Newsletter

“Wait!” yelled Veronica. She could barely run in her heels. Illustrator Natalia Dunyak, 13 for her story Galactic Rebels, Published January/February 2015. A note from Editor Emma Wood Congratulations to our Science Fiction Contest Winners! First Place ($80):  “Middlenames” by Thomas Faulhaber, 13 Second Place ($40): “Young Eyes” by Allie Aguila, 12 Third Place ($20):  “The Mystical Creatures of Blue Spout Bay,” by Marlena Rohde, 12 Fourth Place ($10): “Sunk” by Benjamin Mitchell, 13 Honorable Mentions: “The Transmitter” by Sabrina Guo, 12 “Holding On,” by Macy Li, 12 “Shhh” by Harper Miller, 11 I have to admit: when we put out a call for our science fiction contest, I was nervous. Even growing up, I didn’t read a lot of science fiction, and I certainly don’t read a lot of it now. Because I’m not as familiar with it as a genre, I didn’t feel very comfortable with the idea of judging a contest! But, once I started reading, I realized what a good reminder this contest was—a reminder of the fact that a good story is a good story, regardless of genre. The stories that stood out to us were the ones that would have stood out to us in general submissions as well. They were stories that used exciting language, that created realistic worlds, that kept us engaged, that created suspense, and that ultimately led us to a deeper understanding of ourselves and our world. Many stories stood out to us for different reasons, but the few that we chose were really remarkable: “Middlenames,” the winning story, offers an imaginative critique of religion and class through an invented society that assigns you a middlename—which determines your identity for life—at birth. “Young Eyes” explores the dangers of technology, and both “Mystical Creatures of Blue Spout Bay” and “Sunk” take radically different approaches to climate change. We’re excited to share the full stories with you in a special Science issue that will be published this September. Congratulations to all our winners, and thank you for your wonderful work! Your Amazon voucher prizes will be with you this weekend. The September Science Special Issue We need more science-related work to complement our contest winners’ stories in the science special issue. To that end: we are putting out a call for all science-related and science-inspired nonfiction, poetry, and art submissions to include in our September issue! Have you completed a science project recently? Are you fascinated by dinosaurs or comets? Do you love to photograph butterflies? If so, we would love to hear from you. You can either submit: a scientifically-inspired poem, drawing, photograph, collage, or sculpture a write-up of a science project you completed (this might include images, to illustrate processes you discuss, or different stages of an experiment) a researched nonfiction essay about a subject that interests you (this might also include a personal narrative about your interest) Please write with any questions and please submit your work soon! The deadline for this issue is July 1st. May 2018 issue online now–and in print very soon Our May issue is out this week, and I hope you all take some time over the weekend (or whenever you have time) to enjoy the range of poetry, stories and art we’ve chosen for you this month. The issue is online now, and subscribers can download a pdf version to print at home or browse on an offline reader of your choice. We are also now back in print! Individual issues are for sale in our online store(amazon.com/stonesoup). January to April 2018 are in stock and shipping now; and May 2018 is available for pre-order. The printing presses are running, and copies of our May issue will be with us and ready to ship to you in the middle of the month. Whichever format you choose, please enjoy all the wonderful work our young authors and artists produce, tell your friends about it, and leave a comment at our website if there is something you particularly respond to. It’s your support that makes Stone Soup all that it is. Until next week, Emma   It was so realistic it didn’t look like a hologram From Stone Soup January/February 2015   Galactic Rebels   Written and illustrated by Natalia Dunyak, 13     The Galactic Soldier Code To protect the peace of the Milky Way, To fight bravely on land, sea, air, and space, To execute the orders of our superiors, We are the Galactic Soldiers. Jade’s cell was a small, cramped space, with bare white walls and floor, except for a small bed, sink, toilet, and mirror. She paced back and forth, her legs burning and the tattoo of her boots soothing her. I’m running out of time, she thought bitterly. I need to get out of here. Beads of sweat collected on her forehead, her heart beating like a drum in her chest. She sighed and pressed her back against the wall. She stopped to look at her reflection. She was startled by it. Her deep blue eyes were shaken with fear. A hunk of black hair covered the left side of her face. The one blue highlight stood out. She eyed her uniform—tight black shirt and pants, made for ease in slipping in and out of spacesuits. The purple band on her right arm finally caught her attention. The band had two thin letters, GS, and a crude drawing of an eagle circling Earth in orbit. It was the symbol of the Galactic Soldiers. Jade was part of this group, the space combat branch of the military, founded shortly after the discovery of other planetary life. The soldiers were trained to be diplomats and defend the galaxy from harm. They went through intense training and had to understand the ins and outs of astrophysics. Jade excelled through training and rose through the ranks. She and other officers were sent on the spacecraft Athena to travel to the Alpha Centauri solar system. This mission would determine the fate of the Earth. She sighed as tears swelled in her eyes; she buried her face in her hands as

