Newsletter

“Tiny only barks at you if he doesn’t know you” Illustrator Chelsey Scheffe, 13 for The Shooting Star by Samantha Cecil, 10. Published September/October 2004. A note from William Rubel Print is back! Yes, home delivery is back. We started printing Stone Soup again last January and are now pleased to be able to tell you that we are restarting subscription-based delivery of beautifully printed Stone Soup issues to your mailbox!* What is different between now and before? One difference is that we now publish eleven times per year. As a print subscriber you will receive a copy of Stone Soup in your mailbox every month between September and June. In July, you will receive the summer double issue. What else is different? For those of you who haven’t looked at the PDFs or purchased a print copy, you’ll find that the new Stone Soup is more colorful than before and has a dynamic, updated design. And the content is more varied—we accept a wider range of media in our art submissions (photography included), and we publish more standalone art. There are special thematic issues, such as poetry, food, science writing, historical fiction, and more. The issues also vary in length a little—some of our special issues, such as science writing or food, are a few pages longer than the others. For the new Stone Soup we turned to the highly respected London-based designer Joe Ewart. Joe is known in London museum and art circles as the go-to designer for catalogues and monographs (art books devoted to a single artist). We asked him to give us a look that will graphically put our young contributors’ writing and art on a par with the literary and artistic work of adults—that is what Stone Soup is all about, after all—and he did! Sneak preview! Look at these gorgeous covers and inside pages from issues between January and September.   What is the difference between a print subscription and a digital subscription? We publish the best writing (fiction, poetry, and some short nonfiction) and art that is sent to us, around thirty pages per issue. If you buy a print-only subscription, you will receive the physical magazine in your mailbox. In addition, we now publish book reviews every week on our website, and every week we also publish blog posts by Stone Soup writers on the wide range of topics that our contributors and subscribers care about—from sewing to sport, family life to environmental issues. So, when you subscribe to the digital Stone Soup you get the current issues of the magazine in digital form, plus about 20 years’ worth of back issues, plus the book reviews and blog posts already mentioned. You also receive access to activities linked to the writing and art stored online, as well as music, interviews with authors, and more. Our new order page has all the details, with packages that allow you to choose print, digital, or a bundle with both. Stone Soup is the perfect gift for any creative child between the ages of 7 and 13. Please join us for another year of new issues, and help us spread the word that not only are we are still here after 45 years, we are back in print! Until next week *Subscriptions including home delivery of print issues are currently only available in the U.S. and Canada. Individual print issues can be delivered from the Stone Soup online store to other regions of the world. This week’s story and art from the archives Thirteen-year-old Chelsey Scheffe’s bold, colorful illustrations complement 10-year-old Samantha Cecil’s powerful story about the challenges and tribulations of school popularity in “The Shooting Star.” Read on to discover if the school nerd Darren’s wish upon a star, to become popular at school, comes true—and how matters unfold… We hope you enjoy the art and writing we bring to you from our archives every Saturday! You can peruse the illustrations and read the first few paragraphs in the newsletter, and then click through to our site using the ‘more’ link at the bottom of the story section to read the rest. Remember, subscribers have full, unlimited access to the whole archive on the Stone Soup website. Non subscribers can read a limited number of stories, poems and posts. Don’t miss the latest content from our book reviewers and young bloggers at Stonesoup.com! This week, the Stone Soup editors have been busy adding material that might be interesting or inspirational for those of you thinking of entering the Secret Kids Contest that we announced a few weeks ago. The top prize for the contest is a book deal with a publisher, which we think is a great incentive to start polishing up your best long-form work. Be ready to submit before January 1, 2019! The contest is accepting work from kids as young as 5, and up to age 18, in four age groups (meaning there are four prizes to be awarded). This week, we have been looking into juvenilia produced by writers from the past who later became famous adult writers—writers like Jane Austen, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, and the Brontës. We have also put up the text of Daisy Ashford’s The Young Visiters, a classic work of child fiction initially published in the early decades of the twentieth century. Enjoy, be inspired, and don’t miss this opportunity to reach an even wider audience with your own long-form fiction. He closed his eyes and whispered, “I wish I was popular at school” From Stone Soup September/October 2004 The Shooting Star  By Samantha Cecil, 10 Illustrated by Chelsey Scheffe, 13   Darren Milar sighed as he walked into the schoolyard. All around him kids were laughing, running, and playing. The sound of tetherball chains as they clinked against their metal poles rang out as Darren passed. When kids started school again, they were sometimes nervous, excited, or a little sad. But that was nothing compared to what Darren felt. Ever since kindergarten, Darren had been the outcast. The nerd, if you had to put it that way. Other kids had had loads of friends, and turned against him. Darren had only one friend, Ian, and Ian was just

