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I clutched my pen and began to write Illustrator Joanne Cai, 13, for ‘Drifting’ by Emma Peterson, 11, Published March/April 2016 A note from Emma Wood What is a poem? What can a poem do? What makes a poem good? These are three questions I was considering this week with a group of students at UC Santa Cruz who are working with me to put together our July/August issue. As we talked about poems and read poems, we realized that many of us had grown up hating poems—that there had, once upon a time, been a teacher who had sat us down before an Emily Dickinson poem and said: What does this mean? One student said that “poetry feels like a riddle, and I hate being tricked.” I am a poet now but growing up I wasn’t, and for a long time, I felt this way, too. I preferred poems that had a clear meaning or message. Anything else made me feel stupid. I didn’t know what it meant. But the more I read both in and about poetry, the more I began to love, and even prefer, poems that had no clear meaning or message, poems that evaded my understanding but that made me think or wonder in new ways, about new things. Poems that suggested instead of told, that traced a line of thought without a final drawing in mind. “poetry feels like a riddle, and I hate being tricked” When we thought about poems in class this week, we all wrote our own definitions. Some people thought about the form or the shape of a poem. A poem has lines, they said. But this was misleading because a poem can also be written like a story, in sentences and paragraphs. Some mentioned rhyme and rhythm. In my definition, I wrote that a poem is the saying of the unsayable. Maybe. It’s hard to write a definition of poetry. One of my favorite definitions was written by a third grader: “A poem is an egg with horses in it.” I love that definition because it captures the mystery—and joy!—of poetry. A poem should be a pleasure, a surprise, a gift. Not a puzzle, a riddle, a trick. Think about how you experience a painting or photograph: do you look at it then immediately think—but what does it mean? Of course not! You look at it and you smile, or maybe you turn away—it’s not interesting to you—or maybe you step a little closer to look at a small detail. You admire it, enjoy it, observe it! This is how you should also aim to read poems. To approach them as you would a painting, with an open mind and an open heart, not primarily with your intellect and certainly not with fear or anxiety. If you want to look more closely at the poem, as you would at a painting, if you want to analyze or interpret it—that’s wonderful! But you don’t have to. The brain is a mysterious organ, even to scientists, and I believe we can understand a poem on a visceral, emotional, even unconscious level. That we can understand a poem, in a way, without intellectually “understanding” it. “a poem is an egg with horses in it” This month, National Poetry Month, I encourage you all to read as much poetry as you can. You can start on the Stone Soup website, where we have partnered with the Academy of American Poets to create a small anthology of “poems for kids.” Subscribers can also explore the poems in our archives, including the poetry portfolio in our April 2018 issue.I also encourage you to write your own poems! This weekend, try writing a poem like Marley Powell’s “Sounds,” which is included in full below. In “Sounds,” Marley wrote a series of sentences connected only by a single idea—and that single idea is sound. When you’ve written your poem, please submit it to Stone Soup with a note telling me about your experience with this writing experiment! Until next week,     From Stone Soup January/February 2002 Sounds By Marley Powell, 12 My iguana cage is silent. Just two weeks ago it was alive with sounds. I wish we’d just throw it out. The other night I heard a helicopter fly over my head. I hear a lot of helicopters at night when I’m trying to sleep but this one was different. I was at UCLA and it was late at night and it flew over my head and I ran away from it but then it landed on the top of the UCLA emergency room parking lot and I was glad the awful noise just stopped. The answering machine picks up and says I would like to know if you can join Kaleidoscope on Sunday night. I don’t recognize the voice but I know it has something to do with school. I hear my stomach gurgling. It sounds like a washing machine. The siren of a police car wakes my cat up. The sound of a blue jay squawking is stopped by a loud shriek. I wonder if my cat got the bird. A dog is howling like a werewolf next door. The thought of that makes me shiver. I hit my pen against the table like a drumstick. I’m drumming to “Love Me Do.” It’s suddenly so quiet. The French people to the left of us are not home. The Japanese people to the right are asleep. I don’t like it. The only sound I hear is the tap tap tapping of my foot on the floor and the rap rap rapping of my pen on the table . . . Paul McCartney’s voice sings in my head. I can’t believe he can sing so deep and so high at the same time.     Stone Soup’s Advisors: Abby Austin, Mike Axelrod, Annabelle Baird, Jem Burch, Evelyn Chen, Juliet Fraser, Zoe Hall, Montanna Harling, Alicia and Joe Havilland, Lara Katz, Rebecca Kilroy, Christine Leishman, Julie Minnis, Jessica Opolko, Tara Prakash, Denise Prata, Logan Roberts, Emily Tarco, Rebecca Ramos Velasquez, and Susan Wilky.

