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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

“That’s practice for today, so dry off and go home” Illustrator Alicia Betancourt, 13 for Guts and a Few Strokes by Eve Asher, 10 Published March/April 2002. A note from William Rubel I am going to keep my comments short his week as I don’t want to detract from Editor Emma Wood’s call for reviews of classic books, below. What I’d like to say today is that being a reader and being a writer go hand-in-hand. While it isn’t true that all readers are writers, it is true that all writers are readers. In the last two months, our colleague Sarah Ainsworth has posted approximately thirty book reviews by our young reviewers. This is nearly three times the number of book reviews we used to publish in an entire year! Many thanks to Sarah, and an especial thanks to all of you who are now regularly sending us reviews. We love to be able to publish your thoughts to share with other readers! We also love to see the comments that people are leaving in the book review section. Anna Rowell, reviewer of the graphic novel Young Beowulf: the Bloodbound Oath has received a comment and a thank you from the author himself (thank you, Alexis Farjado!), while one of our teacher readers, Sue Granzella, is taking up our reviewers’ recommendation of Save me a Seat. Well done, reviewers Sarina Banker and Nandini Krishnan! As Emma is talking about classics, I would  also like to refer you to the three reviews of classics that have just been posted to the website: The Iliad, reviewed by Che Amaral. A Midsummer Night’s Dream reviewed by Justin Park, and Oliver Twist reviewed by Vivaan Kartik. One of the signs that these are ‘classics’ is that I don’t need to tell you who wrote them. If you haven’t read them yet and want to know more, their reviews are a great place to start. Until next week William A call for reviews of the classics from Editor Emma As you know, the team at Stone Soup has been hard at work bringing our new digital-only book reviews section to life on the website. We hope you will visit it and be inspired to read more books! As we worked on this we realized that there are lots of reviews missing. Many of the classic books that lit up my childhood—and continue to inspire and change kids around the world—simply do not have a Stone Soup review. Harry Potter, The Hunger Games, The Wind in the Willows, Charlotte’s Web, and The Golden Compass—among many, many more—are missing from our archives. We can’t believe it! Do you have a classic that you love? Or one you’ve been meaning to read? Or maybe you just need to fill out your summer reading list! Whatever the case, consider taking a look at our list of classic books in need of reviewing. We would love to hear your thoughtful, intelligent, enthusiastic, or even negative takes on any and all of these books.  We would also love to hear from you if you think there are classic books missing from this list and missing from our website, even if you don’t want to review them yourself. We are sure that someone will! A friend of mine who edits book reviews and writes them for a living told me that the best book reviews read like a smart conversation between the writer and their closest friend. I hope you will keep that in mind as you begin working on your reviews. When you’re ready, click the Submit button in this Newsletter or at our website to send them to us. Happy reading and writing! Emma   “Hey, you guys, we oughta show Brown what we’re made of!” From Stone Soup March/April 2002 Guts and a Few Strokes Written by Eve Asher, 10 Illustrated by Alicia Betancourt, 13 Stroke. Stroke. Breathe left. Straight legs, follow through with the arms. These are usually my thoughts while swimming the hundred-meter freestyle. For those of you who don’t know, that’s two laps. I can do it in about a minute and twenty seconds, sometimes more, sometimes less. Oh, and my name is Sophia, been swimming for five years in that very pool, been on the team for three years. Had I been going more slowly and looking ahead, I would have noticed that the seemingly endless deep blue of the chlorinated water was lightening into white. I would have noticed that I could no longer see the stems of sunlight poking through the water like sprouts poking through the air. This time, all I noticed was the green line on the bottom of the pool which would mean I would do a flip turn and start on another length if I wasn’t on my last one. I knew what to expect. I felt the warm sunlit wall under my hand. Done! You know, when I’m underwater, I can’t hear or see the rest of the world. I’ve escaped to what I call Blueland. In Blueland, I don’t have a meet in two days, I’m not stressing over fraction homework, I’m not watching whatever I eat because I’m allergic to peanuts, I’m just floating in blue and relaxing. Everything fades away into the blue. But, unfortunately, I’m not in Blueland now and I wasn’t then. Coach Morris called us together. “Did you notice how Sophia’s arms came out of the water straight? That’s following through. Keep that in mind. Remember, not only do swimmers with correct strokes go faster, they also don’t get disqualified. That’s practice for today, so dry off and go home.” Every practice ended with “dry off and go home.” It signaled us to disperse, which we did. Always. “That’s practice for today, so dry off and go home” Later, while gossiping in the locker room, Maggie, whom we trusted to know the most about the pool (no one knew why), gave us startling news. “The pool’s getting a new manager and they might fire Coach Morris,” she said, amazingly calm. Out came a scream from all of us of,

