“Just then the Rose appeared with her rosellas” Illustrator Cameron Osteen, 13, for Fort Cuniculus by Ralph Kabo, 11. Published September/October 2005. A note from William Rubel Well, this week has been a strange week. I was supposed to go to Napa to give a talk on the history of bread. The conference was to begin on Tuesday and I was to speak on Wednesday. On Monday, only vaguely aware there was a fire near Napa, I was surprised by a call from the conference organizers saying the conference was cancelled. The speakers were then asked to go to San Francisco to meet for a couple of hours to at least talk. The city was covered by a haze. The smoke was dense enough to make one’s eyes sting. One of the speakers had been staying with friends and on Sunday night, a couple of hours after the fires started, was awakened by his friends who told him he needed to pack up and leave. By the time he got to the bottom of the country road he was driving through fire on both sides of the road. Yes. Scary. Today, Friday, there is a haze and distinct smell of smoke where I live, in Santa Cruz, 130 miles from the fire. Strange and even frightening times. If any of our readers were evacuated, lost houses, or live in the San Francisco Bay Area and know the area well we’d like to read your writing about the fire, whether non-fiction or fiction, or see your art. Writing about conflict My colleague, Jane Levi, sent me a link to an article about Bana al-Abed, an eight-year-old Syrian girl who tweeted about her life in Aleppo. Now as a refugee in Turkey, she continues to tweet about the war in Syria. I recommend this article from the New York Times that introduces her to the many of us who have not been following her twitter feed. Her book,Dear World: A Syrian Girl’s Story of War and Plea for Peace was just published and is available in bookshops and at Amazon.com. If you read the book, then please submit your review to Stone Soup. We would like to read and publish art and writing by children who are caught up the many conflicts around the world. If you might be interested in helping us to give a voice to children who are living through difficult events in the Middle East, Afghanistan, Sudan, or elsewhere, please reply to this newsletter. This goes for Stone Soup-aged readers or adults. I am flying to London on Monday to work on my book for three weeks (I plan on writing most days) so I will not promise a prompt response, but please write, anyway, and I promise I will get back to you. Several of you answered our call for young bloggers. Thank you. We should have several new blogs up and running to announce next week. I also received a letter this week from Ruth Nakazibwe, who lives in Uganda. She who wrote a wonderful story, ‘The Magician and the Birds, that we published in 1997. It is always a pleasure to hear from Stone Soup authors. Do keep writing to us! So, until next week, William Using objects in place of dialogue La fille mal gardée – Pas de ruban from Act I (The Royal Ballet) 188,665 views La Fille mal Garde is a wonderful comic ballet. It was first performed in the 1780s which makes it one of the oldest ballets that is still performed. The scene I include here is a duet between Lise and Colas, the man she loves. They dance with a ribbon. They wind and unwind the ribbon tying and untying each other. The scene takes place very early in the ballet—very early in the story as their relationship begins to take a more serious turn. As a ballet is a story told without words, this ribbon can be thought of as taking the place of dialogue. I want you to imagine what they would be saying to each other if this were a story told with words rather than a story told through movement. I feel pretty certain that they’d be having a fast moving, flirtatious conversation. You can tell the same story in many different ways—for example, through images, words, music, dance, and video. I am including this here today to get you thinking about how you might tell the same story differently as you shift from one story-telling format to another. From Stone Soup March/April 2000 A Puzzling Story By Erin Brock, 13 Illustrated by Nikkie Zanevsky, 13 Rachel loved puzzles. Jigsaw puzzles. Thousand-piece clear-blue-sky and flowery-meadow puzzles. Cute little puppy-dog-face puzzles. Any kind of puzzle suited her fancy. She loved the challenge of putting one together, piece by piece. Discovering the piece that fit was always thrilling and a small victory over the manufacturer who had labeled the puzzle “difficult.” For her thirteenth birthday, Rachel received a package in the mail from her Aunt Lola, who shared her passion for puzzles. When she ripped open the box, she found a one-thousand- five-hundred-piece puzzle with a painting of a colonial farm and the surrounding forest on it. It was very detailed, with a mother working in the garden while two girls hung up the wash and a boy led the cows out to pasture. A farmer worked in the fields and a large wooden barn stood off to the left. At the edge of the field was a forest and a gravel road running through it. The farmhouse and various animals were also included in the busy scene. Rachel sat working on her puzzle: “Colonial Farm: A Painting by George Smits.” She put together most of the puzzle pieces and was working on the forest. Being the imaginative type, Rachel thought the girls didn’t look like they were having much fun. She wondered if those colonial girls could ever have fun like she had, perhaps in the forest. She thought, That
Newsletter
Saturday Newsletter: October 7, 2017
