“Reaching” by Jackie Cutrona, 13 (Bedford, MA) Published in Stone Soup October 2020 A note from William Honor for Abhi Sukhdial: Here is the link to an interview with Abhi, the winning novelist in our first long-form fiction contest (the 2021 contest is still being judged, with the award announcement coming soon). The interview is in a publication from the prestigious Duke University, in North Carolina. Abhi started out with Stone Soup writing for our blog. The writing advice he gives in the interview is spot on. I’d like, in particular, to highlight his advice that you do not need to work in chronological order—that if you have an inspiration for the ending, then write the ending. Ultimately, your success in writing fiction of any length is to be engaged with your work, and to stay engaged until it is finished. But you can’t finish if you don’t start! You can support Abhi’s writing ambitions by buying his book! It is available directly from us at Stone Soup and also from Amazon and Barnes & Noble. Annual Drive: We will be sending out letters within a week or two initiating our Annual Drive. This year, Stone Soup substantively increased the range and scope of its programs with the writing prompts, weekly contests, writing workshops, a book club, and more. We know that these programs have been a lifeline for many of our young readers and contributors during this difficult time, and we need your help to continue them, so please respond to our Annual Drive when it is launched. Thank you. Amazon Smile: The most effortless way to support Stone Soup is to sign up for Amazon Smile. If you go to Smile.amazon.com, you can register so that your purchases will each contribute something to Children’s Art Foundation—Stone Soup Inc. If all of you were to do this going into the holiday season, each of those tiny donations would add up to something profound. The “Stone Soup” story itself is about each of us contributing something small to a community project, achieving together what we may not be able to achieve on our own. Using Amazon Smile takes a small change in behavior at first, but it is fully integrated into your normal Amazon account, so you lose nothing while helping us. What a brilliant photograph! What a strong image by Jackie Cutrona! A magnificent transformation of a sculpture into an evocative photograph. Pay attention to the play of light and dark. While we normally think of light as the way to focus on what is important—think of the spotlight in traditional theater—in this photograph it is the shadow that highlights the face. Note that little vertical slash of sunlight in the middle of the image. In pulling that into her image, I think Jackie Cutrona really strengthened her vision. William’s Weekend Project: The project of this weekend is to photograph a sculpture—or an inanimate object like a chair, table, bowl, or car. The industrially produced objects that are everywhere in our life were, at one point, designed by an artist! Use your camera to explore what you are looking at, paying attention to the way the light illuminates the object. Move your camera around. Take lots of pictures; I think you will find that small shifts in perspective may make a big difference in how your photograph works. If you are taking pictures indoors, play around with artificial light to find inspiration. As always, if you like what you make, please go to our website and submit it so Emma, our editor, can consider it for the magazine. Sabrina Guo: Today I would like to report on some of the work of Sabrina Guo, now a high school student but for many years a regular contributor to Stone Soup. As I have mentioned before, Sabrina has risen to the COVID-19 challenge. She has raised over $80,000, some of that from our Stone Soup family. She has created on ongoing nonprofit that is still involved in getting protective gear to people who need it but has also expanded to, for example, sending art and letters of thanks and encouragement to people who are in special need. I am sharing a recent video about her work below. Until next week, Highlights from the past week online Don’t miss the latest content from our Book Reviewers and Young Bloggers at Stonesoup.com! Take a virtual trip to Switzerland by reading Vivaan’s latest travelogue on the blog. Read Vivaan’s account to learn more about the country, including its tradition of yodeling. Blogger Eunice discusses all of her mixed emotions about going back to school during the pandemic. Are you back in school? Leave a comment on Eunice’s post to say how you feel about your school experience this year. Flash Contest Winners We received so many wonderful entries to this month’s Flash Contest, answering the following prompt: Write a Poem That Can Be Read Up or Down. Congratulations to our winners and honorable mentions listed below. You can read the winning entries for this contest (and previous ones) at the Stone Soup website. Winners “Home” by Arishka Jha, 12, Redwood City, CA “Perspective” by Lily Jones & Sawyer Hanley, both 10, Eugene, OR “A diary of a young musician” by Alice Ruan, 8, Beaverton, OR “Fall Fiesta” by Adele Stamenov, 11, Bethel Park, PA “War, Love, and Peace by Chloe Zhang, 9, Portland, OR Honorable Mentions “Save the Earth” by Prisha Aswal, 8, Portland, OR “Wild Fire” by Cathy Jiang, 11, Portland, OR “The Light” by Grace Mancini, 12, Glenside, PA “Fire and Water Collide” by Sophie Yu, 12, Houston, TX “My Toys” by Jessie Zhang, 8, Portland, OR Contest, partnership & project news More readers for the podcast needed! We’re still looking for a few more young readers to record stories and poems from the archives for our podcast that will be released soon. Email sarah@stonesoup.com for more information. From Stone Soup October 2020 The Book With No Words By Michaela Frey, 12 (Herndon, VA) Photographed by Jackie Cutrona, 13 (Bedford, MA) One word today, thought Meri. * * * Yesterday was three words. For Meri, speaking was like a honeybee sting. The bee has