“Excuse me, may I please have those two doves?” Illustrator Olivia Zhou, 12 for My Father’s Doves by Jenny Li, 11. Published May/June 2013. A note from William Rubel Reminder! Midnight, September 30. That is the absolute final deadline for recipes for the December food issue! Get cooking! Get writing! Enough said. It is a Stone Soup first! As we highlighted in last week’s blog round-up, Stone Soup blogger Lukas Cooke interviewed Patricia Newman, author of Plastic Ahoy!, a book on plastic pollution in the oceans. Those of you who follow Lukas’ blog know that he writes about nature and the environment–the perfect Stone Soup author to interview Ms. Newman. I’d like to congratulate Lukas. You did a really good job! I have been interviewed many times for press and for radio. Everything hinges on the quality of the questions one is asked. You asked good questions. Newsletter readers, if you missed it last week, please check out the interview this week–and leave a comment if you are so inclined. Lukas is not the only Stone Soup blogger writing about nature. Mia W. published an essay this week, ‘The Atlantic Net Pen Collapse’, that talks about the escape from a fish farm of an immense number of Atlantic salmon into the Salish Sea. Where is the Salish sea? Mia describes it as “a vast body of water, stretching from southwest British Columbia, Canada, to the northwest portion of Washington State, USA.” An informative, well-written essay, with a bibliography, I highly recommend it. The writing by Lukas and Mia, and other bloggers who are posting nonfiction, is broadening our Stone Soup world. Thank you, Mia and Lukas! I know that many of you write both fiction and nonfiction. While we are keeping fiction writing the main focus of Stone Soup magazine (although there is some great nonfiction in our September Science issue), the website is where we are now offering you an opportunity to write about absolutely anything that interests you. Join Mia and Lukas to write about the natural world, or Vandana R to write about books, or Leo T. Smith who writes about sports–and the list goes on, with wonderful writers on every issue under the sun. Have an interest? Love to write? Want to share your thoughts? If you are under the age of fourteen OR if you are involved in teaching writing, art, or music to kids then become a Stone Soup blogger! Write something up and upload it to the blog section of our online submission form so we can take a look. Now. For the rest of you! Again, this is regardless of your age, if you are not going to sit down and start working on what you hope will be your first Stone Soup blog entry, then I want you find some time this weekend to sit down and start writing about something that are you are really interested in right now, like today. For me, today, it is pit firing. After years and years of thinking, wouldn’t it be nice to fire pottery in the backyard?, but never doing it, I bought some clay, and with my daughter made two bowls where we hope our finches will make nests, two cooking pots, and two cookie stamps. I made sure the pottery was bone dry by putting it in a low oven this morning, and then I went for it: Cleared some ground in my backyard; built a small fire; when the fire had burned down put the pottery on the embers; and then piled wood over the pots–and lit it! I added a little more wood when the fire was roaring to ensure the pottery would get hot enough to fire; let it all die down; and after the heap was reasonably cool, I uncovered the pieces from the ashes. Miracle! Pottery! That is what I’d write about. You? Until next week         This week’s story and art from the archives We do encourage you to click through to read the whole of this week’s featured story (as we hope you do every week!). 12-year-old Olivia Zhou’s lovely, detailed drawings, with their calm, understated color-palette complement the beautifully expressed evocation of the past, love and longing in 11-year-old Jenny Li’s story ‘My Father’s Doves’–which is about the father and the doves of the title, and so much more. Remember, subscribers have full, unlimited access to the whole archive on the Stone Soup website. Non-subscribers can read a limited number of stories, poems and posts. Highlights from the past week online Don’t miss the latest content from our Book Reviewers and Young Bloggers at stonesoup.com! As mentioned above, we published Mia W’s nature and environment piece this week, ‘The Atlantic Net Pen Collapse’. Maybe I could use the doves to send a note to my father From Stone Soup May/June 2013 My Father’s Doves By Jenny Li, 11 Illustrated by Olivia Zhou, 12 Running to the market, my father clutched the bagful of coins to his chest. On the leather bag was sewn “,” horse, in Chinese, the only gift that his father had given him before the war. He hurried across town, walking under the wood sign with the words “Tai City” etched on it and following the path, which he knew by heart. He finally arrived at the center of town, full of street vendors selling fruits and other goods, with gray-uniformed soldiers at every corner. The coins were clanking against each other inside the bag as if clamoring to break free. My father lowered his eyes from the glaring of the men and shuffled to the doves’ area. He spilled the coins onto his calloused, rough hands and spoke to the salesperson. “Excuse me,” he said in a steady voice, “may I please have those two doves?” My father pointed to the two slender spotted doves perched inside an angular metal cage—the doves which he had admired for so long. The man glared suspiciously at him. “Do you have the money?” “Yes, sir,” replied my father, trying to look

