Newsletter

Illustration by Max Strebel, 12, published in Stone Soup 2002. A Note from William Rubel Thanks to those of you who took our survey last week on themed issues. Here are some preliminary results: 60% of the respondents were age 14 or under. This is great! Thank you, Stone Soup readers! The adult respondents were divided between parents (20%), grandparents (10%), and other adult friends of Stone Soup (10%), a great balance. 80% of you like the idea of themed issues, with the understanding that we don’t overdo it. So, we are thinking that we might have three or four themed issues out of eleven issues in a year. What about the topics? Well, Nature is the favorite theme suggested, and Sports is the theme that was disliked the most. Given the relatively small numbers of responses it is probably safe to say that Food, including recipes, Family, Photography, Comics/Animation, Poetry, and Science Fiction are all quite well liked. However, in the comments section many more fantastic ideas were put forward, so we are thinking of sending out another set of questions on themes in a week or two, building on this first one. To the adults who wrote more extensive comments, thank you. New survey on reviews! As you all know, Stone Soup has in the past only reviewed books. Our new editor, Emma Wood, would like to expand the range of what we review beyond that, and we’d like to know what kind of reviews you would like to read in Stone Soup. Do you think we should review movies, TV shows, video games, or something else? Tell us your opinion in this new survey, and also tell us the titles of any books, movies, games or TV shows you might like to see reviewed (or review yourself). Emma will publish lists of titles we’d like to have reviewed based on your suggestions, so please let us know what you think! Please Take the Stone Soup Reviews Survey. Thank You! Simplified submit form: As my daughter is reminding me constantly, school is nearly out. Please look through your stories, poems, and artwork and select the best from the year to send to us. Our editor, Emma Wood, has simplified the submission form so it’s never been easier to send us your work! In my other life, as some of you know, I am a writer. Right now, I mostly write about bread. On Sunday, I am going to Charlotte, North Carolina. I am giving a talk about the history of bread at a conference. I need to finish my talk – so, this being Saturday morning, I’d better get back to it! Until next week, William From the Stone Soup issue: November/December 2000 Memories of Sunset Lake Written by Mandana Nakhai, 11 Illustrated by Zoe Paschkis, 12 It was getting dark. Zoe lay on the hammock on the front porch eating an ice-cream sundae. She looked out at the golden lake thoughtfully. The porch door slammed. Zoe scooted over for her twin brother, Hunter.“Thinkin’?” Zoe nodded. She slurped a chocolate drip off the side of the tall glass. Hunter carefully watched Zoe’s gaze drop toward the other white-picket-fence houses ringing the lake. “I just can’t believe the summer’s over.” Hunter got up and dangled his feet over the porch, brushing some blond hair out of his intense green eyes. “Well, we can come back next summer. We have to go back to school, you know.” Zoe nodded, wishing that the summer would never end. Cool air blew the trees as the twins walked down to the dock. “I just wish we could have done something interesting. All we did is sit around on the dock the whole time.” Read more

This painting by a Jordanian child shows her mother standing in a room with a bowl on her head. In many cultures people walk carrying loads balanced on the top of their heads, which we find exotic. I have traveled to many places where the only people with backpacks, and the only people in torn jeans, are the tourists. Our costume. We tend not to think of as the way we dress as a costume, nor the way we carry things as particularly interesting. But, in fact, how we dress and even how we carry things reflect the culture and times we live in. The backpack that most Stone Soup readers wear to and from school is part of an overall look that is very much of today.  When I was in elementary and middle school in Los Angeles, California, in the 1950s and early 1960s, I did not have a backpack. Nobody did. I think we had something like a briefcase! And we wore clothing that was a little different from what you wear today. I want you to make a photograph, drawing, or painting of you or a friend dressed for school. Create this portrait thinking of it as a letter to someone in the future (10, 20 or 30 years from now). This, your picture says, is how we dressed for school in 2017. This continues to be a busy time for us here at Stone Soup, with lots of exciting changes coming up. One decision we made this week was to increase the frequency of publication for Stone Soup Online from 6 issues per year to 11 issues per year. Beginning in September, Stone Soup will be published monthly during the school year, with a combined July/August summer issue. This means a significant increase in the amount of material we publish. We are thinking that at least some of the issues should be organized around a theme. We’d like your input on whether having themed issues is a good idea, and we’d like to know what you think of some of the themes we are considering. If you have ideas we don’t list, please tell us what they are. Our Short SurveyMonkey Questionnaire Another decision we made this week was to revise the look of stonesoup.com. Is there a website you like a lot that you think we should take inspiration from? Do you have some great ideas of your own? If you do, please let me know by replying to this newsletter’s email address. Send me a link to a great website (it doesn’t have to be a magazine, but it could be), and explain what you think is so good about it. Thank you for help. Until next week, William From the Stone Soup issue: September/October 2005 Forever Untitled Written by Margaret Bryan, 10 Illustrated by Ashley Burke, 12 The feather fluttered to the ground. I looked about me, as if affirming that no one would deprive me of this precious trinket. A red-breasted robin broke out in song. I closed my eyes and breathed in the lightly fragrant aroma of its music.Music. One of the few things in life that can’t be described in words. I relished the robin’s tune for a few short minutes, clutching the feather (which had a texture of raw silk) for the whole experience. The tender autumn air rustled my hair ever so slightly, like that of the first sunshine of spring. The sensation of autumn flooded through me, and “Forever Untitled,” as I had decided to call the robin’s melody, rang through my veins. It seemed as if this day of bliss would never come to an end. But there were other things to be done that day. I slowly strolled home, not wanting to pop the magical bubble which nature had conjured. Read more

