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Colored pencil ‘Tick Tock’ by Marco Lu, 12, published in Stone Soup, January 2019. To our adult readers: A call for web designers! Before getting into the meat of this week’s newsletter, I’d like to put out a call to those of you who are web designers or work for a web-design firm. Our first priority this year is improving our website’s functionality and its design. Our print publications were redesigned in 2018. It is the website’s turn in 2019. A more beautiful and more functional website is key to our many projects—the magazine, the blogs, the book reviews, a new project space for child-refugee art and writing, a space for child composers, and more. How do we improve our navigation and make what we have clearer and more engaging? How do we add new kinds of content and retain clarity and engagement? If you can help us with this, please reply to the newsletter. This is a WordPress site. Thank you. A note from William Rubel The January Issue! It’s great! I know. I am always saying that. But it is always true. You, our Stone Soup writers and artists, are consistently sending us fabulous material. Before saying something more about the issue, I’d like to let you read editor Emma Wood’s introduction. In January, the days are already getting longer but it doesn’t feel that way! This issue has some short short fiction—the winners of our 2018 contest—to match the season’s short short days, as well as wintry, dark landscapes in both art and poetry. It also has three longer stories that matched the seasonal mood in a different way; their “darkness” is more metaphorical, but each one still leaves you with a feeling of hope and the presentiment of longer, lighter days ahead. Here’s to some fireside reading! As always, no matter how old you are, you will find inspiring language in this issue. Read the poems aloud and read at least one or two of the stories aloud as well. This way, you go slowly and are more able to savor the language. And, regardless of your age, the photography Emma chose will speak to you. I’d like to highlight “Cuts of the Blade” and “The Lonely Tree.”As you read in Emma’s letter, the issue includes the winners of our short short story contest. On behalf of all of the Stone Soup staff—Emma, Sarah, Jane, and myself—I’d like to thank all of you who sent in your flash fiction to the contest. Whether you placed in our contest or not, I hope that you have found the format of short short fiction useful to you. William’s weekend projects Writing Below, you will find the first-place winner the Flash Fiction Contest, “The Pendulum,” by Sabrina Guo. For the writing project today, write an observation of something around your house, yard, or neighborhood. Make it short, no more than 300 words, which was the constraint that Sabrina was working under. You can describe a pet doing something, as Sabrina did, a place, a feeling, a meal, your room, anything. Unlike a longer story, you may find that there is no beginning, middle, or end as we normally think of them. You may just evoke a place, describing its look and feel but without there necessarily being any action, without there being a plot–something we’d call a vignette. But 300 words is plenty for a short scene that includes characters and even dialogue. As always, if you feel you have succeeded, then submit it to Stone Soup via the ‘submit’ button so Emma can read it. Art The drawing by Marco Lu that you see above, “Tick Tock,” combines the precision of scientific illustration with the imagination of a creative thinker. When I first looked at the drawing I saw a flea in a nautilus’s body. Next, it looked to me like a mechanical creature eating a bug. Now, I understand the image to be that of a single robotic creature. There is so much to look at in Marco’s masterful drawing, so many ideas in it, that I’d like to use it as the inspiration for today’s art project. What strikes me most about the drawing is the flea clock feels so present, so real—so weirdly, naturally alive. At least, that is how it strikes me. I think the real “how” of this drawing is not its accomplished technique. The “how” is in the ideas that Marco brings to life with his pencils. We all have different levels of drawing skill. What is is important to succeed at this project is not that your work is as precise as Marco’s but that your idea is equally well developed. It is the idea of this mechanical flea-like creature with a clock stuck to its side that that gives the work its power. We look forward too seeing what you come up with. Until next week, Highlights from the past week online Don’t miss the latest content from our Book Reviewers and Young Bloggers–keep checking our website to keep up with what’s new! This week, we have another nature video from blogger Sierra Glassman, this one of the wildlife she encountered on a trip to Pantanal, Brazil. Plus, a new book review from Kaiya and Silas, of They Poured Fire on us From the Sky by Benjamin Ajak, Benson Deng, Alephonsion Deng, and Judy A. Bernstein. From Stone Soup, January 2019, & winner of our 2018 Short Short Fiction Contest The Pendulum By Sabrina Guo, 12 Art: “Tick Tock” by Marco Lu, 12 Most nights, my cat stares at the grandfather clock in the living room. She is a grey tabby with splotches of black and white. Her eyes are golden and edged in greenish blue, like a miniature painting of the sun over a forest, or a mood ring, because you never know when the colors will change. When she is calm, you see more of the gold, flickering. But when she is scared, her pupils are large and black, and you notice more of the green, which is the way she looks before the clock at night—her back arched, her fur raised like small tufts of grass. She stares at the oval shape of the

