Perfect flying weather, especially for this trip Illustrator Amelia Jiang, 13, for Searching for Atlantis by Sonja Skye Wooley, 12. Published July/August 2016. A note from William Rubel Science Fiction Contest: Deadline April 1 Do you write science fiction? You have a little over five weeks to the April 1st deadline for our Science Fiction Contest. Another name for science fiction is “speculative fiction.” What if meat could be made in a factory so we wouldn’t need to kill chickens, pigs, and cows to eat the meat we like? How might that change the world? In fact, lots of work is being done by scientists to grow meat in factory laboratories. So, it isn’t necessarily a wild science fiction fantasy. What if cars could drive themselves? Then what? What would that world look like? Well, lots of people would be out of a driving job! And as the driverless cars might be operated like a taxi company, or like Uber, most of us might end up just calling for a car when we need one. If we did that, then there wouldn’t be so many (or any) cars parked on streets. There would be too many parking lots so we could do something else with them. What would our lives be like? What kind world—good or bad—might you imagine with driverless cars? Everything you know about science and technology can be brought into the creation of a speculative fiction story. The is your chance to explore, “What if?” Elon Musk’s company, SpaceX, just launched a powerful rocket. It is now already possible to imagine affordable rocket transport to the moon and to Mars. Well, what would that mean for us here on Earth? Would it make a difference? On Earth we have lots of trouble living peacefully all together. Could we make our space colonies reflect the best of who we humans are? Or, do you imagine that we’d mess up our space exploration, too? The Star Wars stories imagine a technologically advanced time in which fighting over power and control are still central to the story of advanced cultures, like ours. Is that what you imagine, too? Use what you know of science and technology to explore possible futures. I’ll remind you in a couple of weeks. You have five weeks, starting now. Giving Refugee Children a Voice What are we working on this week? We are beginning work on a project of publishing writing and art by refugee children. The idea is to offer the Stone Soup platform to give refugee children all over the world a voice and a creative outlet. Is this something you’d like to get involved with? If you do think you might be interested in helping with this project, then please read our introduction on our website, and get in touch with us. There is room for kids as well as adults to help with this. Books books books! We are continuing to develop our ideas for a Stone Soup Book Club, working with a major publisher on some of the details. So far, we have been discussing how to get free copies of books to our subscribers and future members of our Book Club; and thinking about how to organise discussion events with some of your favourite authors. There is some work to do on the website to make it all possible, which is getting started next week. We hope this sounds exciting–we think it does!–and we’ll have more news on the Book Club very soon. Until Next WeekWilliam From Stone Soup January/February 2001 Life Without You By Laberije Shala, 12 Art by Florije Bobbi, 12 You were loved, sweet, Always smiling When I needed you, You left. You gave me the name orphan, You gave me a black shadow, Life without you has no sense. Now, in your best years, Black soil covers you. O my Daddy On your grave There are roses It’s me who put them there Your orphan My Daddy A life without you. You can read more about these works by children from western Kosovo at our website; and please consider supporting and getting involved with our project, Giving Refugee Children a Voice.
