Newsletter

A note from Jane Levi Dear Stone Soup readers and writers, Would you like to have your very own short story performed as part of a podcast series? If this sounds interesting, read on to learn about our brand new spring contest! We have launched our new spring writing contest, working with our friends at AV Entertainment, producers of the By Kids, for Kids Story Time podcast. The winner of this contest will have their short story turned into a dramatized reading, with up to five performers, that will be broadcast as an episode in the Story Time podcast series. The winning story, along with the second- and third-place entries, will also be published in an edition of Stone Soup magazine and receive a number of other great Stone Soup prizes. We are looking for original short stories of 500–1,000 words. Our theme is climate change. Your mission as writers is to deliver your message in an accessible, fun style: the material that works best for the Story Time podcast tends to be fantasy, magical, or fairy-tale. The winning stories will feature a strong narrative and plenty of direct speech. (But remember, we are looking for a story, not a drama script.) The winner will have their story turned into a podcast episode performed by the Story Time cast of one narrator and up to four character actors, embellished with suitable music and sound effects. Climate change and the environment are serious topics, but that doesn’t mean the stories have to be somber. We are looking for lively, enjoyable stories with a sense of drama and some scope for silliness in the performance (and some good sound effects). All of the stories already featured in the By Kids, For Kids Story Time podcast are fun audio dramas performed by kids for an audience of kids. The idea is to take the listeners on an audio emotional rollercoaster—to be funny, zany, heartfelt, suspenseful, ridiculous—and especially fun! Follow the links on their website to find out more, to listen to some of the more than 56 episodes that are already there, and to get an idea of the style. You will find all sorts of stories to enjoy: fairy tales, folk tales, myths, legends, and more. There is even going to be an episode of the original “Stone Soup” tale soon! This week I particularly enjoyed a story with the brilliant title of “The Bearded Fool.” It’s lively, action-packed, brilliantly performed, and, like all good stories conveys a message in a very entertaining way. Let me know which is your favorite! Writing with direct speech This week, to encourage you to think about your entries for the new contest, we’ve found a story from deep in our archive (all the way from 1986!) that uses a lot of direct speech to build its narrative. You can read the first part of it below, and visit our website to read the rest—you’ll also find one of our online activities on the same page. We hope you enjoy the story and feel inspired to think about how to tell your own contemporary story through the voices of a lively group of characters. Who knows? You might just find it is brought to life in an audio drama! Happy creating! P.S. It’s the beginning of a new month, so look out for the brand new March 2019 issue of Stone Soup online and in the mail now! P.P.S. While we are on the subject of contests and drama, there are six days left to submit entries to the BBC’s 500 Words contest, in which Stone Soup will be helping with a little bit of the judging. The winners of this contest will have their stories read on the UK’s BBC Radio 2 by a famous actor. Also on the 500 Words website, you will find some good advice on writing short stories for dramatic reading that might help you with our contest too–check that out here!   Highlights from the past week online Don’t miss the latest content from our Book Reviewers and Young Bloggers at Stonesoup.com! Maya writes a compelling blog post about competing in a math contest. “The same things that make it scary, the short amount of time to solve each problem and the huge room of people watching you, also make it exciting, an adventure.” Read the rest to find out what happens! Do you know what the old covers of Stone Soup look like? Check out our Instagram postto see the cover from the May/June 1981 issue. Abhi Sukhdial is a frequent contributor to Stone Soup who recently won a fantastic prize for his work. Congratulations, Abhi! Read his essay about how getting published inspired him to write more.   From Stone Soup September/October 1986 As Long As We’re Happy (part 1) By Clea Rivera, 14 I was a proud woman on my first day teaching at the elementary school. I was trying to be the typical teacher. I brought a shiny red apple and placed it on my desk. I wore a stiff black skirt and high-collared white blouse and did a fine job of commanding my third-grade class to work. I held the white, dusty chalk firmly and wrote neatly on the blackboard in ridiculously large letters. I was also very happy, for I was engaged to a handsome doctor about 10 years older than me. Every afternoon he’d spin me off in his little racy car or he’d sometimes take me out to dinner. “Boys and girls, who can tell me what five times five is?” I asked that first day. Several rowdy boys and a few girls began shouting answers. However, one girl raised her hand. “Twenty-five,” she answered. “Very good. What is your name?” “Grace Matthews.” “Everyone, did you see how polite Grace was?” The room was quiet. “Have I gone deaf?” I asked. Finally, the children assented that Grace had been polite and they promised to be that way, too, in the future. *          *          * Three years later I was promoted to teach the sixth grade, therefore switching from the elementary to the junior high school. I was married now and I had the same batch of children that I had in third grade. I sometimes found it a little