Deep sympathy filled his heart for the writer of the tattered diary Illustration by Annakai Hayakawa Geshlider, 12, for her story, Journeys to the Past, published in Stone Soup, January/February 2008. A note from Sarah Ainsworth Hello, Stone Soup readers! You may know me (Sarah) from subscription help or the blog, but this week I wanted to talk to you about what I am studying: archives. If you have any idea about what an archive is, the picture that comes to mind may be of some dusty shelves full of books or artefacts that haven’t been used in years. But as an aspiring archivist, I want to dispel any notion you might have that archives are only about the past. I want to instead encourage you to think about how archives maintain their relevance when people (like you!) access them in the present. Here’s a very brief introduction to archives: In the Western tradition, archives are institutions charged with taking care of historical records. These records are organized by their creator, whether that creator is an individual (like an author) or an organization (like a university or a hospital). An important concept for archivists is “original order.” This means that when archives receive papers, they have to keep them in the order their creator intended. The archivist is in charge of arranging the collection, describing its contents, and facilitating public access to the records. There are all different kinds of archives. There are archives for countries, like the National Archives in the United Kingdom. Sometimes companies have their own archives, like Disney. And famous authors, like Mark Twain and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, frequently have their own archives. Museums and universities often have archives too. For some physical archives, you need to book an appointment in advance or email the archivist to say you are coming in. But here’s a secret—in many cases, you don’t need to! You can just walk in, talk to the archivist, and ask them for the documents you are interested in. Just be sure to check the website or contact the archive directly. But if you don’t want to leave your house, there are also tons of online archives or archives that have lots of digitized content! The Internet Archive is just one example. Stone Soup has a tradition of publishing excellent historical fiction. In 2002, we published “Kisses from Cecile,” which uses historical records as its inspiration. The author, Marie Agnello, is fascinated by letters she found written by Cécile Cosqueric, a girl in Paris, to her pen pal, Ruth, who happened to be Marie’s great-grandmother. These letters offer Marie a whole new world, a different way of understanding life in 1919. Are there any archives in your area that you can visit? If so, try to plan a trip with a parent or other adult. If not, don’t worry! Look to your attic or basement—or even your computer. What is in your own personal—or your family’s—archive? Maybe your grandparents saved old magazines or newspapers. And if you don’t have access to old documents, remember that there is so much available online. The Library of Congress is a good place to start, but some of my personal favorites are the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the New York Public Library’s Digital Collections. Find a record that speaks to you. What does it tell you about the past? What can you learn from it that you might not learn in a textbook? How can you invent a story around it? I would love to see what you come up with! Please reply to this newsletter or email me at sarah@stonesoup.com if you have any questions or comments about this activity. My best, This week on the blog This week on the blog we have something of a first: a nature video! See the beauty of Anna’s hummingbirds and learn about them with Sierra Glassman’s fascinating commentary. Plus, a review of John Steinbeck’s The Pearl by our regular reviewer, 12-year-old Vandana Ravi. Published in Stone Soup, January/February 2008, and in The Stone Soup Book of Historical Fiction Journeys to the Past Written and illustrated by Annakai Hayakawa Geshlider, 12 The floor creaked as Simon crept through his grandparents’ attic towards a large chest in the corner of the room that had caught his eye. In the dusty attic, cobwebs hung from the shelves and bookcases and a thick layer of dust blanketed the mildew-covered furniture. As he timidly tiptoed towards the chest, Simon felt an air of complete silence in the small room, a feeling that the whole world was waiting for him to discover what lay ahead. Carefully raising the key to the large brass lock that secured the maple-wood chest, Simon slowly turned it between his fingers. The key felt smooth and cool, and it fit perfectly in the keyhole. A satisfactory “click” sounded from the chest and he lifted the lid. Inside it was filled with many magnificent treasures: loads and loads of books. His eyes feasted upon the sight and he immediately reached for one of the musty spines, caution instantly gone from his body. And it was only a few moments later when Simon realized that what lay before him were not normal books. “Tuesday, December 23, 1986,” he read aloud into the dimly lit room. Once again he could almost feel the whole room listening to him. The ancient furniture, the peeling wallpaper covering the cracked walls, and even the spiders stopped weaving their webs to listen to Simon’s eloquent voice. Simon was good at reading aloud, and he knew it, for when he read aloud, he could nearly bring the words alive. “Dear Diary” he continued to his audience. “I know you aren’t much of a book, just a few old scraps bound together, but that was all I could find, just like everything is all I could find. When we are still hungry after dinner it is because those few scraps of meat and broken crackers were all I could find, and when we are cold at night it is because the small knit blanket was all I could find.

