Turkish Aircraft Bombing Cyprus by Frosoula Papeptrou, age 6. This image was made shortly after the Turkish invasion of Cyprus in 1974. There are millions of children who have escaped from war zones and are now living in refugee camps, or as refugees in countries far from their homes. We, at Stone Soup, would like to begin offering space on our website, and in Stone Soup, our magazine, for writing, art, and photography by refugee children. Our goal is to build a powerful collection of creative work by kids ages 13 and under to speak on behalf of the millions of children whose lives have been upended by uncontrollable violence. We are looking for people who want to help us make this project a reality: people who have time to spend contacting organizations; people who are already working in an NGO that works with refugee children; and people who might be willing to offer some financial support for the project. If you would like to help us with this initiative, then please get in touch with Sarah Ainsworth by email. You can write to her at sarah@stonesoup.com. Thank you. William Rubel for Children’s Art Foundation & Stone Soup Magazine
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Saturday Newsletter: November 4, 2017
A note from William Rubel We did it! Or, to be more accurate, Jane Levi, our rock of competence, has shepherded this project to completion. The Stone Soup 2017 annual is being published in response to so many of you saying how much you miss print and how important having Stone Soup in print form is to you. The Stone Soup Annual is 350 pages. It is a magnificent book. Full colour, every issue for the year, plus bonus material from the website. We selected a high quality paper in keeping with Stone Soup’s long-standing production values. The book weighs over one pound! What you will get are the print issues from the first half of the year and the digital issues from the second half of the year all bound together in one volume: eight issues covering January to December 2017. Also in the volume you will find work by winners of our contests, selected posts from our young bloggers, and music written by our Stone Soup composers. The issues inside the volume are formatted exactly as the Stone Soup print issues have been for years. The cover and new material are designed by one of London’s most sought after designers of art museum catalogues. We will also be using a new design from Joe Ewart for our monthly issues starting in January 2018. Joe brings a freshness and energy to his design that I know you will all appreciate, and which I think you will agree lives up to the quality of our contributors’ work. This is a book that is a pleasure to hold and to look at as well as to read. The Stone Soup Annual is finalised and at the printer. In publishing terms, it is “forthcoming”. We are expecting delivery of our piles of books in early December, ready to ship out. Later in the year we will have a new subscription system in place so you will be able to order a digital subscription plus the print Annual as a bundle for next year. In the meantime, you need to order the print Annual 2017 separately. Please go to our online store, Stonesoupstore.com, and order your copies. I’d like to close by encouraging you to listen to “Let This be the World”, a lovely song without words sung by Kathleen Werth, also the artist responsible for the magnificent cover of our first Stone Soup Annual, 2017. Until next week, William Bloggers There are several new blog posts up from our new young bloggers, so do please visit our website to read them and comment. We’ve been delighted by the response they’ve had so far. If you are a young writer and have something you want to say on our blog, let me know. The November Issue is online now – don’t miss it! We wrote to everyone on Wednesday announcing the November issue of Stone Soup. If you haven’t had a chance yet to read it, do make some time to go to our website this weekend and enjoy the fantastic selection of stories, poems and artworks we’ve chosen for you this month. Congratulations to all our talented contributors! Also, if you didn’t get our email about the new issue, please check your spam folder and make sure you have told your system you want to receive email from us (assuming you do!). We won’t ever bother you with email you don’t want (you can unsubscribe any time at the bottom of our emails), but we certainly don’t want you to miss out on any new material, especially when it’s the current issue off your magazine. From Stone Soup May/June 2004 The Lone Wolf By Preston Craig, 10 Illustrated by J. Palmer, 13 Alexis Jamison looked thoughtfully at the young gray wolf anxiously pacing the enclosure. “You’ve got green eyes. That’s odd. Did you know that most gray wolves have gold eyes, or yellow even?” Alexis Jamison looked thoughtfully at the young gray wolf anxiously pacing the enclosure. “You’ve got green eyes. That’s odd. Did you know that most gray wolves have gold eyes, or yellow even?” The wolf whined fearfully, a pup’s apprehensive sound, and Alex looked helplessly at it. “I can’t do anything yet,” she continued bitterly. “You’re going to be released, don’t you know that? What’s your name, anyway?” She looked at the piece of paper tacked lopsidedly to the fence, her father’s practically illegible handwriting spelling out the words: Lupus. Gray wolf. Approximately two years old. “Lupus, is that your name then?” Alex said interestedly. “Good name for a gray wolf.” Lupus whined again. “Oh, Lupus,” she murmured, her voice breaking. She jumped to her feet, put a hand against the fence briefly, then tore herself away and strode toward her house, trying hard to keep from turning back to Lupus. The cool Alaskan air bit at Alex as she walked across the field of dying grass. She was used to wolves; there were plenty here at the gray wolf release center her father had begun four years ago. She had come here every summer since her parents split up when she was six. Alex had learned everything there was to know about endangered gray wolves from her father, and was already able to help him with his work. She didn’t usually let herself get attached to any of the wolves, knowing they were eventually going to be released and she’d never see them again, but she was curiously interested in Lupus… /more
The Life of Mahatma Gandhi and the Act of Going Deeper in Learning
Eleven seventh graders and one teacher are clustered around three white tables in the middle of a small room, the walls adorned with maps, a white board, and a picture of Gandhi at a spinning wheel. We are discussing Gandhi’s religion and how it influenced him in his philosophy and life. Ideas bounce around the table, but I have run out of things to say. Our limited information comes from a few days of teacher presentations, class discussions, and short articles that our teacher handed out it class. All of the information is very school-like, interesting, but minimal because of the time limitations. After a few more ideas fly by, my mind drifts to my Gandhi book that I had picked off the shelf yesterday. It was The Life of Mahatma Gandhi, by Louis Fischer. I had gobbled the first few chapters up, taking in all the information I could about his death, the Hindu religion, and nonviolence. That information comes back to me and my hand shoots up. His relationship with his very religious mother led him to read the Gita and other religious texts when he was in law school. The Gita taught him to not feel temptation, which contributed to him being able to stay non-violent and peaceful. Then class is over, and instead of the learning about Gandhi being over too, I have the Gandhi book in my hand, ready to be read. I was more confident in class because I went deeper in this subject, but more importantly, I learned that I can go deeper in my learning. I may not ever need to know about Gandhi’s relationship with his mother, but learning to love and to go deeper with a subject is a skill that I will want in my life. I homeschooled until 6th grade, and I was taught at an early age that learning has no beginning or end, that you are constantly learning. We went regularly to the library and explored the Library of Congress, Folger Shakespeare Library, National Gallery, and all of the museums on the DC mall. When I homeschooled, learning was an all day experience. It was not confined to a small classroom, but opened up to the whole world. I learned when I was homeschooling that the world of learning is a mansion. The teacher’s job is to hand you the key and bring you to the entryway. However, there are so many more rooms to go through. They may not be neat and tidy like the information that your teacher presents you, but there are endless closets, drawers, and nooks and crannies to explore.. So, I challenge you, don’t let the mindset of having school work be the only way you learn take over. This week, month, or even semester, take something that you are learning about in school, or are super interested in, and find a book about it at the library, or read an article, or talk to an adult (other than your teacher) who knows about it. Dig into the subject even deeper–be an explorer, a researcher, an adventurer, a learner–and see what you find. Good luck!