“Ligiri’s only comfort was a fifty-foot baobab tree, which reminded Ligiri of her kind grandfather” Illustrator Rita Rozenbaoum, 10, for Ligiri, a Dogon Cinderella by the illustrator. Published November/December, 2001. A note from William Rubel What a dramatic painting! Intense! A tree and a person in silhouette backed by a glowing orange sky. Like the poem we feature today from our archive, it’s highly evocative. It makes me think of heat, of sunsets, of Africa, of times and places where women carry baskets on their heads. The silhouettes seem simple, but every line is carefully considered: there is no room for mistakes in the deep black outlines. What does it make you think and feel? Submissions & Contests Firstly, there is never a deadline for most issues of Stone Soup. Just upload stories, photographs, poems, reviews, music—whatever you have created—whenever you like at our submissions page, and your work will be considered for publication. However, contests and special issues do have deadlines. The December issue is closing this week so this weekend is the last minute for the Food Issue. We have some very good material—some wonderful stories, recipes, poetry, art, and photographs. But, there is always room for more—so, if you have something to say that involves food in some way, then please say it and submit it by Monday. Several contributions have come in for the Selfie contest and the deadline is still weeks away. You can work with the selfie as a self-portrait but you can also, of course, include friends, family, and pets in the picture, too. As you can submit up to three images you can also create a set of linked images that tell a story. Author interviews—for teachers and readers We have just re-edited our dozen or so interviews with Stone Soup authors. One of the changes we made was to take off the background music, which we were finding a bit distracting We have also decided to show the question that our authors are answering on the screen, so that if you are a teacher showing the videos in class and look away from the screen, when you look back up at it you will still be able to see what question is being answered. If you are a teacher, please check out the videos. I think you’ll find them useful in your classroom. If you are an aspiring Stone Soup writer I think you will find what these Stone Soup authors have to say of value for your own writing. And, if you are a current or former Stone Soup writer or Honor Roll recipient, and after looking at a couple of our existing videos think you’d like to be interviewed, too, then please reply to this Newsletter letting me know you are interested. I’ll pass you on to my colleague Sarah who will get you set up. This week’s poem from the archives I’d like to say something about the poem that is included, below. I think that it is unusually beautiful and powerful. It is definitely one to read aloud as well as to read silently. The non-English words are evocative. Without knowing what they mean they bring us to this other place—this lost home. In saying these words we can feel the poet reaching out to this place she loves and has left, and as you read on you feel in the language her longing for family and, especially, her dead father, left behind in the old land. This poem works even if you don’t know what attieke or aloko are, or who are the Baoule. But the power of the internet is that you can find out. The author, Soujourner, is writing about the West African country of Cȏte d’Ivoire. I don’t want to present this like homework—but I will say that if you want to both get deeper into this poem and get to know more about Soujourner’s influences, then spend a little time on the internet reading about Cȏte d’Ivoire and looking up some of the poem’s references. You can also use her work as inspiration for your own poetry. Imagine yourself having moved to a different country, no longer speaking your native language outside of your house. You write a poem in the language of your new country, but you include a few words of the old one to express the link between who are now and where you came from. See how evocative you can make your own writing with just a few well-chosen words. Until next week, William School Site Licenses and donations-in-kind This last couple of weeks teachers have been signing up on our website for trial subscriptions to Stone Soup in the form of site licenses, and some generous donors also contacted us to purchase licenses for their local schools. We are very encouraged! Thank you! Site licenses allow anyone in a school to use Stone Soup. The license also allows students to access Stone Soup from home, just as they can access other school resources. If you are a teacher please request a trial subscription. If you are the parent of Stone Soup-aged student, please introduce Stone Soup to your child’s teacher, or contact us to discuss how you might help us get Stone Soup into your local classrooms. From Stone Soup May/June 2006 Homesick By Soujourner Salil Ahebee, 10 Leaving my dear country made me sad, made me miss all that was worth remembering the food like foutou the food like attieke the food like aloko. Leaving my African country made me mourn, made me long for the people like the Baoule the people like the Senefou…/more
Weekend Newsletter: October 1, 2017
