Newsletter

“Cloud Dancer” by Sage Millen, 12 (Vancouver, Canada) Published in the May 2020 Issue of Stone Soup A note from Sarah First of all, a special announcement: summer camps! Check out the website for our summer camp collaboration with the Society of Young Inklings. Right now we have three camps available that we’ll conduct via Zoom, but we’re working on bringing you more! We hope you’ll get creative with us this summer. What have you been doing to keep yourself busy during social distancing? I’ve found that in my spare time, I’ve been reading and cooking more than usual and have recently started a small garden. I hope you have also found some enjoyable hobbies to occupy yourself during this time. If you’d like to share what you’ve been doing, consider submitting a piece to our blog. I really liked the prompt for this week’s Flash Contest, from Stone Soup contributor Molly Torinus, which is what got me thinking about hobbies in the first place. Molly asked you to think of your favorite superhero (or supervillain!) and imagine what they do in their down time. I can’t wait to read what you’ve come up with! In a similar vein, Stone Soup contributor Anna Rowell wrote a Daily Creativity prompt on Wednesday that asked you to take one of your favorite characters and create a story about how they would act during the time of coronavirus. Both of these prompts ask you to dive into the world of fan fiction. If you’re not familiar, fan fiction is when a writer takes fictional characters or their worlds and adds onto them in their own story. While it’s fun to make up a story entirely of your own creation, sometimes it’s comforting to anchor your story with elements from books that you’ve read or movies you’ve seen. Maybe you’ve become attached to a character and want to place them in a new situation of your own invention. Or maybe you want to create a story where the characters from your two favorite stories meet! The possibilities for fan fiction are endless.One famous example of fan fiction is Death Comes to Pemberley by author P.D. James. The book takes place after the happily-ever-after conclusion of Jane Austen’s classic Pride and Prejudice. James takes the existing characters, like Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy, and places them in a new genre: murder mystery. Could you do something similar with one of your favorite books and imagine what could happen after “The End”? If Molly or Anna’s prompt inspired you to write a fan fiction of your own, think about how you can expand your piece into something longer. What elements of the original story or character do you want to keep? And in what ways do you want to expand and explore new ground? Until next week, Winners from Weekly Flash Contest #7 The week commencing May 11 (Daily Creativity prompt #36) was our seventh week of flash contests, with another record number of entries including one from our youngest-ever Flash Contest entrant! We had fun meeting time travelers from different eras from ancient history (even dinosaurs!) to the present (yes, some time travel was projected into the future—it’s complicated!), and it was even harder than usual to choose our favorites. We commend all of the entrants for their imagination, and for the creative ways they found to bring their characters from the past into life in the present using clothes, language, and misunderstandings about contemporary everyday life to make them real. This week, we are announcing our five winners, whose work is published below, plus five honorable mentions. Congratulations, everyone! Winners (work published on this page) Isabel Bashaw, 10, Enumclaw, WA Samson Brown, 12, Cary, NC Ava Shorten, 10, Mallow, Ireland Michela You, 11, Lexington, MA Xuyi (Lauren) Zheng, 10, Guelph, Ontario, Canada Honorable Mentions “The Time Watch” by Hannah Nami Gajcowski, 10, Bellevue, WA “Lace, Frills, and Clever Jokes” by Samantha Lee, 10, Thomaston, CT “Prehistoric Visitors” by Sean Tenzin O’ Connor, 4, Bishop, CA “Panic From the Seventies” by Lauren Oh, 12, Cary, NC “A Dose of Time” by Ella Yamamura, 12, Cary, NC Remember, we are running the Flash Contest every week during the COVID-19-related school closures and shelter-in-place arrangements. It is always based on the first Daily Creativity prompt of the week. The prompt is posted on Monday, entries are due by Friday, and the winners are chosen and announced the following week. Highlights from the past week online Don’t miss the latest content from