Newsletter
Saturday Newsletter: February 10, 2018
I ran out on stage. All I could think about was dancing Illustrator Rachel Hellwig, 13, for her story Nutcracker Dreams. Published November/December 2002. A note from William Rubel Last Sunday I went to see the ballet The Sleeping Beauty with my daughter, Stella. I had never watched many ballets until Stella was eighteen months old. One morning, in a café, I thought, well, I have a daughter, what about looking up “ballet prince” in YouTube? What I found was the Prince Variation in the wedding scene in Sleeping Beauty’s last act. The Prince is dancing (showing off) for his now-betrothed, Princess Aurora. In this variation, the Prince dances in a circle with lots of leaps and twirls. It is an athletic tour-de-force and seemed to keep my then very young daughter reasonably engaged. So, I bought the DVD of The Sleeping Beauty and that was a real success—at least the scene in which the evil witch gives Sleep Beauty the spindle that will send her into her long sleep. Stella watched that scene over and over and over and over again. And then, she watched it again. I vividly recall her saying “again” and my re-playing the DVD. Over the years we have watched different version of The Sleeping Beauty which means in ballet terms that we have watched the same story with the same music interpreted with dance moves that are slightly different from each other. Seeing the San Francisco Ballet performance with yet another choreography brought to mind the many different ways that choreographers have handled the spindle scene my daughter loved so much as a young child. To remind you what happens in the story. At the very beginning, the King and Queen’s secretary makes a mistake and fails to invite the fairy Carabosse to their infant daughter’s christening. The secretary invites all of the other important fairies, but not Carabosse. When Carabosse shows up anyway, uninvited, she is in a foul mood. She arrives, dressed in black, with demon assistants. She is angry. Very. In ballet sign language she tells the King and Queen that she has come to give their daughter a present. The present is that on her 16th birthday she will prick herself with a spindle, and die. She will die! What a present to bring to a christening! In the ballet story there were twelve fairies invited to the party, and all but one of them had already given her gift before Carabosse gave hers. The one who hadn’t was the very powerful Lilac fairy. So, the Lilac fairy comes forward and tells the King and Queen that while she cannot completely undo the evil witch’s gift of death, she could change death to sleeping until a prince finds her and kisses her, at which point Aurora will wake up. Nolween Daniel as Carabosse with the Paris Opera Ballet. Jacques Demarthon/AFP/Getty Image. Well, you know what happens. However hard her parents tried to shield her from spindles, on her 16th birthday, at a grand dance, the evil witch appears, hands Aurora a spindle, she pricks herself, and collapses. She manages to rise again, but she is in a bad way. She continues dancing, but this time, her dance steps are erratic. In one of the most beautiful and moving scenes in all the ballet repertoire Aurora dances backwards with great speed, but as the poison spreads her backward movement becomes uneven, jerky, and then she collapses unconscious.The way most choreographers handle this scene is to have Aurora dancing erratically and the rest of the court looking on as passive observers. But there is one version in particular, the Sleeping Beauty that is danced by the Paris Opera Ballet, that is different. In their version, when Aurora is dancing strangely, all the people who are watching the dance sway back and forth in sympathy with her staggering back and forth. It is as if the whole world feels for her. I would urge you to watch this video of that particular dance. This weekend’s writing project Reflecting on Princess Aurora, here is this Saturday’s project. I want you to tell a story in which something bad happens to a main character. The character can be a person, a fairy, a sportsperson, a member of royalty, a farmer, a pet, even an object that you might care about—like a stuffed animal. I want you to decide whether the world at large feels your character’s pain, or not. Some years ago I had a friend, who died. He was a kind, brilliant, creative man: a musician, an artist, a poet, and a mathematician. His name was Gene Lewis. The night he died there was a terrific storm. On that night, I was driving back to Santa Cruz from San Francisco. The last twenty miles of that drive is over a winding mountain road. When I got to the base of the mountain, the storm was so bad that rather than drive over the mountains in the storm, I stayed at a motel waiting for the morning. It was during the height of this storm, when the earth went wild, that my friend died. If this were a story about a fictional character who was brilliant and beloved by all his or her friends, then writing the death scene with the world itself howling in protest—the world flailing its arms in the form of thrashing tree branches, and crying in the form of a deluge, you would be reinforcing the emotional sense of your character’s death. On the other hand, the turbulence might all be internal. You could describe a calm world: the cars still driving on the freeways, the night calm, apparently no different from so many other nights. Your character dies. The world doesn’t seem to blink. As always, if you really like what you’ve done, then please send it Emma via the Stone Soup Submissions page. Until Next WeekWilliam Thank you! I just want, briefly, to thank the 215 of you who subscribed to Stone Soup in January. Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! I like to keep