Newsletter
Saturday Newsletter: October 10, 2020
“Rocks at Pohoiko Beach” by Lila Raj, 11 (San Francisco, CA) Published in Stone Soup October 2020 A note from Emma Before you read this, scroll down to the bottom of the newsletter to read Daniel Shorten’s poem “Afterthought.” It is one of the best poems I have read all year. I can describe what happens in the poem very simply: in it, the narrator goes to see a play (or perhaps a movie); then he goes home. But there is so much more “happening” in it than that. The poem is titled “Afterthought.” To be an afterthought is to be secondary, peripheral, on the margins. This poem is about what it feels like to be an afterthought. It opens by situating the narrator in space: Just in front of the back wall Was my seat Full of salty popcorn He is in a theater. His seat is all the way at the back, and it hasn’t been cleaned—it’s filled with someone else’s spilled popcorn. Both of these things indicate the narrator’s marginal status: he is literally on the edge of the theater, about to occupy a seat that’s been neglected, or overlooked, by the theater’s cleaners. The status of the seat which the narrator occupies reinforces his own peripheral status. It continues: No curtain went up There was no curtain The fact that there is no curtain indicates that there wasn’t a clear separation between the audience and the actors, reality and the play. Everything occurring on stage seemed immediate, close. In the following lines, the narrator describes some of the action in the play; however, he doesn’t announce he will be doing this, which creates a sense of immediacy for the reader as well. It seems as if the things he describes are “actually” happening—in real life, not on stage: A poor man buried his children Who will bury me he wept A dog barked suddenly Then Michael stoned the rabbit And Peggy said the leg stinks Straight away, Michael said you stink There is grief, violence, and humor in these lines. The “poor man” who buried his children has become a peripheral figure, an afterthought himself. “Who will bury me he wept”—a question that carries other questions within it: Who will care for me? Who will love me? Who will call me every Sunday? As if to reinforce his now-marginal status, the focus shifts quickly away from the “poor man”—to the dog and then to Michael and Peggy, who are not definitely peripheral figures. They aren’t standing on the sidelines, weeping—they are out in the world, killing and eating a rabbit, and talking to each other. They are at the center of life. From there, the poem returns to the narrator’s experience, concluding like this: All I could smell was cola As we got back on the bus A man and a woman kissed Who will bury me? In these final lines, we see once again that the narrator feels marginal. The bus he returns to smells like cola—no one has bothered to clean it for them. Then a man and woman kiss—they are not peripheral; they have each other. While the narrator is alone, wondering, like the “poor man” from the play, Who will bury me? You will notice that throughout, Daniel does not use what you might normally think of as “poetic” language. Instead, he uses short, direct sentences and simple vocabulary—most words only have 1–2 syllables. This gives the poem an immediacy and directness as well as a deceptive plainness! I hope you enjoyed my academic reading of this poem! I know many of my students often wonder about “intention” when we read poems closely, as I have read this one. I had a teacher once tell me that, as a writer, I should always just answer yes when someone asked if I meant to do something in a poem. Because I did do it—my subconscious knew, even if I didn’t! And after a certain point, the author’s intention doesn’t matter: the author can’t ever fully know or see what she has created. They are too close to the work. That is why outside critics are so important. Your writing challenge for the weekend: using Daniel’s poem as a model, write a fifteen-line poem in simple, direct, non-poetic language about something you did or saw in the past week without explicitly saying what it was. So, if you write about going to a park, don’t title the poem “A Trip to the Park” or say, “I went to the park with my mom.” In short: don’t be afraid to confuse the reader! Often that confusion will create unexpected complexity. Until next week, Highlights from the past week online Don’t miss the latest content from our Book Reviewers and Young Bloggers at Stonesoup.com! “Coronavirus if you’re reading this, / please stop doing this!” Patrycja, 13, writes in her poem about what it was like in the spring during the beginning of the pandemic. Read the entire poem here. Ava, 10, reviewed The Whale Child by Keith Egawa and Chenoa Egawa. Read about what why she hopes there’s a sequel and how the illustrations add to the story. Olivia wrote a review of The Girl Who Drank the Moon by Kelly Barnhill. Find out why she thinks it’s not a typical fantasy novel. Contest, partnership & project news This was the first full week of October, so this week is Flash Contest week! You have until midday PDT on Sunday (Oct. 11, 2020) to complete and submit your entries. Write a Poem That Can Be Read Up or Down We are looking for a poem that can be read both from top to bottom, and bottom to top. To read examples of the kind of poem we mean, see Love Hate Relationship by Morgan Lane (12) in the February 2018 issue of Stone Soup or 11-year-old Layla Linnard’s Lost Dog from September 2019. For full contest details, submission links, and previous winners, click here. Daniel Shorten, 9Mallow, Ireland From Stone Soup October
