Newsletter

The Hunting Season, a novel By Tara Prakash Buy from Amazon.com A Note from William Rubel Firstly, if you haven’t kept up, please read about changes in Stone Soup at this post. If you are a Stone Soup subscriber, please also see the Stone Soup News section, below. And now for the main message of today’s newsletter: Tara Prakash, a longtime Stone Soup reader and Stone Soup honor roll writer, has written a novel, The Hunting Season. As a book author myself, I can assure you, nothing makes the work of writing more rewarding than people buying your book. I encourage each of you to buy Hunting Season. It is available at Amazon.com. I am buying Tara’s book for my daughter as a present for her eleventh birthday. We will be on a camping trip in the high Sierras then—the perfect place for my daughter to read this book rich with bears, wolves, and nature. When you go to Amazon you will be able to read large excerpts from the book. I want to include here the prologue which provides the setting for the novel:”A golden leaf fell on the cold steady ground. Trees, bursting to life, stood strong in Wyoming, Grand Tetons and Yellowstone National Park. Maple trees showed continued brightness in the middle of the gloom and ferns flamed scarlet. The birches and aspens glowed yellow, holding a cheerfulness of their own. As winter exploded into spring, flowers bloomed and grass turned lime green. The clouds shadowed down on the corn fields, making them forced to droop. Black Berries grew from the trees, fresh as ever. Rain droplets splintered over Wyoming, hardly ever having a sunny day. Birds chirped their high-pitched voices and foxes growled their low rusty growl. Bison ran on their chubby legs and Elk ate the misty wet grass. Jays screamed at the squirrels and the bears howled with the wind. And boy did they not know, death was soon to come.” I’d like to point out the fantastic depth and energy that Tara brings to setting the scene. Note how she uses original language like “splintered” and “rusty.” This is written from the heart. It is brilliant. Just look at these two sentences: “The birches and aspens glowed yellow, holding a cheerfulness of their own. As winter exploded into spring, flowers bloomed and grass turned lime green.” Her description here of the changing season is bursting with its own energy. It conveys the excitement and dynamism of nature. Buy her book. And why not also do some descriptive writing of your own? If you are in Stone Soup’s age range (age 13 and under) then please submit descriptive nature stories—and they can be short, even a page or less—through our regular submissions channel via the button below. This is summer, the perfect time to go outdoors, find a beautiful spot, and write. I would like to encourage you try to get an adult in your life—a parent or a grandparent, for instance—to sit with you and also to write. Parallel works—one by you, the young writer, and one by your adult—should be sent to me by replying to this newsletter. Joint child/adult submissions will probably not be included in Stone Soup, but I might find a way of publishing a few of them on the website. I am in London today—one reason this newsletter is a day late, for the second week in a row. Soon after I return to California next week, I am going on a camping trip with my daughter. Thus, I will not be replying to emails generated by the newsletter until mid-August. Until Next Week, William Founder and Executive Director Stone Soup Announcements and News As regular readers know, our last print issue was the May/June issue. We have sent letters to all subscribers helping you convert to digital subscriptions. The system we set up was, admittedly, a little clunky. We will be sending a revised procedure to those of you who did not open the first letter. For those of you who have registered as digital subscribers, I’d like you to please explore our iOS and Android app. Download from the respective App stores and then follow the instructions you find within the app. Once you register the device (and you are entitled to up to 5 devices), you will have all of the back issues going back twenty years. The app is the best way to enjoy reading Stone Soup offline. Please explore the app with your child. Experiment in how to download material for offline reading. The app in offline mode is ideal for vacations or for “offline time.” I know some of you have been taken aback by the conversion to digital. Fortunately, the vast majority of letters were supportive. For those of you still on the fence, let me put it this way: I was twenty when I thought of the idea of making Stone Soup; I now have a social security card in my wallet and grey hair. When Stone Soup was started there were no personal computers. The internet was literally two decades away! Two decades! For those of you who remember back then, before email and websites, our (paper) mailboxes were full. Times have changed. I am asking you to help us make Stone Soup the magazine for our 21st century children. If you have more questions, please read what I have posted about the change here. We are now a digital magazine with a print annual, and we are looking forward to rolling out a number of exciting changes in the coming months. From Stone Soup July/August 2017 A Horse Named Seamus By Kate Bailey, 11 Illustrated by Elena Delzer, 12 Horses, horses, horses. There were so many horses! Valery wondered which one would be hers as she gazed over the crowd of them. She had waited so long for this day. Today was her tenth birthday, and her parents had finally given in to Valery’s pleas to let her adopt a horse. There was a local horse carnival in town, so Valery and her mom

A note from William Rubel The fabulous July/August issue of Stone Soup has just been published online. I encourage you all to take a look, and add Stone Soup to your summer reading list. If you are going to be travelling, why not do what my daughter does: download the Stone Soup app to a mobile device. That way you can store up a collection of current and past copies in one place before you go and read whatever you like on a tablet while you’re on the move. Summer Creativity As summer vacation begins in earnest I encourage all of you to set aside some time every day to be creative. I have been making a drawing a day for the last couple of weeks — my own Summer resolution. Summer is also a good time to work on big projects. One of the other things I’ve been playing with recently is stop motion animation, which I’ve been experimenting with using the camera in my phone. I know you won’t all have your own phones, but this is kind of fantastic experiment that might encourage your parents to lend you theirs!You will also need a simple program to help you. The one that I got for my daughter is called Stop Motion Studio. There is an Apple version and an Android version. The program costs a few dollars, so you will need to discuss getting it with your parents, but my advice to your parents is that this is a very good program and well worth the price. Making Your Stop Motion Animated Film I would start out hand-holding your camera and also working from homemade stands. If you really get into it then a dolly, which helps you move your camera more smoothly than you can do by hand, is helpful. They are are little expensive to buy, or you could make one with one of your wheeled toys.Using lego, playmobile characters, dolls or toys, or drawings are all practical ways to get started telling stories through stop motion. To start with, just practice making something move. You take picture of something — anything — it can be a glass on a table — move it a short distance, take another photo, move it again, and so on, until you have told your story on moving pictures. Its easy!At Stone Soup we would be interested in seeing your story, or even an interesting film of abstract movements. As creating stop action is a slow process, I’d focus at first on dramatizing a story or a visual idea that will be under three minutes.I am not going to give you an idea for a story. But here are three ideas to get you into making something move. 1. Two objects move towards each other and then bump into each to each other. 2. A glass of water empties. 3. A drawing of a person forms on a page. Once you get the hang of stop motion, you can create anything! We look forward to seeing what you accomplish. Just respond to this newsletter and your email will come through to me. Until next week, William   She rushed up to the large horse that stood tall above her, grinding hay between his strong jaws From Stone Soup January/ February  2000 Waiting  By Annie Strother, age 12 Illustrated by Camille Hebert, age 11 The wind whispered through the long grass, blowing it gently into a lullaby of soft sounds. The grass rustled and the lake stirred as the setting sun dripped down the sky and below the stretch of trees that marked the horizon.The stains it left were stunning. Pinks and oranges smeared across the sky. They dripped lazily down the great sky, leaving behind a vast carpet of deep blue, intense and enveloping. As a myriad of stars became visible and bewitching with their bright twinkles, a little girl walked down the pathway to the dock.She pulled her hair back from her face and let the wind lift up the ends of it and toss it playfully. She was a very small girl, about five years old or so, with long red hair and freckles dotting her face. She had green eyes that shone like the tops of lighthouses, beckoning and beaming with a welcoming glow… read more