It must be very early, the light is just creeping sleepily up from behind the trees and rooftops Illustrator Rosemary Engelfried, 13 for On the Bridge of Dawn by Megan M. Gannett, 13 Published May/June 2004 A note from William Rubel At last, thanks to Emma and Sarah, the long-promised Book Reviews section of our website is here! What you’ll see on the page today is a small beginning to something we want to see grow. We’ve got lots more reviews to add, and we’ll be putting them up every day this week and into the future, so you will see something new popping up on a regular basis from now on. We want our Book Reviews section to develop into a lively place for Stone Soup readers to drop by and discuss the books they love (and even those they don’t!). If you love books and want to get some ideas of new ones to read, or hear what others thought of some you have already read, take a look, read the reviews, and leave your comments. Do you agree or disagree with the reviewer’s thoughts? Do you have something to add? Let us and the reviewers know what you think! And of course, do please keep on submitting your book reviews to us. Relating to others—thoughts from great novels and our bloggers For those of you who are following the news at all, or have talked with your parents about the many huge changes in the politics of the world taking place right now, I think you will probably have talked about how polarized politics has gotten in the United States and in many other countries around the world. We are tending only to talk to people who think the way we do, with less reaching out to people with whom we disagree in order to find common ground. I want talk talk today about Sarah Cymrot’s review of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, posted on our blog a few weeks ago. Like many of you, Sarah is in middle school. She is experiencing changes in the way kids (people) relate to each other compared with elementary school. What adult reading this Newsletter does not also remember those cliquish years? Which group were (are) you in, which group weren’t (aren’t) you in, how could (can) you make new friends? The Scarlet Letter is one of the major American novels of the nineteenth century. It is regularly taught in high school. I think it is fantastic that Sarah has taken this book on and has found that it offers some insights into middle school life. At the end of her post Sarah asks a question and invites readers to answer in a comment. I have left a comment, and now I am hoping that this weekend you will read the review—alone or with your parents or another adult—and will answer her questions too. Adults: the comments sections are open to adult readers, as well, and in this case I think the question is challenging enough to force all of us to think and to then struggle to find the words to answer. Sarah asks us to think carefully about how we relate to others: “Are there ways that you are judged by your peers? Are there ways you convince yourself to accept others in the face of feeling judgmental? Are there times you have reached across perceived differences and have connected with someone you didn’t expect to? I’d love to hear from you…” Go to her post, read her review, and then please continue the discussion by leaving a comment. It’s National Poetry Month! Did you know that April is National Poetry Month in the United States and Canada, and that in springtime in particular poetry is celebrated all over the world? Coming back from Taiwan last week my colleague Jane read a feature about poetry in the inflight magazine, written in celebration of national poetry month. I’d like to leave you with a few words from the article that express some of the ways we think about poetry here at Stone Soup, to inspire you both this weekend and for the rest of the month. “Love, warmth, and hope are all part of the April rhapsody. April is a never-ending love song. Come along with us as we experience the poetic side of April. In this warm spring month, take the opportunity to write poetry, recite poetry, sing poetry, discuss poetry and experience a poetic life.” (Dynasty, Inflight Magazine of China Airlines, April 2018, p. 22) We will share with you some of the work being done by our friends at the Academy of American Poets during National Poetry Month next week, and meanwhile, as ever, look forward to receiving your expressions of your poetic lives, whether they are written, painted, sung or recited!Until next week William From Stone Soup July/August 2015 The Five-Dollar Bill Written by Katherine Tung, 11 Illustrated by Aris Demopoulos, 12 “Stop Tiger from chasing Fluffy!” Mike Brady yelled as he charged headlong at his sons’ dog at his wedding reception. Tiger dashed under the wedding cake table and tipped it. The three-tiered cake slid along the table and into Mike’s arms. When Carol Brady hugged him for saving the cake, it toppled onto Mike’s face. This scene on TV sent my brother and me rolling on the carpet in fits of laughter. Ben and I relied on The Brady Bunch reruns to release frustration. We watched them every afternoon, since we spent our taxing schooldays proving to the mostly  white student body that we were not mentally retarded, we just couldn’t speak English. After all, we came to the U.S. three months ago, knowing only how to say “hi.” I wanted to return to Taiwan, where I lived a Brady-Bunch life—wholesome and carefree, where each day ended with everyone happy. Mom yelled from the kitchen, “哥哥, 去市場 買一袋紅蘿蔔. 現 在就去!”1. She ordered Ben to buy a bag of carrots from the market, this instant. “我不要! 叫妹妹去,”2. Ben shouted back, refusing to budge and offering me a chance to go. Mom marched