Saturday Newsletter: February 3, 2018
‘Mist at the Lake,’ Stone Soup cover art, February 2018. Photograph by Brian Qi, 11, Lexington, MA. A note from William Rubel First! Welcome, welcome, welcome to Hana Greenberg, our latest Stone Soup blogger and our first blogger who is blogging a graphic novel! In Hana’s words: This is one of my graphic novel series, “Luxi and Miola.” It is about two 4th grade girls who are twins that have daily adventures and a bit of chaos, and their fashionista 8th grade sister who is sometimes annoying. I hope you like it! Please click through to her blog to enjoy the whole story and leave a comment. Also, if you are a graphic novelist and want to blog a graphic novel to Stone Soup, then please get in touch with sarah@stonesoup.com. Welcome to the new February issue The February issue is out. Look at that gorgeous cover! Thank you, Brian Qi! Everyone with a paid subscription can download the PDF to read on their computer or tablet. The letters section is coming back—so if you have a comment to make on the issue (and you’re age 13 or younger) then please send a letter to Emma using our online submissions form. Before I share with you the letter that Emma has written to introduce the issue I want to say that this February issue is magnificent. The writing is varied, sumptuous, elegant, challenging. While Emma is going to tell you what the issue is about—what she sees as the thematic links between the stories and poems and art she selected for you—I want to emphasize that this is an issue of gorgeous writing and powerful photographs and art. Everyone can access a few free articles a month on our website, so if you aren’t yet a subscriber, check out this month’s issue. It is an issue of creative work by young people at its very best. I’ve said enough! Here is what our Editor, Emma Wood, has to say about this issue: A princess stuck in a tower. A very ill girl confined to her room. A poem that enacts the feeling of being trapped in a love/hate relationship. A young boy whose fear of heights restricts his movement. A poem that describes beauty as “suffocating.” The stories and poems in this issue are about being confined, trapped, restricted, stuck, suffocated. They are about wanting to escape—either physically or mentally— from that “stuckness.” This is the feeling, to me, of February: it is a time of rain, snow, cold, and wind after the novelty of that weather has worn off. It is a month for dreaming of spring, of an escape. If that has whetted your appetite, visit our website to read more! A weekend writing project! Emma’s reference to “suffocating” beauty is taken from the poem The Road to Williamstown by Sophie Nerine. Williamstown is in Massachusetts, in the United States. Sophie writes about the landscape at a point along that road. She also acknowledges in her poem that there is a road through this place of extraordinary beauty—a fly in Paradise, one might say. We all have beautiful places we have been, and even beautiful places that we go to relax. Some you will have special places you visit to be in nature, a private spot. When I was your age I went to a vacant lot in my neighborhood. There were violets and a mulberry tree that I remember, still, although it has been fifty years since I have seen it. I have learned not to try to go back and find these places from my childhood. The lot is sure not to be there, and if it is it is unlikely to be as magical as I remember it. I do wish I had written about at the time and could read that text—a story, a poem, even a diary entry—or see the drawing that I might have made, or the photograph I had taken. Whether you live where February is cold, and (as it does for Emma) includes a dream of spring; or live where I do and are having an unusually warm winter (it has been like Spring the last few days); or if you live in the Southern Hemisphere and this is your Summer, go outside sometime this weekend to a place that has natural beauty, or a beauty that means something to you, and use your words, your art, your camera, to record and explore the place and your feelings about it. As always, if you feel strongly that the work you make is one you’d like to share with other Stone Soup readers, use our online submission form to send what you’ve made to Emma. Until Next WeekWilliam From Stone Soup November/December 2010 Time for Letting Go By Silva Baiton, 13 Illustrated by Zoe Hall, 12 Gina Boston sat with her brother and grandmother at the old, well-used kitchen table in Grandma’s farmhouse. They were eating breakfast, which was mixed cereal, composed of six different kinds. Gina and her older brother, Caleb, were used to this because they had always had mixed cereals when they had lived with their parents. Maybe that’s why Grandma mixes different kinds of cereals—to make us feel better, Gina thought as she pushed her spoon around. She ran her hand over the table’s honey-colored surface (scarred and faded from years of baking and sunlight) and thought about her parents. They had both died in a car accident when Gina was ten years old. Gina and Caleb had not been in the car when the accident happened; in fact, they had been seven miles away, visiting their grandmother who lived in the country in a beautiful old farmhouse, where outside there was a cow, eight chickens, and four pigs. Before the accident happened, in 1967, Gina and her brother had lived in Maple Brook, Alberta, with their parents and the family’s fluffy white cat, Queenie. Gina did not know exactly how or when her grandmother had gotten the news, but it had been late one February night
