young Ethnographer’s Writing Workshop, I will teach the art of ‘autoethnography,’ a creative nonfiction form of personal writing used by anthropologists in their research. Part memoir writing, part early introduction to social science research, young writers will use autoethnography to construct their own personal narratives in the context of the current global pandemic. I hope you’ll join me!” Friday Writing Workshop Our free Friday Writing Workshop, originally scheduled to run until yesterday, will continue by popular demand (from us and the participants!). It shifts to 9 a.m. Pacific Time through July and then shifts to Saturday at 9 a.m. for the remainder of the year. We hope the earlier time will allow some of our subscribers in Europe, who had wanted to join, to be able to do so. We look forward to welcoming everyone who can make it starting next Friday! The Friday writing workshop does not conflict with the more intensive summer writing programs, so you can do both. Until next week, Winners from Weekly Flash Contest #8 Last week’s Flash Contest (#8) was based on one of Stone Soup reader and contributor Molly Torinus’s daily creativity prompts—and it was certainly a popular one! We had a record number of entries with some very funny and imaginative stories and poems about what superheroes and supervillains do in their time off. It was great fun for us to read and judge all the entries alongside our reader judge. Thank you for your great decision-making and enthusiasm, Molly! This week we also unexpectedly received a few art entries responding to the writing prompt, and we have chosen one of those as a special honorable mention for art, as well (Wonder Woman is stuck trying to get into a Zoom meeting, a familiar situation for lots of us non-super-heroes right now!). Congratulations to all our winners and honorable mentions, listed blow. You can read the winning entries for this week (and previous weeks) at the Stone Soup website. Well done everyone, and keep on entering! Winners Enni Harlan, 13, Los Angeles, CA Julianna Muzyczyszyn, 13, Warsaw, Poland Lucy Berberich, 11, Oxford, OH Samuel McMullin, 10, Portland, ME Sophie Yu, 12, Houston, TXHonorable Mention (writing) Alice Xie, 12, West Windsor, NJ Yutia Li, 11, Houston, TX Daniel Shorten, 9, Mallow, Ireland Isabel Bashaw, 10, Enumclaw, WA Em Jay, 10, Austin, TX Honorable Mention (art) Chloe Mancini, 9, Glenside, PA Highlights from the past week online Don’t miss the latest content from our Book Reviewers and Young Bloggers at Stonesoup.com! Ben, 12, wrote a poem called “Believe,” with encouraging words about getting through this pandemic. In “It Was,” Grace, 11, writes a short but powerful poem about the beauty of the world, though it feels so far away from what we’re experiencing right now. Micah, 11, composed the very impressive “Moonlight Waltz.” Listen (or try playing it yourself!) on the blog. Anya, 13, pairs a poem about seeing a situation in two different ways with a lovely composite photograph of a tree. Check out “Perspective” here. Need more positive news

“Cloud Dancer” by Sage Millen, 12 (Vancouver, Canada) Published in the May 2020 Issue of Stone Soup A note from Sarah First of all, a special announcement: summer camps! Check out the website for our summer camp collaboration with the Society of Young Inklings. Right now we have three camps available that we’ll conduct via Zoom, but we’re working on bringing you more! We hope you’ll get creative with us this summer. What have you been doing to keep yourself busy during social distancing? I’ve found that in my spare time, I’ve been reading and cooking more than usual and have recently started a small garden. I hope you have also found some enjoyable hobbies to occupy yourself during this time. If you’d like to share what you’ve been doing, consider submitting a piece to our blog. I really liked the prompt for this week’s Flash Contest, from Stone Soup contributor Molly Torinus, which is what got me thinking about hobbies in the first place. Molly asked you to think of your favorite superhero (or supervillain!) and imagine what they do in their down time. I can’t wait to read what you’ve come up with! In a similar vein, Stone Soup contributor Anna Rowell wrote a Daily Creativity prompt on Wednesday that asked you to take one of your favorite characters and create a story about how they would act during the time of coronavirus. Both of these prompts ask you to dive into the world of fan fiction. If you’re not familiar, fan fiction is when a writer takes fictional