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“Spirit to Healthy Living” by Parinita Chandrashekar, 12 (Bridgewater, NJ), published in Stone Soup November 2019. A note from Emma Wood This week, I discovered this Twitter account, Kids Write Jokes. As the title implies, it only tweets jokes written by kids! A lot of the jokes on the site are like this: not traditionally funny but also very funny precisely for that reason. It’s a weird contradiction. I encourage you to peruse them and think about what you find funny—and why. I think you will find it’s really hard to either predict or explain what will make you laugh. And what makes you laugh might not make your mom or your brother laugh! We all have our own unique sense of humor. I am often reminded of this when I am the only one laughing in a silent room. The story I have chosen to highlight this week is “The Missing Hair” by Oliver Giller, 10, and it is a funny story. Not only is the premise of the story perfectly absurd—the protagonist employs a detective to find his missing hair—it is told with a seriousness that makes it even funnier. I realized as I read it initially how rarely I read funny stories in the Stone Soup submissions. And it is even rarer to find funny stories that feel right for Stone Soup! I think this is partly because humor is so individual and partly because there is a gap between what adults consider funny and what kids find funny (as evinced by the jokes above!), and then also because it is hard to be funny in writing and in visual art. So this weekend I have a challenge for you: try to be funny in your work. Maybe this simply means approaching your art with a new lightness and playfulness. Or maybe this means telling jokes. Or maybe it means setting up a funny premise that you then proceed to take very seriously like Oliver does in his story. As always, send us the result! On another note, we are attempting to gather testimonials and comments from Stone Soup readers to use in our efforts to spread the word about Stone Soup and expand our readership. Whether you are a kid, a parent, a teacher, a librarian, or anyone else who reads or engages with Stone Soup, we want to hear from you! What is your favorite thing about Stone Soup? Has any single piece from the magazine—story, poem, or art—had a particular impact on you? Feel free to answer these questions or tell us anything else you would like about your experience with the magazine—you can submit a letter to the editor or reply to an email with some comments. Until next week, Current Contest: Personal Narrative The way we approach fiction, nonfiction, and poetry, as both readers and writers, is drastically different. For this reason, we’re happy to announce that Stone Soup is partnering with  Society of Young Inklings in our very first nonfiction contest and that, in 2020, we will begin to publish all nonfiction under its very own label in the magazine. What makes this contest extra special is our partnership with Society of Young Inklings (SYI): we are very excited to share that their team of professional writers has designed a mentorship experience for both the youth and the educators who take part in this contest. Check out the details on our website here, including links to SYI’s video series to help in writing a personal narrative. Contest deadline is December 15th! It’s that time of year again! This year, we’ve published so much incredible, thought-provoking creative work by children ages 13 and under. Just browse our website and you’ll see what we mean. As is now traditional, Stone Soup is publishing the Stone Soup Annual 2019 composed of all 11 issues from the calendar year, plus some extra highlights from the blog—and a beautiful wraparound cover design by Avery Multer, age 12. It’s a fantastic, 400+ page book that will give you and the young people in your life hours of great reading and inspiring art to browse. It makes a terrific gift. It’s going to print within the next week or two, and copies will start mailing in the first week of December. We are offering 20% off all preorders received before November 24. That means that when you preorder, you’ll get the Annual for just $28.00—a reduction of $6.99. Support the young writers and artists of Stone Soup. Preorder your copies of the Annual today. P.S. for Stone Soup contributors: remember to use your special code to get a 50% discount on all copies you buy! Highlights from the past week online Don’t miss the latest content from our Book Reviewers and Young Bloggers at Stonesoup.com! Have you read (or watched) the classic fantasy series The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien? On the blog this week, Daniel takes us through the different kinds of creatures and magic in The Lord of the Rings. Do you want to learn about dwarves, elves, and wizards? Read Daniel’s post to find out more. Do you have a hard time with chemistry? Well, our blogger Lucinda Chu wants to challenge you. Read the first post in her new series, in which she identifies a fun fact about each element on the periodic table. Find it interesting? Leave a comment! Oliver Giller, 10Providence, RI From Stone Soup, November 2019 The Missing Hair By Oliver Giller, 10 (Providence, RI) Once, when I was counting the hairs on my head, I noticed that one hair was missing. You see, usually, I had 2,476 hairs on my head, but when I counted them this time, there were only 2,475 hairs on my head. Someone had stolen my hair. I went to the police station for help, but they said that I was crazy. Then I went to the FBI, but they said that they had much more important cases on their hands. Personally, I don’t understand how vandalism in the White House could be more important than my missing hair, but it wasn’t my choice. Finally, I realized that the

