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“Experiments in Reduction” by Caitlin Goh, 13 (Dallas, TX) Published in the April 2020 issue of Stone Soup A note from Sarah Things are difficult and overwhelming right now, but I want to take the time to highlight some really excellent initiatives happening online that you can enjoy. Did you know that the author Kelly Yang is holding writing workshops on Instagram Live every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday at 12 p.m. PDT? Kelly Yang wrote the critically acclaimed Front Desk, which was reviewed on our blog. Also, Library of Congress Ambassador of Literature Jason Reynolds has been creating great videos with prompts for young writers. Here is where you can find the videos for his series, Write. Right. Rite. We’ve never featured reviews of Jason Reynolds’s books on our blog, but we would love to! If you’ve read one, consider writing a review and submitting it to us LeVar Burton, who you might know from the show Reading Rainbow, is going live on Twitter reading books three times a week. He’s reading children’s books Mondays at 9 a.m. PDT and young adult books on Wednesdays at 3 p.m. PDT. It’s not just authors, though. Museums are also offering more online for people at home. The Museum of Modern Art has started Virtual Views every Thursday, where they highlight one of their exhibits with commentary from museum curators and more. And you can explore famous museums like the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam and the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles from the comfort of home. And that’s just to name a few! Other arts organizations are also doing exciting things. I tuned into my friend’s theater company doing a Facebook Live reading of the Shakespeare play Much Ado About Nothing (each actor at their own home!) and really enjoyed it. Also, the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra is streaming weekly concerts on Fridays for free. Getting back to more mainstream–but still great!–providers or inspiration and tools, there is a really great list of links to free Learning at Home resources being provided at this time by lots of major publishers–including Stone Soup–on the Copyright Clearance Center’s website. Plus, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention all of the things that Stone Soup is doing at this time. We’re holding Book Club on Wednesdays and Writing Workshop on Fridays. Check out an update from our book club here. And read what participants have created during writing workshop for our first meeting here, our second meeting here, and our third meeting here Are there other cultural events happening online that you’d like the Stone Soup community to know about? Email me at sarah@stonesoup.com and we’ll start a page with a list of resources. We hope that some of these can make your time at home a little brighter. Until next week, Weekly Flash Contest #3: Winners The week commencing April 13 was a very special week for our Daily Creativity series. We had a takeover by one of our readers, Molly Torinus, age 11, from Middleton, WI! Molly is a volunteer in our COVID-19 Focus Group, and she wrote a whole series of terrific writing prompts for us. When we planned her takeover, we all agreed that this prompt, challenging everyone to write from the point of view of an animal (Daily Creativity prompt #16), would be a great one to set as the contest. You all seemed to think so too, as we had a record number of entries! We were thrilled that Molly also joined the Stone Soup team to be one of this week’s judges. Once the contest closed at the end of last week, we all read the entries independently and gave them our own scores. Then, we put the three judges’ scores together to come up with a shortlist and had a Zoom meeting to discuss it and agree the final results. It’s the first time we have had a reader judge in one of our contests, so it was very exciting for us to work with Molly on the contest: we can tell you that she was a very thoughtful and fair judge, and we really enjoyed working with her on this contest. We will try to get readers involved again in future, so look out for another takeover soon! We all very much enjoyed reading these entries, and we were impressed by the different ways people approached the challenge of thinking like an animal. We especially loved the entries that really sounded like the thoughts and behaviors of animals we have met. It was easy to agree on our top contestants, and we also wanted to honor some of the other entries, as there were so many good ones. So this week we are announcing our five winners, whose work is published here, plus four honorable mentions. Congratulations to all of them, and thank you, Molly, for a great writing challenge and a fantastic job as a judge! Winners, in alphabetical order: Yutia Li, 10, Houston, TX Anna Rosini, 12, Arlington, VA Audrey Tzeng, 11, Rocklin, CA Ella Yamamura, 12, Cary, NC Sophie Yu, 12, Houston, TX Honorable Mentions: “Chickens and Playtime” by Nora Heiskell, 12, Philadelphia, PA “Piano Bunny” by Maya Mourshed, 8, Silver Spring, MD “The Great Indoors” by Enni Harlan, 13, Los Angeles, CA “A Good Summer Day: A Day in the Life of Moti” by Anushka Trivedi, 9, Silver Spring, MD Highlights from the past week online Don’t miss the latest content from our Book Reviewers and Young Bloggers at Stonesoup.com! We posted another art piece by Sloka, 11, related to the COVID-19 pandemic. It shows how families have been separated because of the risk of contagion. Audrey, 11, wrote a poem that captures the anxiety she feels about the coronavirus and the inescapable news coverage of it. Daniel, 10, writes about what he learned about the scientists who created the atomic bomb in the book Bomb: The Race to Build—and Steal—the World’s Most Dangerous Weapon by Steve Sheinkin. Though proud of their invention’s success, many of the scientists felt overwhelming guilt. We posted a short, humorous comic strip by Abhi, 12. Are there parts of the self-isolating lifestyle that