I realized that I’d probably never have what she had. She had hope Illustrator Anika Knudson, 13, for Hope, by Isabel Folger, 12 Published January/February 2014. A note from William Rubel Another week! Where do they go? Last week, I said that I’d write about blogs this week. To begin, I’d like to acknowledge my colleague, Sarah Ainsworth, who manages the blogs, including the book reviews. We at Stone Soup are very excited by the material that our young bloggers and reviewers have been sending to us. I would like to ask you–whether you are a young Stone Soup reader or an adult Stone Soup reader–to please look at the material being published in our blogs. The blogs enable us to publish more book reviews than we can in Stone Soup, and they enable us to publish writing by young writers that falls outside of the literary framework of the magazine itself. When you read a blog post or a book review that you like (and I’m sure you will), then leave a supportive comment. If anything you read on the Stone Soup website makes you think of something, if a blog post or review gets your own thoughts and creative juices flowing, then please share. I am now working with a web developer who is going to set us up with a system to reward you for commenting on blogs, but in the meantime, please leave comments anyway! I can tell you as a writer of books and magazine articles that it is rewarding for authors to receive feedback and fan mail. We are so pleased with the additional material we are publishing online that I’d like to issue another call for bloggers. We are particularly looking for young bloggers–that is, age 13 and under–and we are also looking for teenagers, young adults, and adults. If you are a homeschool parent or a teacher, then we especially want to hear from you. We are about to launch an educator blog. To become a blogger you need to to first send us an example of a blog entry. You will find full  instructions on our submissions platform. I want to share with you an excerpt from Vandana Ravi’s review of The Book of Boy. It is thought provoking. “I think that this book, though told in a medieval setting, really applies to modern day. Everyone is different. Although most kids have been told this many times, we still tend to single out the people who are very tall, very short, who have learning problems, who look different. We look at someone and judge them, forgetting hidden under everybody’s metaphorical disfigurement, there is a mind that thinks and feels just like we do. Everyone has, at some point, felt that they don’t fit into the norm. It’s hard to realize that our differences might actually be assets. When you are singled out or made fun of, it’s difficult to put a smile on your face and show the world that you may be different, but you have your own special powers. When you do, however, you are given wings for your personality to fly free.” For something very different, I recommend ‘The Winds of Change,’ by Lukas Cooke, who we think of as our nature blogger. This is Lukas’ fifth post. ‘The Winds of Change’ is about Spring. Lukas talks about the smell of the air, the signs of the season’s change. At the center of his story is a nest of moles that he saves from from a bonfire. The post includes a photograph of the nest. My summary does not do Lukas’ work justice. It is a well written evocation of Spring on a farm. Here is the link to find all of the work by our young Stone Soup bloggers: STONE SOUP BLOGGERS. Until next week,     Making Stone Soup even more accessible Those of you who read our masthead will have noticed that for many years Stone Soup has been available in braille and ebraille for our visually impaired readers. This free service, in print and online, is provided by the US Library of Congress’ National Library Service, who you can contact to sign up or receive more information either at their website or by calling +1 800-424-8567. Now, we have expanded our accessible options by partnering with the US National Federation of the Blind’s NFB-NEWSLINE®, a free audio information service available to anyone who is blind, visually impaired, or print-disabled. We are delighted to add Stone Soup to the list of more than 500 publications already available via this service. Our young authors’ writing is standing shoulder-to-shoulder with an incredible range of publications: national, international and regional newspapers (like the New York Times), breaking news sources (such as Sports Illustrated Online, CBS, and the BBC), and magazines including Air and Space Smithsonian, Discover, Family Fun, Poets and Writers and Teen Vogue. There are a variety of ways to access NFB-NEWSLINE, always free of charge. You can use your touch-tone telephone in your home; you can access the service via the website, receive On Demand emails, or use your portable player or mobile devices. To learn more about NFB-NEWSLINE and to register, please visit www.nfbnewsline.org or call +1 866-504-7300. Please spread the word to friends, family and colleagues who could benefit from these accessible options! Business News Our Santa Cruz web designer has time for us, again! I met with Jordan Iverson last week and will be meeting with him again on Monday. Over the next couple of weeks you will be seeing tweaks to the website. When we finish fixing what we know could use improvement, then we will come to you to ask for direction. Now that the subscription login system has been simplified (you just need your email address) we have started sending out letters to make absolutely sure that those of you who are subscribers know how to get in. We also have a one-month free offer for non subscribers. If you are a newsletter reader, but not yet a subscriber, you may go to our homepage and choose ‘Subscribe’ on the menu bar. This will take you to our order form. Enter MAY18 where it asks

