About

“That was very nice of you, dear,” said his mom Illustrator Karina Jivkova,13 for They’re Pigs! by Adam Jacobs,11 Published January/February 2007. A note from William Rubel Even if you aren’t a kid, and don’t have a kid in your house, I am sure that you are aware that Summer vacation is almost upon us. My daughter reminded me today that there are only three days left of her middle school semester. Yikes! It is Summer, again! While Stone Soup is for kids, there is nothing kid-like about a great deal of what we publish. Look at this richly colored, well imagined, unusually framed illustration to our 2007 story, “They’re Pigs!”. I am in awe of how this drawing is organized, at the depth of observation and technical skill with which it is drawn. Note the shadow under the bed and the shadow cast by the vase on the night table. The design of that table, the folds of the sheets and curtains, the tactile feeling of the carpet are all masterful. I am also struck by the the child’s gesture, hand on head, and the fabulous directed gazes of the pigs themselves. It is a sumptuous drawing for an entertaining story. Scroll down to start reading the story, and click through to our website to finish it. Enjoy! Read the June issue now, and get inspired by animal art People say, “Don’t judge a book by its cover. I’m going to disagree with that today. You can judge the June issue of Stone Soup by its cover. The stories, poems, photographs, drawings and classic book review our young creators sent us (and Emma Wood selected) for this issue all live up to the promise of the wonderful cover. This portrait of ‘Red Fern’ is a truly great animal portrait. Hannah Parker, the photographer, is 13. Congratulations, Hannah, and thank you for sharing your work with Stone Soup! Scientists are doing a lot of work on animal cognition. The very clear conclusion, so far, is that animals are much cleverer than we humans had been giving them credit for. I have no idea what Red Fern is thinking. But I think one of the great strengths of this image is that it conveys the sense that the goat is not only alive, but aware. They are weird goat eyes, for sure, but even so, Hannah presents us with a goat that has personality, and real presence. In a newspaper I recently read the suggestion that governments should also count the animals we live with when they take a census of their citizens. My daughter and I live with about twenty-five creatures: a cat, rabbits, chickens, and aviary birds. The project for this weekend is to take your camera or your sketchbook, and take or make portraits of animals. I am using “animals” in its largest sense, so I’m including fish, birds, reptiles, and even insects, in addition to mammals. I want you to try to capture a sense of the animal’s personality. As this is a portrait, the head should take up a substantial portion of the frame or page. If you are using a camera, then take lots of pictures so you have many to choose from. Part of the art of photography is recognizing which of the many pictures you took is the “keeper.” As always, if you think you created something Stone Soup might publish, then send it to Editor Emma for her consideration by uploading the image at the Stone Soup submissions page. Meanwhile, I encourage all of you to check out the June issue at our website. If you like what you see, and aren’t already a subscriber, then please subscribe for the young writer or artist in your life. Subscribers can read the full issue online or download it as a PDF to read on their tablet. We also have print copies ready to go at our mailing house, so if you prefer you can order it in print. Until next week Read more at stonesoup.com Don’t miss the latest content from our Book Reviewers and Young Bloggers at stonesoup.com! Book Review: Moo by Sharon Creech, reviewed by Carlyle Bryant, 11  Book Review: Almost Autumn, by Marianne Kaurin, reviewed by Claire Buchanan, 12 Nature: Help Protect Trees by Antara Book Review: Aru Shah and the End of Time by Roshani Chokshi, reviewed by Nina Vigil, 11 Book Review: Holes by Louis Sachar, reviewed by Abhi Sukhdial, 10 Support Stone Soup through Amazon Smile Did you know that you can support the Children’s Art Foundation, the non-profit behind Stone Soup, through the Amazon Smile program? Each purchase made by a supporter contributes a tiny amount so that magically, just like the original stone soup in the fairy tale, the more who chip in, the richer the pot will become. All you have to do to effortlessly raise money for Stone Soup is go to the Amazon Smile portal. You will be asked to choose the charity you’d like to support. Once you have chosen, 0.5% of the value of all your purchases will go to the charitable organization in question. You can change your designation at any time. Find us in the US Amazon program by searching for “Children’s Art Foundation – Stone Soup.” It takes a little retraining to switch to smile.amazon.com as one’s default Amazon URL, but once you do then every time you buy something from Amazon you help us out. Your support matters. Thank you! From Stone Soup January/February 2007 They’re Pigs! By Adam Jacobs, 11 Illustrated by Karina Jivkova,13 It was a beautiful morning in California. The ocean sparkled… the trees were a lush green… what a perfect time for the loud, unwelcome buzz of the alarm clock. Ryan got out of bed and shut the thing off. A little too suddenly, he decided, as he began to grow dizzy and weary. He staggered across the room to the door. He needed breakfast. Now. What day is it, anyway? he wondered. The calendar said it was Thursday. Thursday! Thursday was wake-up-the-family-in-a-weird-and-obnoxious-way day! He had been waiting for this