Stone Soup, October 2017, Volume 45 #8. Cover photograph: ‘Scrapes of Light’ by Delaney Slote, 10. A note from William Rubel Perhaps it was silly, and I’m sorry if you missed our regular Saturday Newsletter yesterday. But as today is October 1, and our latest issue is published today, I decided this week to make the Saturday Newsletter the Sunday—or Weekend—Newsletter plus new issue alert. Stone Soup’s new life is taking shape. We are producing more frequent issues (this is our second monthly issue) that are each a little shorter and also more focused than were the bi-monthly print editions. I can tell you that I have never been happier with the scale of the issues or the quality of what we are publishing than I am now. I encourage all of you to go to our website and check out the new October issue. Non-subscribers are entitled to several articles per month while our subscribers, of course, have full, unlimited access to everything. I want you to hear from the editor, Emma Wood, to get a flavour of what to expect this month. In her Editor’s Note she talks about the written work: “Fear, anger, anxiety, the elements—in the stories and poems in this issue, the characters and speakers are all confronting something big and frightening. Time seems to slow down, and nearly stop altogether, in both “Game Time” and “Perfection,” as nerves take over. In “Facing the Hurricane,” the speaker faces not only a dangerous storm, but his own (mis)understanding of his father. Meanwhile, Evelyn faces her loneliness at the thought of her best friend Abigail moving to Korea in “Only an Ocean Away”. In the poem, “I Remember the Water and the Wind,” the speaker discovers her own strength while encountering a storm head-on, and in “Candlenut Tree,” the speaker faces down—and overcomes—her anger “like lava ready to explode into the air”. If that isn’t enough to get you clicking on the link to start reading, I’d like to call your attention to the art in the issue as well. This is now the second issue in which art is published for its own sake, rather than as an illustration to a story. It’s been a wonderful process to review submissions of work that both stands in its own right and—as I hope you’ll agree—complements the writing in the magazine, starting with “Scrapes of Light”, the striking and evocative cover image. You will find three other photographs in the issue, including a second but very different photograph taken through a rain-spattered window (“Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada”), that conveys a profound melancholy and stillness. “Girl Asleep”, with its different sense of calm and gorgeous muted colour palette feels almost painterly in its framing, textures and timeless subject, while “The Look” gives us a portrait that stands for itself, popping out of its dark background and, at the same time, inviting a thousand questions abut what that look might mean. I’d also like to mention the exquisite and accomplished watercolor, “Mountain Quail.” Whenever I look at it it makes me feel calm. It is a gentle but powerful work of art. If you are interested in photography—whether you are a Stone Soup aged reader or a grownup—I think you will find the photographs in this issue moving, and I hope they will inspire you to pick up a camera and go out into the world looking for images and ideas that engage you in some way. And if you are someone who loves art in any form, why not send us a review of an artwork or exhibit you have enjoyed recently? Thank you so much to all our wonderful Stone Soup writers and artists. Great work. Updates: Selfie Contest and December Food Issue I just discovered that while I announced our second Selfie Contest last week I had not made the Selfie Contest submission category live on our site. My apologies. The category is now up, so if you had tried and failed to upload your selfie contribution, you can do so today. And, if you haven’t entered the contest yet, please read the post on our website and start taking pictures! The deadline for the December Food Issue is coming up. We have some great submissions—thank you. If you still have ideas for that issue that you haven’t sent to us yet, there is still time—but don’t leave it too long! And of course we welcome submissions any time on any topic that inspires you. Keep on sharing your creations with us! Until next week, William Business Update Well, I’m sure that all of you who have small businesses know that one often finds that everything takes longer to accomplish than you thought it would. It’s been hard work managing our transition to digital by ourselves, and we’re very happy to report that our transfer back to the fulfilment house that handled print subscriptions for Stone Soup when we were sending issues to your homes is now nearly complete. As soon as we have our new, improved, subscription form in place you will be able to renew, subscribe and select from all of our Stone Soup packages, including placing orders for our new print Annual. You will be able to choose between digital only, print Annual only, or (the best deal), a combined digital and print Annual subscription. I am pretty confident that next week I will be able to announce that we are back in business with a more industry standard subscription form. Our Newsletter readers will be the first to know! Thank you, as always, for your support, William From Stone Soup November/December 2005 A Wider World By Christy Joy Frost, 13 Illustrated by Vivien Rubin, 13 Kayla dropped the laundry basket down by the washing machine. This was the last load to bring down. She was hot from running up and down the stairs all morning. She rolled up her sleeves and looked around the basement. The unfinished cement walls looked bare and cold, brightened only by the dabs of paint she had splotched there when she was five. She climbed the wooden stairs to the kitchen where her mother