characters or their worlds and adds onto them in their own story. While it’s fun to make up a story entirely of your own creation, sometimes it’s comforting to anchor your story with elements from books that you’ve read or movies you’ve seen. Maybe you’ve become attached to a character and want to place them in a new situation of your own invention. Or maybe you want to create a story where the characters from your two favorite stories meet! The possibilities for fan fiction are endless.One famous example of fan fiction is Death Comes to Pemberley by author P.D. James. The book takes place after the happily-ever-after conclusion of Jane Austen’s classic Pride and Prejudice. James takes the existing characters, like Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy, and places them in a new genre: murder mystery. Could you do something similar with one of your favorite books and imagine what could happen after “The End”? If Molly or Anna’s prompt inspired you to write a fan fiction of your own, think about how you can expand your piece into something longer. What elements of the original story or character do you want to keep? And in what ways do you want to expand and explore new ground? Until next week, Winners from Weekly Flash Contest #7 The week commencing May 11 (Daily Creativity prompt #36) was our seventh week of flash contests, with another record number of entries including one from our youngest-ever Flash Contest entrant! We had fun meeting time travelers from different eras from ancient history (even dinosaurs!) to the present (yes, some time travel was projected into the future—it’s complicated!), and it was even harder than usual to choose our favorites. We commend all of the entrants for their imagination, and for the creative ways they found to bring their characters from the past into life in the present using clothes, language, and misunderstandings about contemporary everyday life to make them real. This week, we are announcing our five winners, whose work is published below, plus five honorable mentions. Congratulations, everyone! Winners (work published on this page) Isabel Bashaw, 10, Enumclaw, WA Samson Brown, 12, Cary, NC Ava Shorten, 10, Mallow, Ireland Michela You, 11, Lexington, MA Xuyi (Lauren) Zheng, 10, Guelph, Ontario, Canada Honorable Mentions “The Time Watch” by Hannah Nami Gajcowski, 10, Bellevue, WA “Lace, Frills, and Clever Jokes” by Samantha Lee, 10, Thomaston, CT “Prehistoric Visitors” by Sean Tenzin O’ Connor, 4, Bishop, CA “Panic From the Seventies” by Lauren Oh, 12, Cary, NC “A Dose of Time” by Ella Yamamura, 12, Cary, NC Remember, we are running the Flash Contest every week during the COVID-19-related school closures and shelter-in-place arrangements. It is always based on the first Daily Creativity prompt of the week. The prompt is posted on Monday, entries are due by Friday, and the winners are chosen and announced the following week. Highlights from the past week online Don’t miss the latest content from our Book Reviewers and Young Bloggers at Stonesoup.com! Himank,12, illustrated a piece called “Utopia for Animals,” which shows how COVID-19 has impacted life for animals. Read an update from the Stone Soup Book Club’s fifth meeting. A poem from Marjona, 11, a student in Uzbekistan. Daniel, 10, reviews the book Heat by Mike Lupica. The book is about family, friendship, and baseball. Emerson, 12, wrote a poem called “Tick Tock” that emphasizes the strange quality time has taken during the time of coronavirus. We posted a cartoon by Natya, 12, called “How the Handshake Has Evolved.” Check it out and consider buying a print of it to support a nonprofit in Natya’s area. In her poem, Cora, 13, wonders about the way our lives have shifted since COVID-19: “Will it Ever End?” Abhyudoy, 13, reads his poem “A Brief History of a Fictional Virus.” Summer Camp: Young Author’s Studio Stone Soup is offering summer camp via Zoom in collaboration with the Society of Young Inklings. We’re calling it Young Author’s Studio. We’re offering three weeks with three different themes. Design a Novel: June 8–11, 2020 (9–11 a.m. PDT) Character Lab: June 15–18, 2020 (9–11 a.m. PDT) Design a Picture Book: June 22–25, 2020 (9–11 am PDT) For more information, visit the Young Author’s Studio website. From Stone Soup May 2020 One Hop at a Time By Sara Heller, 12 (New York, NY) Art by Sage Millen, 12 (Vancouver, Canada) The thin black straps from my leotard dug into my skin. My feet stung and ached inside my dirty, pink pointe shoes, and the humid room reeked of sweat.