Slowly, the Faeries appeared and sat on the daisies in the circle like chairs Illustrator Susannah Benjamin, 13 for The Faerie Circle by Alana Yang, 12 Published March/April 2007 A note from William Rubel The first Stone Soup Science Issue is in the works. The deadline for submissions for this issue, which will include fiction, art and nonfiction writing, is July 1, so this a good beginning-of-Summer project. The nonfiction element is a more unusual one for Stone Soup, and Editor Emma has asked me to explain in this Newsletter what the two kinds of science nonfiction writing we are looking for are, so you can start to think about your submissions. A few weeks ago, I was given a tour of a United States Department of Agriculture laboratory by a scientist who worked there. He was so excited about his work! He was so excited about what he was studying! He was so engaged in his stories about the science he was doing, and his work was so creative, that I became jealous! I thought, wow!, what a great thing it is to be a scientist! We are looking for writing from young scientists that communicates that kind of enthusiasm to us, your readers. One kind of science writing we are looking for is writing that describes science projects or experiments. A science project might include an insect or rock collection, or the careful observation of the behaviors of a pair of pet parakeets. A science experiment is something you have done as a working experimental scientist in which you test a hypothesis through experimentation. For those of you who have participated in a school science fair you may already have science projects that you could write up for Stone Soup. Whether you are an observational scientist or an experimental scientist, in the end you have to tell people what you’ve done. What have you observed? What do the observations mean? Or, what was your experiment? And what did it explain? All science ends in story. What Stone Soup is looking for are stories written when you are working with your “science” hat on, that will engage other Stone Soup readers. The second kind of nonfiction science writing we are looking for is writing on scientific issues, like global warming, or plate tectonics, or snow leopards. Can you write about these subjects in a way that makes the subject accessible and interesting and engaging for non-scientists? There are lots of examples of writers who can. Reporters for the science sections of newspapers, like the New York Times, are science writers who can engage non-experts. A marine biologist and conservationist called Rachel Carson wrote a book called Silent Spring in 1962 that had a lasting impact on the environmental movement all over the world. She told her science story in a way that captured imaginations. That is what we are looking for for Stone Soup. The Stone Soup Science Issue also includes fiction, poetry, photography, and art inspired by science. You might research an animal and become very knowledgeable about how that animal lives, about its behaviors, and about the way it moves. And with that knowledge you might make a model or a painting, or write a story with that animal as a character. You might write a piece of prose or a poem that is inspired by close observation of nature. This could include a natural place that you love. One of the most extraordinary works of art I have ever seen, a painting I think about a lot, is a small watercolor by Albrecht Dürer called The Great Piece of Turf, of a patch of grass with wild flowers. It is painted with the eye of a scientist, and with the feelings and heart of an artist. We are looking forward to seeing what happens when you try to combine those things, too! Getting ready for our June issue Don’t do it! Do not read your Stone Soup issues on your tablet in the bath! This is asking for trouble. My excuse is that I had started the bath water running just as I started reading the printer’s proof of the June 2018 issue, and I just didn’t want to stop reading. I’d like to remind all of you who want to read offline, wherever you like, that the PDFs of each month’s issue are available to subscribers for download on the first of the month. A few of you have asked about the Kindle format. We are working on it, and ought to be able to offer Kindle editions soon. We are also back in print. All of the 2018 issues up to May are in our online store now for sale as single issues; the June issue has been printed, is on its way to our mailing house as I write, and will be ready to be sent out on June 1st. And finally, for our adult readers: please take a look at the section below on our privacy policy, which we have updated to ensure we are in compliance with new European legislation, and a reminder of your control over what email we send you.Enjoy the rest of May, and don’t forget to make the most of the fabulous May issue on our homepage now, while you wait for June to come at the end of next week. Until then, Emails, Privacy and GDPR As you may know, on May 25th 2018 the new European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) privacy laws came into effect.< You currently receive this email newsletter, which contains the latest news about Stone Soup online, our print offerings including books, and offers, reminders about submissions and contests. You also receive emails notifying you when the new monthly issue of the magazine is published online. If you wish to opt-out and stop receiving our emails, you may do so at any time by unsubscribing from this list. The link allowing you to do so is at the bottom of every email from us, including this one. As a non-profit devoted to children’s creativity our work focuses on championing a broad range of creative outlets for our young readers, contributors and artists through our publishing programme, events, newsletters and publications. Our ability to ensure a vibrant future depends on us being

