Newsletter

Stella holding the review pile     A note from William Rubel We are back from the National Council Teachers of English (NCTE) convention in St. Louis. It was a very good experience for us. We spoke to lots of teachers—and we met a few old Stone Soup friends and made quite a number of new ones. We came away from the convention with fresh ideas that we will be working on and sharing with you over the next few months. To begin with, my colleague Jane Levi went around to other publishers who were exhibiting asking for books for Stone Soup readers to review. As you can see from the photograph of my daughter, Stella, holding a stack of them, they were more than happy to oblige. I asked for reviewers last week and quite a few of you wrote saying you are interested—thank you—but just look at that pile of books! We have mysteries, historical fiction, graphic novels…all kinds of fantastic books that are just waiting for a Stone Soup reader to get their teeth into them and then tell us in their own words what they think. Quite a few of the books are pre-publication, which means that no-one can buy them yet, and we can’t even publish your review until the books go into stores in the first few months of 2018. If you want to review brand new books, or a copy of an old favourite that’s been signed by the author (a few of them have), then write to us and let us know. If you have a special interest (like graphic novels, history, nature, sci-fi) please tell us about that, and also give us your address so we know where to mail the books to. Stone Soup Book Group? One of the ideas we came back from St. Louis with is setting up a Stone Soup Book Group. We know lots of you are great writers, and even more of you are great and avid readers, so a book group where we can share those experiences makes sense to us. The authors and publishers we spoke to about it were excited, too. What do you think? We’ll share our ideas for your input before the end of the year when we have worked out a little more. Wishing all our readers very happy holidays. Until next week William Business updates New Stone Soup order form As of this week we are officially back with ICN, the company who used to handle subscriptions for the print editions of Stone Soup. We know that our customer service has been a lot less good than we’d wanted since June. We were trying our best with what proved to be a poor choice in subscription programs. I’d like to thank my colleagues Sarah Ainsworth and Jane Levi for having gotten us through a tough few months, and thank all of you, our subscribers, for your patience with us and with them. I’d also like to thank Bobbi Bortz of ICN who managed the project of setting up ICN as our fulfillment house. We are ICN’s first fully digital magazine so some fancy programming had to be done. Tan Ha was the lead programmer and was assisted by Raven Cole. Thank you Bobbi, Tan and Raven! We feel our subscribers are back in very safe hands. Stone Soup Annual The Annual is now printed, and will arrive at our mailing house next week, which means we’ll be able to start shipping to everyone who pre-ordered it a little sooner than we expected. It feels good to be ahead of schedule on something! From Stone Soup March/April 2010 Hope By Cashen Conroy, 12 Illustrated by Tiger Tam, 11 On the dark wood table, a plain plate lay inches away from Abigail. Her blond hair flounced around her shoulders. Her light blue dress with darker flowers brought out the bright blue in her eyes, which contrasted strangely with the rich brown of Hope’s. Hope, on the other side of the room, was sweeping the grimy floor with a homemade broom of stiff bristles. Abigail was watching Hope’s every move disconcertingly. Suddenly, she ordered, “Fetch me that plate.” Hope’s eyes bore fire into Abigail’s. Abigail ignored Hope and her smug nose tilted up into the air as Hope replied with no choice, “Yes ma’am,” though Abigail was only a year older than her. But Hope did as she was told. After Abigail had the plate in her hands, she leaned against the kitchen wall, holding it. Hope could feel her disapproving gaze upon her working back. “Abigail,” someone said in a harsh voice from another room, “are you doing your embroidery?” “Yes, Father,” Abigail replied stiffly, reaching for her sewing on the chair. Hope’s gaze averted to the floor and she swept faster. “Good,” the tall man said as he came into the room. “I am going into town,” he declared, straightening his overcoat. “Be good. I’ll be back soon.” Abigail gave a small nod and looked into her busy father’s eyes. He left the room briskly and it gave way to silence. Then all Hope could hear was the scratch of the broom on the floor. /…more