I still remember driving into the tiny, midwestern town in Iowa  Illustrator Martin Taylor, 10, for “Song of a Wanderer” by Annie Strother, 13. Published July/August 2000. A note from Jane Levi I love this painting by Martin Taylor, commissioned by our former editor Gerry Mandel in 2000, to illustrate Annie Strother’s story, “Song of a Wanderer”. Besides its striking use of color, and the fantastic amount of detail Martin packs into his picture, I really appreciate the way that he uses perspective to reveal so many scenes within scenes. It’s an illustration that not only captures a moment in the story–the protagonist’s memory of driving into a town in Iowa, the latest town she and her brother have been brought to by their wandering parents–but also paints a picture of the rest of the story, in three major parts. The first part talks about the journeys undertaken by the Wanderers of the title. In fact, the majority of the picture (about two-thirds of the whole) is taken up with a long road through the countryside, implying a lengthy road trip, great distances travelled, and a significant amount of time taken up with such journeys. The trees are reminiscent of the Wisconsin landscape they are leaving, and also hint at the kinds of scenery they have seen on their previous journeys through other states. A little bird looks out on the scene from the top of a tree, while others fly above the forest. The road seems to end almost on the edge of a precipice, or at least a very steep hill, and–like the children in the story– we are jolted into the town, the second part of the image and the story. There is so much detail packed into this part of the picture, that it’s amazing to recognise that this huge town all fits into only two-thirds of the remaining third of the page! Studying these streets and buildings we can imagine all the hundreds or even thousands of new people, the possible new homes, the new schools and stores and restaurants and sports grounds that the children will have to learn about in this new place. In the last small section of the picture, we move from sharp focus on detail into the hazier distance. Beyond the limits of the town we can see more green of forests or plains or hills stretching out and up into the sky. The narrator of the story knows that at some point they will move on again from this town into an unknown future, and we, like her, can only guess at what this distant prospect holds: we just know it is there. This weekend, why not try telling a whole story through an illustration? Make a piece of work that captures a moment, but at the same time speaks about the mood or the overall message of the whole story. If you like, you can use the same kind of aerial perspective that Martin uses (you can read more about that below). As always, if you like what you have made, please send it to us via the Submit button below, or on our website. Remember, there is no fee for art submissions, and you can send us up to 3 in one submission. We always look forward to seeing what you have created. Until next week Aerial perspective One technique for getting lots of detail into one picture–besides having the patience to draw a lot of tiny detail, of course!–is to use perspective. This week’s illustration uses a kind of perspective called aerial perspective, which gives a view, known as an oblique view (because it is at an angle), across a wide range of a landscape. The effect is that the viewer is looking across the scene from a distance, as if from the top of a mountain or the window of an airplane–for a great example of a view from an airplane check out “Parade of Clouds” by Asfia Jawed from the May 2018 issue of Stone Soup. This perspective is different from birds-eye view, which tends to look straight down at the ground from directly above, a similar perspective to a typical map. It is often said by art historians that the use of the aerial view in art really took off in the twentieth century, mainly because of the advent of air travel. This kind of perspective had become increasingly popular in the century before, when the French balloonist known as Nadar (Gaspard-Félix Tournachon) took the very first aerial photographs from his balloon, starting in 1858. Sadly, those photographs of his did not survive, but the Met Museum in New York has a photographic aerial view from 1860, “Boston, as the Eagle and the Wild Goose See It”,  which was taken by James Wallace Black. This is the earliest known aerial photograph of a city. As air travel became increasingly common, aerial views became more popular. You’ll see them