With each round of the pedals I felt more confident that this was the right thing to do Illustrator Sofia deGraff-Ford, 13 for Friends Forever? by Michael Scognamiglio,13 Published September/October 2006. A note from William Rubel In the last two months I have been to Taipei, Philadelphia, Charleston, and Mount Vernon, Virginia! Whew! As I write this at home on a lovely California spring afternoon, the sky blue, the Pacific ocean with its cloud bank hanging on the horizon just a few minutes away, this in-your-face portrait of a bike rider makes me want to jump up from my desk, put on my helmet and head out the door! At least for me, Sofia deGraff-Ford has done a fabulous job evoking the feeling of riding a bike. I think that evoking feelings is one function of art. If any Newsletter readers care to go on a bike ride (or feel the energy of another outdoor activity) this weekend, and then turn the experience into art, go for it. I am sure our Editor, Emma Wood, will be interested in seeing what you come up with. Flash Fiction Contest: Reminder! The deadline for our Flash Fiction Contest is midnight, June 15. Flash fiction is the art of the short-short story. Or, perhaps better put as the short-short-short-impossibly-and-yet-somehow-doable short story. How short? Three hundred words short! I’ll be honest. When Emma emailed me that she wanted us to have a contest for flash fiction I had no idea what she had in mind. So, I did what I am sure most of you do: I looked up flash fiction in the Wikipedia. The term means ultra short fiction. There isn’t a precisely defined word count, but the upper limit seems to be about 1000 words. Emma has structured our contest to have a limit of 300 words. Within that limit, your story must be complete. One of the most famous writers of all time is the ancient Greek writer, Aesop. He lived from 620 BCE to 546 BCE, more than 2500 years ago. He is famous for his fables. The English translation of his fable about the mouse who helps the lion is just 167 words. Here is an index to all of the Aesop fables. Check them out. Aesop’s flash fiction is some of the most famous writing there has ever been. To still be read after 2500 years! That is something. My father did a lot of writing over the last twenty years of his life. He wrote several volumes of his memoirs. A couple of authors I had read in my twenties who wrote (what I now know is) flash fiction had really impressed me with the power of the short-short form. I’d read some of my father’s stories and I’d say, “Dad, these stories are great. But, Dad, these two paragraphs here are brilliant! They tell your whole story.” But, unlike Aesop, he couldn’t bear to give up all those words he’d worked so hard to bring together! But, we think maybe some of you can! Please go to the Flash Fiction contest page and read Emma’s guidelines and suggestions. If you don’t feel instantly inspired then perhaps try going through stories you have already written looking for parts that could be extracted and polished into a tiny jewel. I have one last piece of advice. This is based on my own experience as a writer. When your work is finished, but before you send it in to our contest, read it aloud to yourself. Listen to what you have written. This will enable you to catch tiny errors, like duplicate words that you might not have potted when reading it. And, more importantly, you will hear whether the piece sounds perfect to your ear.  Make minor changes, if needed, and then send it in. Good Luck! Creative responses to current events One last thing. As I think most of you know there was another school shooting on Friday. This time, in a small town in Texas. Emma has recently received a few pieces that talk about school shootings, and we thought this would be a good time to share them with our readers in a blog post. You can read our special feature, Kids React to Gun Violence, at our website. If any of you reading the Newsletter who are age 13 and under have something you want to say about the subject of school shootings in America, then please send it to us. There are links for submitting stories, poems, and art on the submissions page. If you have written nonfiction or something that doesn’t seem to fit in a category you see there, then please upload them to the blog category. We hope you are all getting prepared for a creative Summer. Until next week   This week on the Stone Soup Blog Don’t miss our Special Feature: Kids React to Gun Violence, with three newly published pieces of work: ‘There is a lockdown on October 23, 2015’ by Aidan McClure, 7 ‘Lullaby’ by Rebecca Beaver, 13 ‘Seventeen Graves’ by Kate Kuan, 11Also new this week, a thought-provoking feature on another important topic: Be Aware of Global Warming, by Antara And finally, this weekend seems like a good time to revisit Lucy Regnier Kline’s piece from March 2018, 5 Ways Children Can Make a Difference   From Stone Soup September/October 2006 Friends Forever? By Michael Scognamiglio,13 Illustrated by Sofia deGraff-Ford, 13   “Wheeee!” We must have been going fifty, maybe sixty miles per hour in his new Whaler speedboat, and I loved every minute of it. Janet, lying down in the bow to perfect her supermodel tan, gripped onto the handrails at this sudden shift of speed. I laughed next to Jesse, my six-foot-one, fifteen-year-old friend from two houses down. His sandy-blond hair was erupting from his worn Boston Red Sox cap that looked like it went through just as much abuse as the team itself. His emerald eyes were shielded by a brand new, gleaming pair of black Oakleys so as to impress the ladies. I on