Illustration by Max Strebel for his story, ‘A Gated Memory’, in Stone Soup Magazine, November/December 2003 A note from William Rubel This is a “hello” from St. Louis where the entire Stone Soup staff is at the National Teachers Convention, which I talk a little more about, below. None of us have been to St. Louis before. Our hotel looks onto the Mississippi river. It is still a working river. Long barge-trains are pushed by tug boats. Every couple hours a coal barge goes past the window. We can see the base of the St. Louis Arch. It is on the Western side of the river and represents the Westward expansion of the United States from the Atlantic to the Pacific Oceans. I think I’ve mentioned that our website is going to be redesigned. The first part of that redesign is now in place. Please go to our homepage, stonesoup.com. As you see, blogs are being given more prominence. We thank our new bloggers for their wonderful work. Blogs enable us at Stone Soup to publish material that wouldn’t work in the magazine, but we think is great material that we want to publish. Please read the blogs and leave comments. If you are age 13 or under and would like to blog for us, please go to our submissions page and let us know. For the adults reading the newsletter. We now have more fully stocked our Stone Soup Store. In addition to the Stone Soup 2017 Annual, you can purchase journals and Stone Soup anthologies. This week’s artworks Both of the artworks this week have an interesting perspective on the world. Vertiginous. One is of a monumental construction, viewed from the ground up, towering and impressive, conveying the fear of what might happen as people try to build something so huge. The other is on a smaller scale–at least building-wise–but conveys just as epic a perspective. We are looking down on the stage from the point of view of the performer, waiting in the wings, feeling more than a little apprehensive about the stage they have to take in just a few moments. If you are making a drawing or painting this week, try to think about what mood your perspective might convey. An update from St Louis – book reviewers sought! This week, the whole Stone Soup team is in St Louis at the National Council of Teachers in English conference (NCTE 2017). It’s amazing! Thousands of teachers from all over the country in a huge convention center talking for three days about creative writing, teaching, and books. We will have lots more updates after the conference is over, but for now, the big news is that we have books for you to read and review–lots and lots of books! Many authors and publishers are here and they have given us some signed copies, and even some signed proof copies of books that haven’t been released to the public yet. We (and the authors we spoke to) think the best possible reviewers for all these books must be our Stone Soup readers. Do you want to review a book for us, and can you commit to read it and send us a review to post on our website before the end of the year? If you think that you can do that, please write to me at newsletter@stonesoup.com. Reply as soon as you can–it’s first come first served! We will send the copies of the books to the first reviewers that come back to us. We can’t wait to send you the books and hear what you think of them. Until Next Week William Subscribe to Stone Soup From Stone Soup September/October 2008 A Sliver of Moonlight By Aja Corliss, 12 Illustrated by Gwyneth Welch, 13 Click, clack, sounded the dancer’s feet, echoing out in the auditorium. The smooth piano accompanied her and the audience and judges looked very pleased with the performance. I took a deep breath behind the thick velvet curtain. I was up next. My heart thudded louder than marching drums. I had spent months and months practicing to get this far. I was in the National Level Dancing Team. I breezed through the community and state competitions, but the Nationals were a whole different story. I patted my tight bun and smoothed my tutu out. I was a ballerina. Other dancers around me were quickly reviewing their routine. I was too jittery to do anything. I hoped I would relax once onstage. I was competing with a lot of serious dancers and I had to admit they were looking pretty sharp. The dancer on stage right now was Opal Vasnull. She was a very talented tap dancer. I breathed slowly and tried to soothe my mind by listening to the rhythmic beat of Opal’s performance. I needed to relax. All of a sudden my mom rushed in. “Mom! What are you doing here? I thought you would be in the audience,” I said…/more