“I, Grace Sadlon, sister of Chloë Sadlon, vow to never ever break the Sister Code” by Phoebe Wagoner, 11 (Carlisle, Kentucky), published in Stone Soup March/April 2015, illustrating “The Treehouse” by Ermeen Choudhury, 12 (Scarsdale, New York). A note from William Rubel I am very pleased to be able to announce that we have hired Laura Moran, a cultural anthropologist who has just published a book on her research with refugee children in Australia to lead the Stone Soup refugee project (see below). As most of you know, the first stage in this project is publishing a special issue of Stone Soup devoted to creative work by refugee children. If any of you know people working with refugee children, including with children caught up in US border enforcement actions on the Mexican border, please send Laura an email: laura@stonesoup.com. Stone Soup author Sabrina Guo, whose personal initiative is really the inspiration for this project, has been honored with an invitation to attend the 2020 Harvard Global Women’s Empowerment Expo with Laura Doggett, who is the American artist working with refugee children in the Za’atari camp in Jordan that Sabrina wrote about in a Stone Soup blog post. Congratulations Sabrina! On the subject of blogs. I haven’t put out a call for new blog authors in a while. Writing for our blog is different from writing for Stone Soup. Stone Soup is a literary magazine—so its focus is fiction, poetry, and art. In the blogs you can write on any subject you like so you have the freedom to explore other genres besides fiction and poetry. If you haven’t visited our blogs recently, please do. As you’d expect from Stone Soup writers, the quality of the blog entries is high. At the end of every year we select an issue’s worth of blog posts to include in our Annual. If you are interested in writing for our blog please go to the Stone Soup submissions page and submit a writing sample. On a personal note, I have been working in my garden over the past few weeks. There is an unused treehouse in a big plum tree which we are converting into a space for us adults to relax. It’s so much fun to climb the ladder and sit in the tree, so I was happy to see this illustration from a past issue of Stone Soup in this week’s Newsletter! Do you have a tree house? Why not spend some time in it and send us a picture of the view, or write something inspired by sitting up amongst the branches. Until next week, Current Contest: Personal Narrative The way we approach fiction, nonfiction, and poetry, as both readers and writers, is drastically different. For this reason, we’re happy to announce that Stone Soup is partnering with  Society of Young Inklings in our very first nonfiction contest and that, in 2020, we will begin to publish all nonfiction under its very own label in the magazine. What makes this contest extra special is our partnership with Society of Young Inklings (SYI): we are very excited to share that their team of professional writers has designed a mentorship experience for both the youth and the educators who take part in this contest. Check out the details on our website here, including links to SYI’s video series to help in writing a personal narrative. Contest deadline is December 15th! Highlights from the past week online Don’t miss the latest content from our Book Reviewers and Young Bloggers at Stonesoup.com! Maya writes a blog this week called “Playing in the Youth Orchestra.” Read about her experience preparing for performing a challenging piece for a concert. Remember Tristan Hui’s story “Coconut Pudding” from the November issue? She takes us behind the scenes in a post that details the inspiration for the story. Read more in “Coconut Pudding: Behind the Story.” We’re always accepting blog submissions through the Submittable category– if you know a young person with an interesting perspective, encourage them to submit their work! “I, Grace Sadlon, sister of Chloë Sadlon, vow to never ever break the Sister Code” From Stone Soup, March/April 2015 The Treehouse By Ermeen Choudhury, 12 (Scarsdale, New York) Illustrated by Phoebe Wagoner, 11 (Carlisle, Kentucky) Chloë. Chloë, wake up!” Grace poked her sister in the side, then gently shook her, barely able to contain her excitement. Chloë slowly opened one eyelid, and in seconds the two seven-year-olds were scampering out of the bedroom and down the hallway, leaf-dappled pajamas billowing on their small forms. After making sure their parents were asleep, they went out the back door together, giggling. The girls ran barefoot through swaying grass, scrambled up craggy rocks, maneuvered through a network of gangly trees, and finally, breathless, arrived at their destination. The treehouse stood tall and grand, silhouetted against the golden-orange sky, and the sisters ogled its brilliance for a while. A path of flat stones trailed up to the tree’s roots, and a flimsy rope ladder climbed up its length. Sitting amid a fountain of branches was the house, built of dark, ancient-looking planks of wood. “Come on. Let’s go!” Grace shrieked with delight, and began to skip from stone to stone. She was crawling up the first few rungs before Chloë snapped out of her trance and followed her. Before they entered the house, the girls stopped, their faces solemn. Grace went first. Placing a hand on her chest, she recited, “I, Grace Sadlon, sister of Chloë Sadlon, vow to never ever break the Sister Code. I will always be a loyal sister, and will never tell anyone the secrets of the treehouse.” Chloë opened her mouth, but before she could utter a sound Grace’s foot slipped on the rung above her and her leg swung around wildly as she tried to regain her footing. The ladder began to rock back and forth. “Grace, watch out!” Chloë screamed, but it was too late, and they both came crashing to the ground…./MORE Stone Soup is published by Children’s Art Foundation-Stone Soup Inc.,