our Book Reviewers and Young Bloggers at Stonesoup.com! Himank,12, illustrated a piece called “Utopia for Animals,” which shows how COVID-19 has impacted life for animals. Read an update from the Stone Soup Book Club’s fifth meeting. A poem from Marjona, 11, a student in Uzbekistan. Daniel, 10, reviews the book Heat by Mike Lupica. The book is about family, friendship, and baseball. Emerson, 12, wrote a poem called “Tick Tock” that emphasizes the strange quality time has taken during the time of coronavirus. We posted a cartoon by Natya, 12, called “How the Handshake Has Evolved.” Check it out and consider buying a print of it to support a nonprofit in Natya’s area. In her poem, Cora, 13, wonders about the way our lives have shifted since COVID-19: “Will it Ever End?” Abhyudoy, 13, reads his poem “A Brief History of a Fictional Virus.” Summer Camp: Young Author’s Studio Stone Soup is offering summer camp via Zoom in collaboration with the Society of Young Inklings. We’re calling it Young Author’s Studio. We’re offering three weeks with three different themes. Design a Novel: June 8–11, 2020 (9–11 a.m. PDT) Character Lab: June 15–18, 2020 (9–11 a.m. PDT) Design a Picture Book: June 22–25, 2020 (9–11 am PDT) For more information, visit the Young Author’s Studio website. From Stone Soup May 2020 One Hop at a Time By Sara Heller, 12 (New York, NY) Art by Sage Millen, 12 (Vancouver, Canada) The thin black straps from my leotard dug into my skin. My feet stung and ached inside my dirty, pink pointe shoes, and the humid room reeked of sweat.

“Portrait of Adolescence” By Rishika Porandla, 13 (Coppell, TX) Published in Stone Soup May 2020 Illustrating “Real Life Checkmate” by Harper Fortgang, 11 (San Francisco, CA) A note from William Flash Contest winners. One of our fabulous Stone Soup authors and photographers, Anya Geist, age 13, wrote the five Daily Creativity prompts for the week of May 4 and was one of the judges for the Flash Contest based on her Monday prompt. The five winning illustrations are outrageously good. Congratulations to Analise Braddock, 9; Anna Dollar, 13; Catherine Gruen, 13; Olivia Titus, 11; and  Elia Yamamura, 12. You can read the whole announcement (including the honorable mentions) below, and please be sure to look at their work at our website. Summer programs. For the first time, we will be offering summer writing programs. Stone Soup has teamed up again with the fabulous San Jose, California, program the Society of Young Inklings to offer Summer Zoom Writing Camps. (We ran our personal narrative contest with them last year, and we loved working together!) Full details will be published soon, so this is just to let you know that we have something planned for you. Classes will run for four days per week, Monday through Thursday, starting at 9 a.m. Pacific Time. I will continue running our Friday Writers’ Workshop (free for Stone Soup subscribers), so there will be no conflict between that free ongoing class and the summer programs. The summer classes will run 2 hours a day. Pandemic fundraising news. Longtime Stone Soup writer Sabrina Guo and her family are doing a massive amount of work raising money and buying protective gear for medical personnel on the front lines in Long Island, where they live, and in New Orleans where they are supporting a program for immigrants in distress. Next week we will be sending a fundraising letter on Sabrina’s behalf. I will personally be donating several hundred dollars to her efforts. This disease knows no borders. It knows no boundaries. If there ever was a time to take to heart John Donne’s (1572–1631) observation “never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee,” it is now. Sabrina’s work is saving lives. There is no administrative overhead, so $100 donated goes to buy $100 of needed medical supplies. Today, when I am writing this, I gave a workshop on bread history through Zoom. After the seminar was over, one of the participants wrote to me to say that she had had to leave early because “another member of my family died of Coronavirus.” Another! This is not abstract. If you don’t have a more effective way of helping save lives in your own community, then please respond with generosity to the letter we will be sending on Sabrina’s behalf. Please also read the latest update about her work, published on the Stone Soup website. Even though Sabrina is now 15, she will always be part of our Stone Soup family. I am also asking you to support Sabrina’s