  “What I saw in the classroom surprised me” Illustrator Elenia Henry, 11, for Rain Tears by Isabella Widrow, 11. Published May/June 2014. A note from William Rubel I can’t tell whether Elenia’s drawing of a classroom is from life or from memory. Whichever it was, this is an exceedingly well observed drawing. Look at the stacked chairs, the detail on the instrument, the grille in the door, the writing and art on the walls. There is “sense of place” times one hundred in this work! It’s so well done. Whether you are a kid or a grownup, there is nothing like making a drawing of what you are looking at. What you do with a camera and what you do with a pencil are very different things. Drawing forces you to simplify and focus on what is important to you. I encourage all of you this weekend–young and old–to go somewhere, even if it is only out of your own door, and draw. If there are children in your household, then go out and draw together. My daughter and I draw together when we are on camping trips. What I find interesting looking at my drawings from those trips is how clear it is what I most wanted remember about the scene. Looking at a photograph it isn’t always clear what had most interested you about the scene. Drawing forces you to focus on what is important to you. And, of course, when you draw from life the memory of creating the drawing gets mixed in with the work. If you really will go out today or tomorrow and draw I know you will find that drawing will remind of this Memorial Day weekend in a very special way. By way of equipment, all you need are a few pieces of typing paper, a pencil, a pencil sharpener, and a clipboard to place on your lap. Updates from behind the scenes It’s been some time since I’ve talked about what is going on behind the scenes. At this week’s staff meeting we reviewed the new Stone Soup home page. This is the first phase in revising the website. It is really beautiful and increases site functionality. I am sure you will all be pleased by it. While it is never safe to promise I am pretty confident it will be up before the end of the month. You can pre-order the 371 page full color Stone Soup Annual 2017 now at amazon.com/stonesoup. As we’ve mentioned in previous Newsletters, and noted also, below, we will be going to St. Louis next week to a teachers convention. If our internet connection is strong enough within the convention hall then we will do some live streaming. We’ll let you know. Until next week, William Meet us in St Louis Calling all teachers! Will you be at the NCTE conference in St Louis, MI, next week? We will! Do stop by to talk to us at booth no. 434. We’d love to see you there, and hear about all the creative projects that have surprised and delighted you in your classrooms, and think with you of ways Stone Soup can help your students flourish. If the internet connection is strong enough in the Exhibition Hall we will live stream. If we can make it happen we will  announce a live streaming time in next week’s Newsletter. Stone Soup Annual 2017 – pre-order now at our online store We mentioned it last week, but we are so proud of it we hope you will forgive us if we mention it again–the first Stone Soup Annual, 2017, is now available for pre-order at our store. We are thrilled to see how many of you have already snapped up their copies. Thank you! All of the authors, artists and honor roll recipients from 2017, along with a selection of our young bloggers and musicians, will have their work printed in this year’s Annual. It occurred to us that you might want some extra copies of your work in print, so we have a discount doc for you and your families. If you haven’t heard yet what that code is, write to us at subscriptions@stonesoup.com so we can let you in on the magic words. From Stone Soup July/August 2006 Revenge is Bittersweet By Molly O’Neill, 13 Illustrated by Laura Gould, 13 It was a perfect shot. I was standing across the driveway from the basketball hoop—just beyond where the three-point line would have been—and Matt, who was rebounding, gave me a nice crisp bounce pass. I bent my knees and sent the ball arching beautifully towards the basket. Everything about the shot was perfect—the timing, the follow-through, and the soft swish of the ball falling through the net. And for once even Matt didn’t have any wisecracks to make. He just caught the ball and turned around to make a lay-up, which was about the highest compliment I could get from my older brother because I knew he would have tried the shot if he thought he had a chance at making it. Just then Carla’s dad pulled his silver Saab into the driveway Matt tossed me the ball. “You’ll do great,” he said. I hopped into the back seat of the car. Carla stopped listening to her MP3 player and said, “Nice shot.” “Thanks.” I grinned. Carla knew how to give a compliment, how to make a casual remark into the most beautiful music. That was part of the reason I had talked her into trying out for basketball. She was my best friend, and I wanted her at the tryouts even if she didn’t make the team. Carla and I were different… /more