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Pond, Tomb of Rekhmire, approximately 3,300 years ago, Egypt. A note from William Rubel Last week, editor Emma Wood wrote about a painting by “outsider” artist Morris Hirshfield. If you missed that newsletter, please read it here. Emma wrote about the artist’s evocative and yet not exactly realistic way of depicting scenes. Keeping with this theme, this week I would like to offer you this painting of a pond with people and trees that was painted on a wall in Egypt 3,300 years ago. What I want to remark on is the way in which the space is depicted—specifically, the trees that are painted around the rectangular pond likes spokes around the center of a wheel. This way of depicting trees around a pond has a very strong meaning for me. When I was in sixth grade, in 1963, I painted a pond with the trees organized just like this. I will never ever forget what my teacher said. She said that this was wrong. That the bottom trees should be upright, not “upside down.” And she laughed! I was so upset. That pond had meant a great deal to me. I had just moved to Los Angles from Washington, DC, and it was spring. I missed going with my mother to the see the cherry trees blooming around the tidal basin by the Washington Monument. When the teacher said that the trees should be upright, I remember thinking, “But the leaves will get wet!” I vowed at that time to never paint a painting again. And, somehow, I managed not to until I was in college, when I took an art class. This terrible memory of being bullied by a teacher into depicting a memory the way she wanted me to, and not the way I imagined it, was actually one of my inspirations for starting Stone Soup in 1972—just 10 years after my terrible sixth-grade experience. So, please, all of you—whether you write or draw or compose music or dance or whatever else you may do to record what and how you see and feel—follow your personal star! I will also point out that by depicting the trees surrounding the pond in the way this ancient Egyptian artist did, we can see the people in the pond and exactly how the garden around the pond was landscaped. Notice how very clearly you can make out the different kinds of trees around the pond—in other words, this “unrealistic” way of representing the space actually gives us more information that a more “realistic” painting would. As Emma said last week, “I hope this painting will inspire you to create something similarly strange, striking, and beautiful.” 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! On Tuesday, we posted Lucinda’s second installment in her series 103 Elements and their Interesting Facts. Want to know which element makes up the majority of the yellow surface of Io, one of Jupiter’s moons? Or how about what foods have potassium or iron? Read the post to find out! (Plus, read the first post here.) Have you ever chosen to do something because you wanted to, even though it wasn’t very popular among your peers? Maya describes her experience of magnet-making in the library, and how even though she had reservations about doing something by herself instead of choosing a more popular activity, she enjoyed herself (and it turned out one of her friends did show up!). Canon PowerShot Sx600 From Stone Soup January 2020 A World Without Color By Elyse Bambrough, 7 (Bristol, UK) Art: Eternal Hourglass by Sage Millen, 11 (Vancouver, BC) Dear Diary, I woke up again yesterday and saw the hammering rain pouring harshly down on my small little house. It was the worst sight I had seen in years! It was quite a boring sight, though I’m used to it, so I wasn’t that surprised. I had another amazing dream. I dreamt that I was in a forest with tropical trees and exotic flowers. There was spikey grass and even tigers! I guess it didn’t come true. I had to try to tidy the rubbish by sifting and sorting, burning and burying, but it didn’t work. However, while I was sorting the rubbish, something caught my eye. It was a tiny tin flower! Suddenly an idea planted itself in my head. The idea sprouted and grew roots. Day after day, the idea got bigger. While I was feeding on the rubbish, a forest emerged under my hand. It was not the forest of my dreams, but it was a forest just the same. In the forest, there were tigers, toucans, tree frogs, and even butterflies! I was still a bit disappointed because it was a very dull forest with no color at all. As I walked through the forest, my heart was aching with emptiness. Listen to a recording of the author reading her story, see the artwork in more detail (and read more from the January issue) on the website here. 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.  