Casping shivered as the cold winter wind blew open the curtains Illustration by Anton Dymtchenko, 13 for “Secrets in the Forest” by Eleyna Rosenthal, 13, published in Stone Soup, November/December 2006. A note from Jane Levi I am writing this newsletter—the last of 2018—sitting by a roaring fire in the English countryside with my friend’s dog on one side and a large mug of tea on the other. Bliss! I love the days between Christmas and New Year’s Eve, when almost everyone is still on holiday, I have a pile of new books to read—if I’ve been lucky with my presents—and I can alternate between long walks, cosy fires, and another delicious snack. I hope all of you have your own version of holiday happiness, whichever holidays you celebrate, and that you are experiencing it as another new year approaches. As well as looking forward to 2019 and making plans for all the new projects we’ll be tackling and work we’ll be publishing next year, the holidays have been a time to reflect on what we accomplished in 2018. It’s quite extraordinary to be able to pile all the magazine issues and books up on the table and see just how many incredible pieces of art, poetry, stories, reviews, and blog posts you all made last year. Congratulations to all of our amazing contributors. Stone Soup would not exist without you, and we are constantly in awe of your creativity and hard work. Thank you! Last February we published one of my favorite stories of the year: an alternative fairy tale, called “The Waterfall,” by 12-year-old Natalie Warnke. In that story, the fairy-tale princess makes it clear that being a princess isn’t necessarily all it’s cracked up to be. For this week’s newsletter, I’ve chosen another kind of fantasy story about a princess: a classic princess-in-trouble-and-in-need-of-rescue (albeit by a rescuer with a twist!). I enjoyed rereading both stories and thinking about the different ways each one approached the genre. It was a useful reminder that there is always a new way to tell an old kind of story. I also love the illustration that goes with this week’s story, and the way it uses almost every trope of fairy-tale fantasy. It was a strong contender for the cover of our new edition of The Stone Soup Book of Fantasy Stories. Besides being a glorious snow scene, it has a perfectly turreted castle, a magical old-fashioned horse-drawn coach, and a princess with streaming golden hair. Even the feathered hat and moustache of the carriage driver give it a fantastical air! Perhaps some of you will take inspiration from the drawing or the stories and remake an old story in a new guise. If you do, please send it to Emma via our Submittable link so we can consider it for publication. And, whatever you do to bring in the new year, we wish you all a happy and merry one—and we cannot wait to see what you create in 2019! Happy new year! This week on the blog Don’t miss Maya V’s thoughtful piece on The Pittsburgh Synagogue, reflecting on how different people respond differently to terrible events. Year-end donations Thank you so much to all of you who have answered our call for donations over the last few weeks–and through the year. We are truly grateful and thrilled to feel the strength of support for our work. Click here if you didn’t receive the donor drive letter, or would like to read its message again. More free subscriptions given away in our 45th birthday promotion Congratulations to our latest winners!   Stone Soup is 45 years old this year. We are celebrating that milestone by offering free subscriptions and prizes as we strive to win 1,000 new subscribers before the end of the year. Every 45th subscriber receives a free subscription—more than twenty have already been awarded. The 450th subscriber has been sent their parcel of books, and their free subscription has been awarded. The 900th will shortly be on its way! The 1,000th subscriber (we are so nearly there) will receive a free subscription, plus all 10 books, plus a free site license for the institution (school or public library) of their choice. It’s easy to subscribe: visit this page. This particular promotion will continue until we meet our target or get to the end of the year, whichever comes first. Please share this with everyone you think would benefit from joining the readership of Stone Soup. And don’t forget, you (and anyone you share the code with) can get a 10% discount on your annual subscription using the code CHEER2018 on our subscription form.   Published in Stone Soup, November/December 2006, and in the Stone Soup Book of Fantasy Stories Secrets in the Forest By Eleyna Rosenthal, 13 Illustrated by Anton Dymtchenko, 13 Casping peered out of the curtains hiding her in the carriage speeding down a gravel road. A guard on the seat beside her grunted and reached over to pull her back inside. With a sigh of grief and understanding, Casping sat back against the silk-covered seat. She hung her head and let the burning sensation behind her eyes ascend. She let her soft blond hair cover her pale, angelic face as she wept. The carriage took a sharp turn, stopping her in the middle of a sob. She quickly reminded herself this was all for the best. She needed to stay hidden, and stay safe. Death was not an option; she needed to survive long enough to rule her parents’ kingdom. If she did not hide, then surely her family’s enemy, the powerful Rasha, would find and kill her. Casping knew she must accept her fate. Besides, her family must really love her to go to these measures of safety. Casping shivered as the cold winter wind blew open the curtains. She caught a glimpse of frost-covered trees and bushes and wondered what it would be like living in the middle of a deserted forest. At least she would have a cabin to live