He licked my fingers and I felt that the model dog didn’t matter to me anymore Illustrator Garrett Landon, 11, for Little Pal by Nikki Morse, 12, in Stone Soup Magazine July/August 2000. A note from William Rubel Jet lag! Traveling is great, but there are side effects! I got back from warm Israel via freezing London (literally) to a rainy week in Northern California. Next week, I’m going to Taiwan for my daughter’s Spring break. So the next Newsletter will be produced from Taipei. Being honest, as I am often working at the last minute, Taipei is actually a great place to be writing the Newsletter as we post it Saturday morning California time which is Sunday in Taiwan. All of you writers will understand that means more time to procrastinate!   Science Fiction Contest reminder Speaking of procrastinating, the deadline for submitting a story to our science fiction contest is 11:59 pm on April 1, Pacific Coast Time. Winners receive Amazon gift certificates of $80 (first place), $40 (second place), $20 (third place), and $10 (fourth place). The prize-winners will be published either in the magazine or on the website. The authors of highly commended stories that do not win prizes will also be acknowledged. Upload your submission the usual way — click on the submission link, below.   Celebrating our Young Bloggers, and a joint adult/kid nature-writing challenge I am very pleased with how our Young Bloggers project is going. Some really interesting writing has been posted.  If you are Stone Soup writing age, which is age 13 and under, and if the Young Blogger posts inspire you, then go to the submissions button and upload an example of what you’d like to blog about. If our editor, Emma Wood likes it, then she will make you a Stone Soup blogger. All subjects welcome. The recent post I am featuring today is “Rain” by Lukas Cooke. I think this is an utterly brilliant piece of writing. It is very difficult describing what you see and experience. Storms are particularly difficult to evoke with words. Lukas does an incredible job describing a rain storm, first from observing it inside his house, and then from outside where he is standing in the rain. I’d like to share this passage with you: “The wind seemed to be whistling a tune, accompanied by the soft percussion of rain hitting the ground and splashing in puddles. Dancing to that tune were the trees, swaying back and forth, rejoicing in the water that so eagerly rushed down to quench their thirst. The frogs too, could be heard from inside the house, their chorus befitting the scene. And the frogs too, were rejoicing in the long–needed downpour.” I am a writer and all I can say is, wow! The wind whistles, the trees dance, the frogs rejoice. This passage demonstrates Lukas’ power as a writer as he takes common ideas–the whistling wind, the dancing trees, and the chorus of frogs–and fleshes them out in a dynamic prose that has emotional depth, grace, and rhythm. Notice how he injects emotions and feelings through the core words and ideas he uses to describe the scene. He speaks of the trees “rejoicing in the water that so eagerly rushed down to quench their thirst.” Lukas’ tree is intensely alive, as is the water that rushes down to it. I find this idea of a dancing tree rejoicing in the rain to be powerfully evocative. One of the most memorable storm scenes in English literature is in a short story, Typhoon, by the great Polish-British writer, Joseph Conrad (1857-1924). While Conrad tackled describing a hurricane from the vantage point of a boat in peril on the high seas, Lukas has tackled something that I think may be even more difficult. He describes a storm that is within our experience. Everyone reading his story, whether conscious of doing so or not, will be comparing Lukas’ description of the rain with their own experiences. We know exactly what a storm such as the one Lukas describes is like. A false step would stick out. What I want you to do this weekend, and I am speaking here to all of you reading the Newsletter this week, whether you are still a student or whether you are a parent or grandparent, is to join Lukas in describing  the weather that is right outside your door. I want you to do it this weekend. The challenge is to make something of whatever the day is like when you start writing. If you are together (kids and grownups) then do this together.  When you read Lukas’ complete text you will see that he is clearly thinking deeply about how to say what he wants to say. You can see he worked hard to express the full depth and complexity of his experience. If you feel you are struggling to say what you want to say, then that is good. On your first couple of drafts please let yourself go. Don’t censor what you are writing. Don’t edit yourself. The first words that you write to describe the day may not turn out to be the best words to use. That doesn’t matter. Get the ideas down, make a word sketch, and then later, perfect it. If you end up really liking what you have written, and if you think that you make your readers feel and see the moment of the day you are describing (and you are 13 or under), then please submit it to Stone Soup. You may also send what you have written to me just by replying to the Newsletter. And if you are a kid and actually managed to get an adult to write along with you, then email your joint pieces to me as well. One of our advisors once suggested that we publish work by parents and grandparents, so lets see what comes of this idea. Once I have a few paired works by kids and adults, I’ll have a better idea of what to do with them. And, if you are an adult Newsletter reader but without kids to work with–well, take up the challenge, anyway. What do you see out the window? Until next week,