After we featured her self-published book, The Hunting Season, in our Saturday Newsletter, we asked its young author Tara Prakash to write something for us about the process she went though. From here, it’s over to Tara. The Hunting Season by Tara Prakash, age 11 I got inspired to write The Hunting Season when I went to Wyoming and explored Yellowstone and Grand Tetons National Parks. We saw a lot of bears on that trip and I kept wondering what they were thinking about and what was in their heads.That was when The Hunting Season was born. So when I got home, I wrote on Microsoft Word a story about what I thought the bears would be thinking about, what their fears were and what events exploded excitement into them. I wrote whenever I could. Between my soccer practices and basketball games, every open time I got, I would sit at the computer and write. The plot never got boring or the long amount of time it took to write in never got to be too much. I sometimes got frustrated though, when parts of the plot didn’t match up, like a puzzle piece that didn’t fit. My parents’ friend, who is a self published author, told us about Create Space, the self publishing company. Then, my nanny and I uploaded the Word document into Create Space, and Create Space helped us format the book; we scanned my cover artwork so it would show, we wrote a summary of the book on the back, choosing the color, font, size, etc. Then, from Create Space, my dad uploaded the book to Amazon and we chose the price to set it at and I wrote my ‘About The Author’ there. After it was out to the public, my dad emailed my school teachers, my friends, my sports team coaches, and family, and family friends. Once my teacher bought it and left a five star review then lots of my friends bought it, leaving reviews and giving me compliments at school. I started the story at age nine and finished the story right as I turned ten. I turned was almost eleven when we got it onto Amazon. If there’s one thing I learned during this whole process, it’s this: Keep on writing. All writing starts with one great idea. You can find a copy of The Hunting Season on Amazon.
Teacher Resources
Guest Post: Writing Your Feelings and “My Grandma’s Angels” by Sam Rozal
“Can’t you hear them?” she whispers. “Can’t you hear the angels?” When I think about my grandparents, my head is flooded with vivid memories of them. I hear my grandpa’s deep laughter ringing in my ears as he tells me a story about camping. I see a flash of green as I remember the color of the vest my grandma used to always wear. It is as if I can feel the soft fabric against my cheek like I did when I hugged her. For me and many others, memories of our grandparents are engraved into our thoughts. But sometimes, even though we so distinctly remember them, grandparents don’t always remember us in the same detail. This is the scenario that the main character, Maggie, in the story “Grandma’s Angels” by Mariana Stevenson, 12, finds herself in. Maggie’s grandma has Alzheimer’s, a disease that causes memory loss and cognitive impairment through the deterioration of brain cells. In the story, 13-year-old Maggie is visiting her grandmother. Although Maggie loves and vividly remembers her, her grandma has no recollection of Maggie or Maggie’s father. When Maggie’s father realizes that his mother’s wedding ring is missing, a frantic search to find it ensues, and emotions run very high. Through this ordeal, Maggie finds herself evaluating her own feelings about her grandmother’s Alzheimer’s and questioning whether her grandmother is truly okay. From Maggie’s heartbreak and sadness when her grandmother does not remember who she is to her father’s panic when they cannot find her grandma’s wedding ring, the piece brings you on an emotional journey that I believe holistically portrays the effect of Alzheimer’s on a family. It is an experience that I can personally relate to. While my own grandma was never officially diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, there was no denying that she showed signs of cognitive impairment. Sometimes I think about how she could never remember that my name was “Sam” not “Jennifer” or that I couldn’t speak Chinese. I was a preteen when it first started to happen, so whenever she called me by my cousin’s name and asked me for something in a language that I didn’t understand, I just sighed and gave my mom a look in the stereotypical annoyed teenager sort-of-way. However, looking back, I realize that my “annoyance” was just a facade. I was trying to hide how sad and hurt I was that my grandma couldn’t remember something as easy as my name. Deep down, this is why I love “Grandma’s Angels.” The author’s characters express hurt and sadness that I had been too fearful to express in the past. The story doesn’t shy away from more difficult emotions. “My heart aches for a moment as I look at her. Grandma’s faded blue eyes show nothing. There is no sign of recollection at all,” and “I’m angry that Grandma has to experience a disease like Alzheimer’s” are just two snippets in this story that demonstrate the feelings of fury or dejection that Maggie experiences. For the protagonist to so clearly accept emotions like this conveys a message that it is okay to be sad or angry about things that seem unfair to you. This speaks so much in itself. How often do we hear the words “don’t cry” or “there is no need to be sad”? When did we get to the point where feelings like this are something that we need to hide? Often, when we think of children’s writing, it’s associated with a “happily ever after.” Sometimes children’s stories are expected to be blindly optimistic. But we must remember and recognize the pieces that are honest about reality even when reality isn’t perfect, like this story. Because, in the end, life isn’t perfect—it’s filled with complications, twists and turns, and unexpected challenges. Don’t be afraid to write about things that are hard or sad. In Stone Soup, one difficult topic that there are a lot of stories about is illness. One of my favorites is “We No Longer Go Outside” by Stella