lifesaving efforts as part of your support for the passionate talented young people who make Stone Soup what it is. The Wednesday Book Group and the Friday Writing Workshop are both doing exceedingly well. Both groups are large, with the students doing really good work. It is a real honor for us at Stone Soup to finally be meeting and interacting with our Stone Soup readers and writers. These are no empty words—we are honored to be working with you and experiencing your talent in real time every week. Thank you. Everyone can read some of the output of the workshops and reports from the book group on our website. Do take a look, and you’ll understand why we are so excited! At some point, we will be publishing the projects for the workshops, as well. We (I) am a bit behind right now! For this weekend’s writing project, I suggest working from this one word: “changeable.”` Our lives were all going along on a certain pathway, and now they are totally changed. The weather can be changeable. Moods are changeable. Poem, story, play, dialogue, whatever works for you. Work with this idea: changeable. If you make something you are proud of, submit it to us. Until next week, Weekly Flash Contest #6: Draw or paint a scene from a book you are reading or have read. This week, we are announcing our five Winners, whose work is published on our website, plus five honorable mentions. We were so impressed by the fantastic work entrants produced, the different media used, and the creative approaches you all took. Congratulations, everyone! Winners (visit the website to see all of their work) Analise Braddock, 9, Katonah, NY Anna Dollar, 13, Monticello, FL Catherine Gruen, 13, Chino Hills, CA Olivia Titus, 11, Houston, TX Ella Yamamura, 12, Cary, NC Honorable Mentions Sienna Olsen, 9, Tauranga, New Zealand Yincheng Qian, 12, Dallas, TX Ava Shorten, 10, Mallow, Ireland Zoe Campbell, 10, San Francisco, CA Amelia Barth, 10, Elgin, IL Don’t miss the winning work, published at Stonesoup.com in the official contest announcement, here! Highlights from the past week online Don’t miss the latest content from our Book Reviewers and Young Bloggers at Stonesoup.com! Leah, 12, wrote a poem memoir about her time in imposed social distancing. Read it here. Check out the update from our fourth book club, where we discussed The Inquisitor’s Tale by Adam Gidwitz. In “The Monster,” Haopu (Max) Xu describes two horrors. His short piece creatively underlines the need to take COVID-19 seriously. Have you been having strange dreams lately? Daniel describes one of his dreams, which made him go, “Huh?” Read an update from our last writing workshop, plus all the impressive work that participants created. Ethan, 7, wrote a poem about how coronavirus interrupted his basketball dream. But he hasn’t given up yet. Do you have a birthday during quarantine? Anya talks about her upcoming birthday, which she won’t be able to celebrate as usual this year. While sad about not being able to continue traditions, Anya brings

Artist Mark Wallinger standing behind his work, The World Turned Upside Down (2019) London, April 2020 A note from Jane A couple of weeks ago I took my daily walk in central London (walking at a two-meter distance from Stone Soup’s designer, my neighbor Joe Ewart). All of you who live in big cities will know how strange and wonderful it is to experience city spaces in a whole new way right now. Usually thronging with people, traffic, fumes, and noise, London is currently almost traffic-free, its pavements (sidewalks) barely populated, and the air filled with birdsong. But some of the same rules of life still apply: It doesn’t matter how big the city is—you are probably going to bump into someone you know! On this walk, that someone was the artist Mark Wallinger. As we entered Lincoln’s Inn Fields, we saw him sitting on a bench, so we said hello and had a catch up (each of us forming a point on a two-meter-spaced triangle to maintain social distancing). It turned out that Mark had installed a whole new public artwork in 2019, and it was just around the corner, so we walked together (though also still apart) to see it. And this is it: The World Turned Upside Down. It is a gigantic globe balanced on the ground, like the ones you see in geography classes or on people’s desks, but there’s something odd about it—the words are the right way up for the reader, but the world itself is upside down! It’s a deceptively simple idea, but this artwork has a profound effect