“Wait!” yelled Veronica. She could barely run in her heels. Illustrator Natalia Dunyak, 13 for her story Galactic Rebels, Published January/February 2015. A note from Editor Emma Wood Congratulations to our Science Fiction Contest Winners! First Place ($80):  “Middlenames” by Thomas Faulhaber, 13 Second Place ($40): “Young Eyes” by Allie Aguila, 12 Third Place ($20):  “The Mystical Creatures of Blue Spout Bay,” by Marlena Rohde, 12 Fourth Place ($10): “Sunk” by Benjamin Mitchell, 13 Honorable Mentions: “The Transmitter” by Sabrina Guo, 12 “Holding On,” by Macy Li, 12 “Shhh” by Harper Miller, 11 I have to admit: when we put out a call for our science fiction contest, I was nervous. Even growing up, I didn’t read a lot of science fiction, and I certainly don’t read a lot of it now. Because I’m not as familiar with it as a genre, I didn’t feel very comfortable with the idea of judging a contest! But, once I started reading, I realized what a good reminder this contest was—a reminder of the fact that a good story is a good story, regardless of genre. The stories that stood out to us were the ones that would have stood out to us in general submissions as well. They were stories that used exciting language, that created realistic worlds, that kept us engaged, that created suspense, and that ultimately led us to a deeper understanding of ourselves and our world. Many stories stood out to us for different reasons, but the few that we chose were really remarkable: “Middlenames,” the winning story, offers an imaginative critique of religion and class through an invented society that assigns you a middlename—which determines your identity for life—at birth. “Young Eyes” explores the dangers of technology, and both “Mystical Creatures of Blue Spout Bay” and “Sunk” take radically different approaches to climate change. We’re excited to share the full stories with you in a special Science issue that will be published this September. Congratulations to all our winners, and thank you for your wonderful work! Your Amazon voucher prizes will be with you this weekend. The September Science Special Issue We need more science-related work to complement our contest winners’ stories in the science special issue. To that end: we are putting out a call for all science-related and science-inspired nonfiction, poetry, and art submissions to include in our September issue! Have you completed a science project recently? Are you fascinated by dinosaurs or comets? Do you love to photograph butterflies? If so, we would love to hear from you. You can either submit: a scientifically-inspired poem, drawing, photograph, collage, or sculpture a write-up of a science project you completed (this might include images, to illustrate processes you discuss, or different stages of an experiment) a researched nonfiction essay about a subject that interests you (this might also include a personal narrative about your interest) Please write with any questions and please submit your work soon! The deadline for this issue is July 1st. May 2018 issue online now–and in print very soon Our May issue is out this week, and I hope you all take some time over the weekend (or whenever you have time) to enjoy the range of poetry, stories and art we’ve chosen for you this month. The issue is online now, and subscribers can download a pdf version to print at home or browse on an offline reader of your choice. We are also now back in print! Individual issues are for sale in our online store(amazon.com/stonesoup). January to April 2018 are in stock and shipping now; and May 2018 is available for pre-order. The printing presses are running, and copies of our May issue will be with us and ready to ship to you in the middle of the month. Whichever format you choose, please enjoy all the wonderful work our young authors and artists produce, tell your friends about it, and leave a comment at our website if there is something you particularly respond to. It’s your support that makes Stone Soup all that it is. Until next week, Emma   It was so realistic it didn’t look like a hologram From Stone Soup January/February 2015   Galactic Rebels   Written and illustrated by Natalia Dunyak, 13     The Galactic Soldier Code To protect the peace of the Milky Way, To fight bravely on land, sea, air, and space, To execute the orders of our superiors, We are the Galactic Soldiers. Jade’s cell was a small, cramped space, with bare white walls and floor, except for a small bed, sink, toilet, and mirror. She paced back and forth, her legs burning and the tattoo of her boots soothing her. I’m running out of time, she thought bitterly. I need to get out of here. Beads of sweat collected on her forehead, her heart beating like a drum in her chest. She sighed and pressed her back against the wall. She stopped to look at her reflection. She was startled by it. Her deep blue eyes were shaken with fear. A hunk of black hair covered the left side of her face. The one blue highlight stood out. She eyed her uniform—tight black shirt and pants, made for ease in slipping in and out of spacesuits. The purple band on her right arm finally caught her attention. The band had two thin letters, GS, and a crude drawing of an eagle circling Earth in orbit. It was the symbol of the Galactic Soldiers. Jade was part of this group, the space combat branch of the military, founded shortly after the discovery of other planetary life. The soldiers were trained to be diplomats and defend the galaxy from harm. They went through intense training and had to understand the ins and outs of astrophysics. Jade excelled through training and rose through the ranks. She and other officers were sent on the spacecraft Athena to travel to the Alpha Centauri solar system. This mission would determine the fate of the Earth. She sighed as tears swelled in her eyes; she buried her face in her hands as