“Web Dweller” by Anya Geist, 12 From Stone Soup April 2020 A note from William Joyful news! This newsletter is dedicated to the newest member of our Stone Soup family, Editor Emma Wood’s first child, Margot Dylan Bassett-Wood, who was born last week. Congratulations to Emma and her husband, Conner. This is a very strange time to be born into our world. I would like each of you to find a way to say a welcome to Margot. Margot has very special parents, so I know she is a very lucky child. She lives in the Santa Cruz Mountains in a redwood forest, so her first vision of the outside world will be these huge amazing trees. Emma is not checking her Stone Soup email, but if those of you who write poetry would like to write a poem for Margot, I know that Emma will value whatever you send. You can email your poem to me with the subject line, “For Margot,” and I will be sure that Emma receives it so she can read it to her daughter. The email address to use is stonesoup@stonesoup.com. This is a very emotional time for all of us. I am writing this on April 15, which is always a very emotional day for me. This is the 45th anniversary of my mother’s death. She died two years after I founded Stone Soup. My mother gave me so much: my life, of course, but also my world view and the encouragement and money to make Stone Soup possible. We all owe this wonderful project to her, and so I also dedicate this newsletter to my mother. These are eventful times! It is a long newsletter today. Please stay with me. There is a lot to say. Thank you, team! Before getting into the heart of the newsletter, our first project, and lots of news, I would like to thank my colleagues for the huge amount of work they have put into getting our coronavirus programs up and running. Monday will be our 21st Daily Creativity Prompt, and we now have two Zoom workshops running, a new COVID-19 blog with daily posts, and a weekly Flash Contest. The heavy lifting for all this has been carried by Jane Levi, who, like me, has been working unpaid for the past three years. Sarah Ainsworth, a graduate student in Library Science, has been going the extra mile on top of her coursework. Our newest colleague, Laura Moran, who manages the Stone Soup Refugee Project (more on its status in a future newsletter) has stepped in to run the Wednesday Book Group on top of being a parent and an adjunct professor in cultural anthropology. (Also, Emma wrote a large number of the prompts before taking maternity leave.) Thank you. This week’s art—and William’s weekend project What a gorgeous photograph! A tour de force. A story told with a limited color palette—golden brown, silver, grey, and black. Anya Geist has titled the image Web Dweller. At the moment, all of us are house dwellers. Our houses are closed boxes. Her spider’s dwelling is as open as open can be. It is also a trap. An engineering marvel. And exceedingly beautiful. Anya’s vision of this spider and her web at night is told with boldness and subtlety. Sharp lines and blurred light. We all have spiders in our houses, so spiders make the perfect COVID-19 photography project. One thing we all have right now is lots of time. So, find a web, and take the time to observe it closely. And photograph it in different lights and from different angles. Send us the images you like the best by going to the submissions link. COVID-19 projects update We have two groups meeting via Zoom every week: the Wednesday Book Group (ages 10–13) and the Friday Writing Workshop (all ages). To receive the link detailing how to join these groups, you must sign up for the Daily Creativity prompts that we are sending out Monday through Friday. Monday will be the 21st prompt. Please look below for the winners of this week’s Weekly Flash Contest. Remember, the first prompt of the week is the prompt to use when you enter the contest, and entries are due at midnight on Friday of the week. This week’s story—and some thoughts on writing serials You might have noticed that we brought forward the launch of our second annual Book Contest. I hope you are all thinking about your entries for this year! But this week, I want to talk about last year’s Book Contest because this month everyone can finally start reading some of 2019’s winning work! In this month’s issue of Stone Soup, you can enjoy the first part of nine-year-old Hannah Nami Gajcowski’s inventive adventure, the novella Elana. Elana won third prize in last year’s Book Contest and is appearing in three parts over the April, May, and June issues of Stone Soup. Hannah has invented a world populated with colorful characters and filled with fantastical adventure. Congratulations, Hannah, on writing a wonderful book. We are very excited to be publishing it in Stone Soup and thrilled to be sharing it with all our readers at last! Publication in serial form was a common model in the nineteenth century. Charles Dickens (1812–1870) wrote many of his most famous novels week by week for publication in parts in newspapers and magazines. This imposes quite a discipline on a writer. You need to be very organized. You must make it easy for the reader to keep track of all your characters, remember what has happened to them in past episodes, and make sense of what might happen to them in the future, without lots of repetition and reminders. You also need to be able to retain a reader’s interest in every section of the story: each episode has to be able to stand on its own, with its own arc, as well as earn its place in a larger narrative. If, like Dickens, you have a huge cast of characters, you need to make sure that your reader can still remember about one group while you are talking about another. It’s a big challenge! Elana wasn’t originally written to be published in episodic form, but the inventiveness of