Saturday Newsletter: October 3, 2020
A note from William Website redesign: It has been a long time coming! For some reason, web design work seems to take forever plus a day. Our new homepage design just went up! Please visit. The site is now much better at showcasing the writing and art in the magazine and on the blogs. The second and third phases of the redesign are in process. An improved system of navigation and more beautiful interior pages comes next, followed by a portal for the Refugee Project. Our Saturday Writing Workshop and Book Club for Writers is open for registration. This session, Saturdays at 9 a.m. Pacific, runs through December 16. You can sign up for one or more classes through EventBrite. Weekend creativity project: Next week, at the Saturday Writing Workshop, I will be talking about personification. Personification is when you attribute human qualities to inanimate objects. A good example of personification is the recent blog post “Life of a Pencil” by Amruta Krishnan Srinivasan, 9. Imagining you are a pencil, or an eraser, is a common school writing prompt. Amruta’s story goes far beyond anything I have seen anyone do with this idea. Amruta actually makes me care about this pencil! I am going to be following my class on personification with a class on nature writing using personification techniques. So, for this weekend, I would like you sit down with—or at least near—something that means a lot to you. Something to which you have a strong emotional attachment. This could be a stuffed animal, or a tree whose branches you may see projected in shadow against your window. Or something else entirely. Let the spirit of whatever it is that you choose to write about enter your imagination. As always, if you like what you write, then submit it to Stone Soup so editor Emma Wood can read it. Lastly, I know that Jane wrote to you about Three Days till EOC a couple weeks ago, the novel by Abhi Sukhdial, winner of our 2019 Stone Soup Long Form Book Contest. And, I know she gave you the link to Anya Geist’s interview with Abhi. Anya and Abhi are both Stone Soup stars. As an author, all I can say is: support authors, support Abhi! So, if you haven’t already, buy his book! And, if you haven’t seen the interview, please click on the video below. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-susnKavHLY&feature=youtu.be&utm_source=Stone+Soup+Master+List&utm_campaign=66c62ffb19-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2020_09_24_07_00&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_b184558ef7-66c62ffb19-&mc_cid=66c62ffb19&mc_eid=[UNIQID] Until next week, Stay Tuned for Next Month’s Flash Contest Every month we hold a flash contest based on one of our weekly creativity prompts. Take a look at this month’s prompt and the winner here. And keep an eye out for next month’s contest! Highlights from the past week online Don’t miss the latest content from our Book Reviewers and Young Bloggers at Stonesoup.com! Read an update about our Book Club meeting, which was our twentieth (!) meeting. We discussed The War I Finally Won, by Kimberly Brubaker Bradley. Shravya, 11, wrote a poem about her life in quarantine, with lots of sensory details about baking, writing a book, and more. Julia, 13, reviewed Enna Burning by Shannon Hale. Julia explains why she was so captivated by the main character and enjoyed the writing style. Amruta, 9, writes about “The Life of a Pencil” now that she has lately been neglecting it in favor of her laptop. Pragnya, 12, reviewed The Lost Girl by Anne Ursu, which is about twin sisters. Pragnya starts the review with this compelling line: “The Lost Girl is the kind of book you’d want to write but thought you wouldn’t do well enough.” Colored pencil From Stone Soup October 2020 My Life as a Tree By Aiden Chen, 11 (Edmonton, Canada) Illustration by Cecilia Yang, 12 (San Jose, CA) I flew through the brisk, cool air of the morning as a tiny seed, wondering where I would land. With a dull thud that echoed in my ears, I crashed onto the soft, crumbly dirt. The dirt was cool and soothing, and I fell asleep with nothing to do. After a year, I could finally get a clear view of where I had been lodged. Beside me, there was a peaceful lake with muddy brown water. All around me, there was a crowd of towering trees. Even the shrubs were taller than me. I looked around and saw the roots and stems of shrubs. Looking up, I saw their leaves. I looked higher and saw tree trunks. Looking even higher, layers of tree branches and leaves were present, with sunlight occasionally filtering through. Sometimes, small animals from the lake would scamper over the leaf litter on the forest floor. Everything was peaceful, and no bad events happened to me until five years later. . . . /MORE Stone Soup is published by Children’s Art Foundation-Stone Soup Inc., a 501(c)(3) educational nonprofit organization registered in the United States of America, EIN: 23-7317498. Stone Soup’s Advisors: Abby Austin, Mike Axelrod, Annabelle Baird, Jem Burch, Evelyn Chen, Juliet Fraser, Zoe Hall, Montanna Harling, Alicia & Joe Havilland, Lara Katz, Rebecca Kilroy, Christine Leishman, Julie Minnis, Jessica Opolko, Tara Prakash, Denise Prata, Logan Roberts, Emily Tarco, Rebecca Ramos Velasquez, Susan Wilky.