on the viewer, and not just because it is so huge! It plays with our perceptions of the world and really makes us think about how we look at it. In the photo here, you see Mark standing beside the Americas. Looked at from this angle, Brazil dominates the view, and we can see how almost invisible the land mass now positioned toward the bottom of the globe becomes. Then we work out where it is: how could a huge country like Canada disappear almost out of view! Walking around the globe, you realize just how much of our world is water: you can stand at a point where all you can see is blue (the Pacific Ocean). The familiar shapes of countries and continents remake themselves when you look at them a different way around. You realize how much of what you think about the world—the place of your own country in it, the relationships between different continents—has been learned from the way maps have been drawn and the ways we have been taught to look at them. It’s exciting to be prompted to look at something so familiar in a completely new way! For this weekend’s activity, we want you to think about worlds turned upside down. Right now we are all living through something that is a version of the world turned upside down. School is closed even though the semester hasn’t finished—summer vacation/holidays (what you call it depends on where you’re from, of course) are coming, but you are already at home and might have to stay there—and maybe you want to write about that. But you can also think outside the current situation to make some new worlds upside down. What if the kids were in charge and the adults in the role of the kids? What if the animals took over the farm? What if fish could walk or mammals (besides bats) had wings? What if gold was worthless? Try focusing on one specific factor that has turned topsy-turvy and see what it means for the wider world of your story, poem, or art. If you like what you’ve made, send it to us via Submittable. We always love to see your work! Until next week, Weekly Flash Contest #5: Write a story inspired by one of these funny headlines. Visit the Bestlifeonline.com webpage, and read their selection of the “25 Funniest Newspaper Headlines of All Time.” Write a story inspired by your chosen headline. Every week during the COVID-19-related school closures and shelter-in-place arrangements, we are running a Flash Contest based on the first Daily Creativity prompt of the week. The prompt is posted on Monday, and entries are due by Friday. The week commencing April 27 (Daily Creativity Prompt #26) was our fifth week—and our funniest! Everyone obviously needed to get some comedy into their lives, and we had a record number of entries. We enjoyed reading each and every one of them, but a few made all of us laugh out loud, so they are our winners this week. Published below, they come in every shade of humor, from light to dark, and they are all hilarious. We also have a few honorable mentions singled out for special recognition. Congratulations, everyone! Winners Read their work here! Eliana Aschheim, 13, Santa Clara, CA Gabe Finger, 13, Nesconset, NY Hannah Nami Gajcowski, 10, Bellevue, WA Liam Hancock, 12, Danville, CA Alice Xie, 12, West Windsor, NJ Honorable Mentions Lena Aloise, 10, Harvard, MA Cora Casebeer, 10, Salem, OR Samantha Lee, 10, Thomaston, CT Remember, we are running the Flash Contest every week during the COVID-19-related school closures and shelter-in-place arrangements. It is always based on the first Daily Creativity prompt of the week. The prompt is posted on Monday, entries are due by Friday, and the winners are chosen and announced the following week. Highlights from the past week online Don’t miss the latest content from our Book Reviewers and Young Bloggers at Stonesoup.com! Annabelle, 10, wrote a graphic art story about the coronavirus. Alice, 10, shares journal entries about her experience with COVID-19 closures in “Diary of a Locked Kid.” We may not be able to travel at the moment, but you can still enjoy reading accounts of what it’s like to travel to other places. Check out Vivaan’s latest travelogue, this time describing his time at the Taj Mahal. SierraRose, 12, talks about how COVID-19 has affected her life as a student in Los Angeles, California. In Daniel’s latest post, read about how Daniel learned  about the importance of confidence while playing basketball. What are the sounds of COVID-19? Daniel captures some in his poem that we posted to the blog. Connor,