I vividly remember my mom, dad and stepdad around Tyler’s bed, each massaging a different foot and hand.Illustrator Sarah Dennis, 13 for ‘Together’ by Alex Miffiin, 12. Published January/February 2001. A note from William Rubel In the next few Newsletters I’d like to re-introduce to you the Stone Soup staff. As the current September issue marks the first anniversary of Emma Wood taking over as Stone Soup’s Editor, and she also has a new book out this week, we’ll begin with Emma. I’ll start with congratulations on her just-published translation from Russian, A Failed Performance: Short Plays & Scenes by Daniil Kharms. Daniil Kharms (1905-1942) was a Soviet poet, writer, and playwright who worked in the surrealist and absurdist literary traditions. Emma only told me her book (co-authored with C. Dylan Bassett) had just been published yesterday morning. I ordered a copy right away! Is surrealist and absurdist Soviet literature something I know anything about? No, I don’t. But I always order books written by my friends and I always learn something. While this is not a young adult title, I hope the many adult readers of the Newsletter will join me in supporting Emma by ordering her book. If you can also write a review on Amazon that will be extra great. Before I say more about Emma, I’d like to just say, thank you, Emma, for the extraordinary work you have put in this past year at Stone Soup. I can’t believe how lucky we are to have you. Thank you from my heart. In addition to being a translator, a poet, Editor-in-Chief here at Stone Soup, and an editor at other literary publications, Emma is a university instructor, a PhD student, and a marathon runner. I encourage all of you to check out Emma’s website. Like you, Emma sends her work to publications hoping to get published. Here are the literary magazines where her poems appear. I posted a link to this interview in which Emma talks about poetry when she first joined Stone Soup. Whether you are a young writer or an adult reader of this Newsletter, please listen to the interview.  Even if you don’t understand the entire interview I know that each of you will find something in it. I find it inspiring. What is poetry? Listen to Emma’s answer. I’ll write more about the other people in the team who bring you Stone Soup next week. This week’s drawing and story from the archive Look at the drawing by Sarah Dennis. I mean, really look at it. What I find remarkable is the amount of information conveyed about the the scene around Tyler’s hospital bed. You see Tyler’s face is scraped up–note the big red patch on the right side of his face–and he has stitches above one eye. The story the drawing is linked to is about an awful car crash (it’s scary in parts–but, spoiler warning, everyone is fine in the end). The two figures in the foreground, Tyler’s mother and step-father, are massaging his feet while his father holds one of his hands. Everyone is looking in a different direction. We are observing an intimate family moment in which the participants in the scene are united around the injured Tyler. He is in physical pain. His family are in emotional pain for him. His grey-haired father looks very worried. I also read worry on the face of the man in the left foreground. His mother, with her red fingernails (nice detail) seems to be the calm one, despite the detail of her neck brace, a remnant of her own injuries from the crash. I sense that she may hold the family together through her calm demeanor and practical solutions. Somehow, I sense that she is the one who said, “Let’s massage Tyler’s hands and feet.” Inspired by this, here is your activity for the weekend: sketch a scene that involves an important moment with other people. Think of something from this past week or two where you were involved with two or three other people, united in a common purpose and doing something. It might be a moment in your family, with friends, out in a public place, or at school. I suggest the doing something part of the idea inspired by the strength of the hand gestures we see in Sarah’s drawing. Give thought to where each person is looking when you make your drawing snapshot. And, as always, if you come up with something you really like, please send it to Emma by uploading it on our online submissions form. Until next week Write a book and get it published: a brand new contest Do you think you can write a whole book? This week we announced a brand new contest, in partnership with MacKenzie Press, challenging you to  you to do just that. Do you dream of getting it published? Well, if you win this contest, the prize will make that dream come true! The Secret Kids contest invites entries in three age categories, for longer fiction, either illustrated or unillustrated, in any genre. We’ll write more about this contest over the coming months–the deadline for entries is January 1, 2019–and for today we invite you to check out the contest information at our website (click the link above) and think about writing, revising, editing and perfecting your best work in time to submit your entry by the end of the year. Plus, one last reminder about the Concrete Poetry contest: you have until midnight (Pacific time) tonight to get your final entries in! More deadlines!  The deadline for recipe submissions for the December food issue is September 30. As I’ve mentioned before, for Stone Soup we are interested in both the recipe and the headnote, the narrative that precedes the recipe that explains why it is important to you, the author. The  December issue is not limited to holiday recipes. This week, I purchased the cookbook, The Bread and Salt Between Us: Recipes and Stories from a Syrian Refugee’s Kitchen. I’ve had the book a few days and my daughter and I can say that the recipes are good. But, what makes this book exceptional is the combination of the text and the recipes. Recipes can often tie us to a memory. Perhaps it is the memory of a dish that was a grandparent’s favorite, or a dish that you