Water Droplets by Anya Geist, 13 (Worcester, MA)Cover art from the Stone Soup November 2019 A note from Jane Levi Those of you with a print subscription to Stone Soup will by now have received your copy of the November issue with its wraparound cover art, Water Droplets, by Anya Geist, and many more of you will have seen the cover and the complete work of art online. If you read editor Emma’s letter at the beginning of the magazine, you will know that a lot of the work in this month’s issue is about ideas of home. As you probably know, I am from the UK, so this gray, wet-looking image sums up a big part of my expectations of November “at home.” I know that lots of our readers live in similar climates, so you will know what I mean . . . Actually, I am in the United States just now—and Santa Cruz, California, is anything but wet at the moment—but I am pretty confident that when I get back to London next weekend it won’t be long before I will be looking out my window and seeing a live version of Anya’s photograph! One of the things I love about this piece of work is the way it is a mixture of the very specific—a clear and precise record of drops of water on (I assume) glass or tile—and the abstract. We can’t see the edges of the surface the water droplets are on, so even with the clarity of the image a lot is left to our imaginations to work out. Without knowing the title, the photograph could be many things: a close-up of bubbles in a tank, or even a piece of concrete. Although it is plain-looking and ostensibly simple, it is very beautiful, and it is thought-provoking. I find it calming and meditative to look at, in the way just sitting and staring out of the window in your favorite spot at home can be when you need to pause and think through what you are going to write next, or when you need to digest a problem. Thank you, Anya, for a terrific cover! Thinking about returning to the UK, I also appreciate Analise Braddock’s poem “Days” in the November issue, where “The gray is space or a planet,” and in the end “It is time to return.” Maybe this weekend you can take some time to sit and stare and think about home, think about places you would like to return to, and write, draw, or photograph something that encapsulates those thoughts and ideas. As always, send it to us if you are happy with it. Until next time, Current Contest: Personal Narrative The way we approach fiction, nonfiction, and poetry, as both readers and writers, is drastically different. For this reason, we’re happy to announce that Stone Soup is partnering with  Society of Young Inklings in our very first nonfiction contest and that, in 2020, we will begin to publish all nonfiction under its very own label in the magazine. What makes this contest extra special is our partnership with Society of Young Inklings (SYI): we are very excited to share that their team of professional writers has designed a mentorship experience for both the youth and the educators who take part in this contest. Check out the details on our website here, including links to SYI’s video series to help in writing a personal narrative. Contest deadline is December 15th! Highlights from the past week online Don’t miss the latest content from our Book Reviewers and Young Bloggers at Stonesoup.com! Two book reviews posted on the blog this week! Daniel, 10, reviews the children’s classic A Wrinkle in Time by Madeline L’Engle, with a special focus on the fictional world of Camazotz. Would you want to live in a place with peace and order, but without any freedom? Leave a comment on his post! Did you watch the movie Hidden Figures? Vivaan, 10, reviews the book by Margot Lee Shetterly, which the movie was based on. Read Vivaan’s thoughts about the “very inspiring” book, in his words. Our Fall Fundraiser, 2019: The Refugee Project We are raising funds to support the production and publication of creative work by children in refugee camps around the world. We have already almost reached our target of $5,000 to support workshops run by and for kids in camps, a special issue of Stone Soup, and associated projects—and we want to keep going! You have already helped us fund workshops in the Za’atari camp and put us in touch with other great organizations we can work with to expand our efforts. Please help us raise the money to continue this work. You can read more about this initiative on our website and help us by sharing the link with others. Thank you. From Stone Soup, November 2019 Days By Analise Braddock, 8 (Katonah, NY) Illustrated by Anya Geist, 12 (Worcester, MA) The nights are long The days are short A breeze is blown A day is a day. It can’t be reliven Make today today Tomorrow is tomorrow The gray is space or a planet. A cold breeze sweeps by It is time to return   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.