“Eyes on You” by Rebecca Wu, 9 (Medina, WA) Cover art for the April 2020 issue A note from William First things first. As our fabulous editor, Emma Wood, puts it herself in her now-switched-on out-of-office message: “I am busy welcoming our first child (and future Stone Soup contributor!) to the world.” We all wish her the very best of luck as she embarks on the greatest adventure of all: becoming a mother. This week, our fabulous new April issue was released, and we have lots of news on our new projects to help our young readers and writers through the current COVID-19 situation. Yesterday (Friday), we held our first Stone Soup Writing Workshop. Thanks to each of you who participated. Where the participants wish to, we will be posting work produced from the session along with our summary of what we did. I can tell you that what these young writers produced in half an hour was incredible, so I hope all of them decide to share their work with you via our website! Look out for that next week. Also, do consider joining the Friday workshop. It is held from 1pm to 2pm Pacific Time. The group is open to Stone Soup subscribers and those of you who have signed up for the Creativity Prompts mailing list. All you have to do to get on the list is click the link. Every weekday the newest COVID-19 Daily Creativity prompts are posted to our website. Even if you are on the list for daily emails this is an easy reference and archive to refer back to for teachers and all of us now-homeschooling parents. Ten prompts have been published already, and there is a new one every weekday, so there will be 15 by this time next week! Starting last Monday, the first prompt of the week is a Flash Contest. Pick up the prompt, and submit your response by the end of Friday. We will choose our top 5 early the following week, and publish them our blog and announce the winners here in the Saturday Newsletter. All the details are on our contest page. We supply some free content, but the entire website is accessible to all subscribers. Subscriptions start at just $4.99 per month for a digital subscription. This includes access to all current issues, 25 years worth of back issues, dozens of writing and art activities, and the right to submit work to Stone Soup for free. Subscribers also receive the daily Creativity Prompts and the right to join our online Zoom workshops. Month-to-month subscriptions, both print (which includes digital) and digital only, can be cancelled at any time. If you are not a subscriber, and have not already signed up, then sign up for the Daily Creativity prompts by clicking on the link. We have developed a good looking page that you can print out each school day morning. We are being told by kids who are using them that they are helping to keep them focused and keep their morale up. Kids on this list are eligible to join our writing groups. William’s Weekend Project: Keeping a Journal Jane recommended keeping a journal as the project in last week’s Newsletter. I want to reinforce this project by repeating it today. These are historic times. What you write about your experiences as they occur is something you will want to revisit when you are an adult. If you have already started a journal then skip this paragraph. If you haven’t started, then here is my advice. Start. Like, now. And no later than this evening. A journal is different from a memoir. A journal is a contemporaneous record of your life. It is what you write today about today. A memoir is what you write about today next year, or in twenty years. Journal writing is crisp, sharp, full of the confidences and uncertainties of the moment. The only day you can write about today when it is today is today! So. How are you feeling? Whats going on in your life? What did you do today? How are you feeling about the coronavirus pandemic? Are you sheltering in place? Are you safe? Are you afraid? Are you bored (see this week’s poem, below!)? Do you see friends? If so, online, only, or if in person with some rules? A journal is an open ended project – and what we have right now is lots of time and the need to keep focused. I started my journal yesterday. Until next week, April is National Poetry Month Did you know it was National Poetry Month? The Academy of American Poets is celebrating in a few different ways: Dear Poet, an annual education project featuring videos of our award-winning Chancellors and Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellows reading their work, and to which students can respond through letter writing. They will consider all letters for publication on Poets.org beginning in May 2020, and our Chancellors and Fellows will reply to select letters of their choosing.  Poem in Your Pocket Day: Their interactive PDF can be downloaded for Poem in Your Pocket Day, which is happening April 30 this year. We’re encouraging the sharing of poems throughout the day at schools, bookstores, libraries, offices, and on social media with the hashtag #pocketpoem. Downloadable Poster: This year’s poster features artwork by tenth grader Samantha Aikman as part of our national student contest. Anyone can request a free copy of the official National Poetry Month poster on Poets.org for their library, classroom, or home. Highlights from the past week online Don’t miss the latest content from our Book Reviewers and Young Bloggers at Stonesoup.com! Marco, our science fiction and fantasy, reviews one of his favorite books on the blog: Leviathan by Scott Westerfeld. Read the review to find out about the book’s unconventional setting, and why Marco thinks it’s such a fascinating story. Sabrina Guo, a Stone Soup author, has started the initiative LILAC (Long Island Laboring Against COVID-19) to raise money for Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) in hospitals. We’ve linked the fundraiser in the post and encourage you to