“What she saw brought her to an immediate standstill and robbed her of every ounce of her breath.” Illustration by Megan Snide, 13 (Dublin, Ohio), published in Stone Soup September/October 2009, illustrating “Building the Pyramids” by Timmi Ruth Kline, 11 (Jones, Oklahoma). A note from William Rubel Our best to you all for Christmas, Hanukkah, and the New Year! Thank you to those of you who have contributed to our 2019 Annual Drive! Your support is appreciated. I am writing this from London on Christmas evening after a very long and lovely dinner at Jane’s brother’s house. We had a feast! Of course! But, at some point during the meal my friend Augustine who is a Samburu Kenyan blacksmith with four wives and 19 children—yes, there are different cultures—texted me that his family were in the midst of slaughtering 73 goats for a massive feast. Think of that! A feast for an extended family that is so large that it takes 73 goats to feed it. Jane and I are leaving London tomorrow for Cairo where on Saturday, when you are reading this newsletter, we will be visiting the pyramids—so Jane suggested we feature “Building the Pyramids,” a story from Stone Soup published in 2016. The story opens with a well-imagined and historically accurate image—that of “the smell of hot bread”—rising to “Lomea’s nostrils.” While the Great Pyramid, built 4,500 years ago, was built of stone, it is also possible to say that it was built with bread as bread (and beer) were the standard wages for pyramid workers. Timmi Ruth did a very good job researching the historical period of her story. But also to her credit, she doesn’t let her historic research dominate the piece. In fact, like the best writers working in the area of historical fiction, her story is engaging and is supported by research, but not dominated by it. I have recently been listening to lectures by the American author Joyce Carol Oates. Her advice for those of you interested in writing historical fiction is to sketch out the the story—and even go a long way toward writing it—before doing the research into the historic period you have set your story in. This Is good advice. Your job as a writer of fiction is tell a story. Joyce Carol Oates says historical accuracy is important because if you get your details wrong—like having characters in Medieval Italy eating pasta with tomato sauce, which would be before there were tomatoes in Europe—it undermines people’s faith in your story. On the other hand, when you are writing your story, it is unlikely to really matter what was served for dinner. So if I understand what Joyce Carol Oates is saying, look up what people ate or what they wore and other details like that after you have written your compelling story. In a sense, in this approach to writing historical fiction the historic research is part of the finishing up and rewriting. Now, every author is different, so this is not an absolute rule. But I think it is advice that keeps you, as an author, focused on your job, which is storytelling, and leaves the writing up of deep historical research to historians. If you enjoy historical fiction, then I suggest reading our Stone Soup Book of Historical Fiction. And of course, as always, if you have a work of historical fiction already written, please submit it to Stone Soup so editor Emma Wood can consider it for the magazine. And if you have something in the works, upload it to our submissions page when you are done. Until next year! There are only a few more days left in 2019. Finish the year by joining our group of donors and supporters! We are proud of all the kids whose work we publish in our magazine, our books, and on our website, and we are proud of the work we do at Stone Soup to publish and promote children’s creative work. When you give to Stone Soup, you become a publisher of writing and art by kids right alongside us. Our first issue was published in 1973, and 46 years later Stone Soup is still here. We remain as excited about children’s creative work now as we were then, and as committed as ever to making sure the voices of those under 14 are heard. Join us to support the kids of today in their creative journey. You can read more about our 2019 fundraising target and key projects on our website’s Donate page, and help us even more by sharing the link with others. Thank you! Highlights from the past week online Don’t miss the latest content from our Book Reviewers and Young Bloggers at Stonesoup.com! Abhi, 11, reviews The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas by John Boyne. Read why Abhi says the author wants you to figure the book’s setting out on your own, and why Abhi was disappointed by parts of the book. Looking for something to spend your holiday money on? Maybe the gift you want to give yourself is a Stone Soup subscription or book! Monthly and yearly subscriptions to Stone Soup magazine are available at our website, while all our books are available at our separate online store. There are nine Stone Soup Books of . . . to choose from: over 1,800 pages of short stories and poems by young authors, a treasure trove of reading material. The 2019 Annual (all 458 pages of it!) is also in stock, along with the last few copies of the 2017 and 2018 Annuals. Take advantage of the special ongoing holiday discounts we have on both groups of books: Buy the brand new Stone Soup Book of Science Fiction at full price ($10); get any other anthologies for just $6.50 each. Buy one Stone Soup Annual 2019 at full price ($34.99); get $10 off 2018 and $15 off 2017. These discounts will be automatically applied in our online store while stocks last. You can also buy all our books at Amazon (at full price). If you buy at Amazon, please consider making Children’s Art Foundation–Stone Soup Inc. your selected Amazon Smile charity. What she saw