These two illustrations were commissioned by Editor Gerry Mandel for our upcoming July/August 2017 issue. On the left, an illustration by Catherine Chung, age 13, for her own story, “Welcome Aboard.” On the right, an illustration by Elena Delzer, age 13, for “A Horse Named Seamus.” Call to all young artists! There is going to be more art in Stone Soup. Starting in September, we will be publishing art separate from story illustrations. The four best images sent in this week will be featured in next week’s newsletter. Please upload images to our submissions page. A Note from Editor William Rubel Behind the scenes lots is happening at Stone Soup. Jane Levi, our new operations manager, is getting us set up so soon, probably defined as within a couple of months, we will be running efficiently in our virtual office configuration. Many of our back office systems are in flux as we move to a fully automated system for subscriptions. Michael King, our go-to person for just about everything, is responsible for customer relations. Michael is setting up a modern FAQ system for us so you will soon be able to answer more of your questions at our site online. I will be more formally introducing new staff in a few weeks — I want to introduce everyone along with a coherent explanation of future plans. But I do want to say that Emma Wood, a poet with an MFA from the prestigious Iowa Writers Workshop, has joined our staff and is developing ideas for upcoming issues. I can also say that, beginning in September, we will be increasing the frequency of publication to monthly, though probably still with a combined Summer issue. Last week’s newsletter was short because the website was down, owing to an error made as it was shifted to a new server. The site is now transferred and opening many, many times faster than it was before. It is also more secure. In the change, however, we lost our Stone Soup Store with the Stone Soup Anthologies  for sale. We hope to have that back up next week.   Here it is! A photograph from last week’s reunion of Stone Soup founders, taken at Porter College, University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC), which is where we started the magazine. From left to right: William Rubel, Richard Hof, Ziggy Rendler-Bregman, Ivan Rosenblum, Darryl Ferrucci, and Gerry Mandel. Ivan, a pianist, was our faculty advisor. The only one not pictured is Laura Garcia, who sadly died a few years ago.     And here we were in 1974! I am sure you can work out who is who. Darryl is the child. When he was 10 and I was his babysitter at 20, he remembers that I told him that when I am 80 and he is 70, and we are both sitting on a park bench, people would think that we were same age. Not 80, yet! But, in answer to the question young readers of this newsletter might have, like, how did it happen that our hair turned gray, I recommend you go to YouTube and watch the song You Have Deceived Me from Pirates of Penzance. My 10-year-old daughter loves this song. It is a song about how it is that our hair has turned gray. It answers the question about how this happened with the direct, and realistic, answer, “It’s gradually got so.”   From the Stone Soup issue: May/June 2017 Maple and Marmalade Written by Fiona Mulley, 13 Illustrated by Maya Work, 12 A loud knock sounded on Violet’s dressing-room door. “Places for Act One!” Violet leapt up from her dressing-table stool, her breath quickening. A little shiver of nervous excitement ran down her spine as she peered into the mirror one last time, checking anxiously to see that her microphone was in place. She didn’t look quite like herself; the reflection staring back at her from inside the frame of lights was not the image of a thirteen-year-old girl but that of a young Civil-War-era woman. What with the stage makeup, full hoop skirt, and her normally loose hair gathered into a stately bun, she scarcely recognized herself.Violet slipped her hand into the hidden pocket in her costume and groped about, closing her fingers around a pebble- like object. It was a small piece of wood, its surface was smooth and soft; the bark had been whittled away. She drew it out of her pocket and gazed at it wistfully, slipping into a reverie. She could remember . . . . Read more