in all sorts of photographs and artworks once you start looking out for them! What will you choose for your art experiment with aerial perspective? You don’t have to go up in a balloon or a plane! You could work from a photograph you took of a view when you were out walking one day. You could also work from life. Perhaps you live in a tall building and can look at the view from your window. Or maybe, like Martin, you can construct a whole view from your imagination. Highlights from the past week online Don’t miss the latest content from our Book Reviewers and Young Bloggers at stonesoup.com! We published a lovely concrete poem by Angela called “The Fire Flower” on the blog this week. Check out the illustration Angela sent in plus the transcription of the poem included below it. Interested in the experiences of refugee children around the world? Read Ivy’s book review of Refugee by Alan Gratz, which focuses on a Jewish boy in the 1930s in Nazi Germany, a Cuban girl in the 1990s, and a Syrian boy in modern times. From Stone Soup July/August 2000 Song of a Wanderer By Annie Strother, 13 Illustrated by Martin Taylor,

Mysterious Moon (Nikon Coolpix L830) Photograph by Hannah Parker, 13. Published in Stone Soup, October 2018. A note from Sarah Ainsworth Dear Stone Soup readers, Did you know that Stone Soup has a YouTube channel? We’ve posted a variety of videos before, including interviews with authors published in Stone Soup. However, this week I want to draw your attention to some recent videos we’ve been posting. First, did you see the wildlife videos by blogger Sierra Glassman? One was a video about hummingbirds, and the other was a compilation of wildlife videos she shot while on vacation in Pantanal, Brazil. Not only are they interesting to watch, but they also make you think about how wildlife photography and videography is no longer solely in the hands of National Geographic photographers. You very well might have access to a camera right now! Is there something outside that you could film and make the subject of a short documentary? Even inside there may be something worthy of documentation. A pet or a plant, perhaps? Don’t feel that nature documentaries need to be shot in remote parts of the Sahara—you can make one in your own backyard! On the fiction side of things, we published two videos this week: “Space Battle” by Christian Goh and “A Day at Camp” by Caitlin Goh. I highly recommend you to take the time to watch them. Though they were created using the same software, Christian and Caitlin take very different approaches to their short films. Christian chooses to film a science fiction story, while Caitlin gives a day-in-the-life glimpse of a character’s camp experience. Both young filmmakers use a combination of still and moving images (photos and videos, in other words) to tell their story. They also make the choice to only feature a musical score for their films, with some sound effects, but without any spoken dialogue. Instead, the words are written on screen for viewers to read for themselves. This is not a common practice anymore, but back in the days of silent film, it was the only way to convey language on screen—besides body language, of course! Without dialogue spoken aloud, words needed to be chosen carefully, and visual representations, like the actors’ behavior, needed to express a great deal. It can be striking to look back at these old movies and see how “over”-acted they are, or how exaggerated the actors behaved. But remember, they had to make sure the audience knew what was going on! Do you think you could make a silent film with a more modern, subtle acting style? After watching these videos, you may very well be inspired to make your own. It can be helpful to start with a small idea. Maybe you’d like to create a nature documentary like Sierra did. Or maybe you’d like to create a fiction film like the ones the Gohs made. My advice is to lay out a step-by-step plan if you want to make a movie, including script deadlines, casting ideas, locations for filming, and times for final editing (called post-production). Then, once you’re done, submit it! Happy creating! P.S. Don’t forget that we’ve published a screenplay in Stone Soup before! Read Oliver Jacobs’s lively “Bugs Are the Future!” here. If you write your own screenplay and are pleased with it but don’t wish to make it a visual production, feel free to submit that to Stone Soup! Highlights from the past week online Don’t miss the latest content from our Book Reviewers and Young Bloggers at Stonesoup.com! As I discussed above, we published two excellent videos this week: “Space Battle” by Christian Goh and “A Day at Camp” by Caitlin Goh. Leave a comment on the blog if you enjoy them! From Stone Soup July/August 2018 The Moon and My Heart By Rebecca Beaver, 13 The moon ate my heart. My vision was tainted. I staggered forward, uncertain. I heard something disappear. I think— I am myself. I taste the hole in my chest. The moon’s smile mocks me. I know, I know I am not myself— I am merely a whisper Of a husked heartbeat. Click on this link to read more poems by Stone Soup authors on similar themes. 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