I noticed the slightest little crack on the crown Illustrator Christian Miguel, 12, for ‘If Only’ by David Vapnek, 12 Published September/October 2014. A note from William Rubel I’d like to start out today with some business news. Firstly, some great news! Stories from Stone Soup are included in some of those assessment tests that so many of us adults recall with dread and that so many of you Stone Soup readers are about to sit for as the school year winds down. In the last year, Stone Soup stories have been read in reading assessment tests one million times! That is right: ONE MILLION pages. Wow! Congratulations to our Stone Soup writers. You writing is so good it joins the work of adults in those daunting assessment tests! Also business related. I spent two days last week  in Philadelphia to work with the programmers and the account representative for ICN, the fulfillment house that handles Stone Soup orders. Finally, huge progress was made simplifying the login procedures. No more need to enter your name. No more passwords. All you need to sign in is the email address that we were given when your subscription was set up. We’ll be sending out a letter next week reminding you what that address is in case you don’t remember. Powerful portraits My colleague, Jane Levi, selects the art and the story from the archives for this Newsletter every week, and it is always a nice surprise for me to see what she has found when I come to write my part. She selected this striking and colourful portrait of a football player for this week. There are many things that I like about Christian Miguel’s painting, especially the well-observed attention to detail. The detail I want to call your attention to is the boy’s face and, in particular, his eyes. He is looking down, which reinforces the sense of the boy sitting in repose. His thoughts are inward. Yet, at the same time, we can still see his eyes, which communicates to us even more clearly that there might be something going on beyond a mere glance at the helmet in his hands. All of us, and by ‘us’ I mean both our Stone Soup-age readers and adult Newsletter readers, are handy with a camera. There is a custom that when we take a photographic portrait that the person we are photographing looks straight into the camera lens—like looking into our eyes. What I’d like you to do is take a portrait in which the person you photograph is not looking at the camera. Note how the downturned eyes, spread legs and forearms resting on his thighs all work together to communicate this moment of introspection.  When working with photography it is reasonably easy to also work with lighting and the setting for your portrait. I am thinking here of a fairly formal portrait—not a photograph you take while someone is unawares. You and your subject are partners in this project. Your goal is to capture your subject’s inner self.  Kids, parents, grandparents, friends, you may want to make this a shared artistic project in which you take portraits of each other. The only technical advice I’d like to give is to turn off the camera’s shutter sound. When you take your pictures the camera should be silent. That puts your subject at ease. Also, it is often effective when taking portraits to take several in a row. If you are age thirteen and younger then send Emma, the Stone SoupEditor, up to three of the images you like the best, and give them a title that tells us what the moment was about, beyond capturing the person’s likeness. Submit your writing, art, and music to Stone Soup Catch the latest on our Blog! Lastly, don’t forget to keep looking at our blog, where there is always something new. This link will take you to the latest blog posts, where we have several new book reviews (including, at last, the reviews of the books we received from publishers last November), plus a review of Charles Dickens’ Oliver Twist, and another graphic story with the latest in the adventures of Luxi and Miola from Hana Greenberg. Until Next Week William Subscribe to Stone Soup From Stone Soup July/August 2015 Different City, Same Stars By Abby K. Svetlik, 12 Illustrated by Audrey Zhang, 12 I jolt awake when I hear the stewardess’s too perky voice come over the plane’s intercom system. “We will be landing in New York in just about fifteen minutes. I hope you all have enjoyed your flight thus far…” I zone out when she starts to ramble on about the weather conditions and time in New York. My dad realizes I’m awake and turns to me. “Welcome home,” he says. I give him a lame smile in return and hope he accounts its lack of cheeriness for sleepiness. But on the inside, all of me is frowning. New York is not my home. It never really was and it never will be. Colorado is home. Colorado was where I could lie on the roof in a sleeping bag and stare at the stars for hours. Colorado was where I kept a collection of newspaper articles and random doodles in a loose floorboard in my room. Colorado was where I grew up, despite the fact that I was born here, and where anything that ever mattered happened to me. *          *          * The airport we touch down in is like any other. Filled with people, smelling like dry bagels and tasteless coffee, and crowded with suitcases rolling along always clean hallways. As we make our way through the airport, Dad proceeds to tell me of his childhood here, the things he did, and the neighborhood he grew up in. I keep a few steps ahead of him so that he can’t see the grimace that contorts my face. Dad is just beginning a speech that I’m sure will go on for at least ten more minutes about where we’re moving in, and I can’t stand