Lin, 12, which is told from the perspective of a dog whose owner has cancer. One thing you will notice in both “We No Longer Go Outside” and in “Grandma’s Angels” is that although there are feelings of sadness, there is also an overwhelming feeling of hope. This hopefulness evolves from the fact that writing about something difficult helps you heal. This is an idea called catharsis, often characterized by the release of emotions and the subsequent relief that comes from this. You can see this in action through the last lines of “Grandma’s Angels”: “I realize everything will be OK. Grandma will be OK. I can hear the angels.” Through processing her emotions, Maggie realizes that even though her grandma and her family may be facing a challenge, everything will be fine in the end. Sometimes we all get signs in life that tell us this very message. My grandparents passed away recently. I think often about where they are, and how they are doing. Are my grandparents with each other? Are they happy? Do they think about me or the rest of family at all? In a way, this piece was a sign for me; a sign that although I will probably never know the answers to these questions, everything is still okay. This story encouraged me to face my emotions, emotions that everyone will go through at some point in their lives. And I hope that like Maggie, we can all be brave enough to express and face these more difficult emotions head-on, comforted with the knowledge that, in the end, everything will work out. So next time you are sad or upset about something, consider writing about it! It just might help you feel better. Author Bio: Sam Rozal is currently an undergraduate student at the University of California, Santa Cruz. She is studying Biology and Environmental Studies but is also exploring other fields in the humanities and social sciences. Growing up, she absolutely adored books, especially the Boxcar
Writing Activity: personifying objects in poetry
This writing activity by Allison Finley is based on the poem “A Fraction of an Inch” by Abigail Rose Cargo, 13, published in Stone Soup, March/April 2017 Seeing Fractions of an Inch Everywhere After reading the first two couplets of Abigail Cargo’s poem, “Fraction of an Inch,” I was nostalgic for the many days I have spent fishing with my brothers and exploring the bays in Lake Tahoe over school breaks. Abigail’s poetic description of the connection the water and boat share reminds me specifically of how those trips almost always ended: when leaving a lake or ocean, it was always a fight to return the boat to land. Since my friends and family only went out boating once in a while, there was always a comical and stressful chaos in remembering how to get our boat back on its trailer. While the more experienced people on both sides of us would trailer their boats away quickly and effortlessly, my fellow shipmates and I would clumsily fight the water to claim back what was ours. Once the boat would finally start to get onto the trailer, we would slowly crank it further out of the water, a fraction of an inch at a time. At the beginning of the poem, Abigail does an amazing job depicting the back and forth that goes on between the truck and the water. The water’s “new prize”—the boat—must be skillfully put back onto the truck’s trailer. The water fights the truck back when “the waves bouncing off/ the boat’s hull” are a fraction of an inch from connecting with the rubber of the wheels. But this fraction of an inch is enough to cause the red truck’s wheels to spin ineffectively on the muddied concrete slab. Even though this poem is specifically from the point of view of the boat and the water, it reminds me of how this experience is always such a chaotic shift from a peaceful day we just had out on the water. Ultimately, I’m drawn to the way Abigail’s style emphasizes the fact that even the smallest measurement can add up, and that you’re always only a fraction of an inch away from something changing at anytime. Instead of focusing on all of the action happening around her, Abigail beautifully focuses on the little details of the scenes: the “Waves of green foam/ rolled over the railing/ in a calm firmness” and “the rippling water/ pool[ed] at the edge of/ a concrete slab.” It’s these little details in the first scene that bring her to talk about life and death. I love the way that breaking down the scene in front of her in this way makes her think of such complex changes in life. After considering “how closely/ life and death are related,” Abigail introduces a completely new scene: two birds circling each other above their prey. While this scene is much darker to reflect the tonal shift, the image presented is just as familiar an image to me as the first one, and it is as effective in depicting how all it takes is a fraction of an inch in one direction or another to change everything—especially “a fraction of an inch/ to the left,” for the chickens below. Abigail’s perspective throughout “A Fraction of an Inch” is mature. She personifies the water and the boat and then looks into the relationship between the two. To personify an object means to make something that is not a person like a person. In this poem, both the water and the boat “did not want” something. If you are inspired by the style of this piece, I encourage you to try personifying the objects around you to think about how they relate to their setting and to each other. What do they want or not want to happen? What do they see or experience? You might also try, like Abigail, to slow down a moment of chaos to focus on what each object is experiencing. Once you start slowing down, like Abigail, you’ll probably start seeing these fractions of an inch changes everywhere. Author Bio: Allison majored in Literature at UCSC. She first got involved in the literary journal world through Matchbox Magazine, which features and distributes poetry, prose, and art across the University of California system. Allison has been involved with Matchbox during her entire time in college and she has filled the position of editor in chief for the past year. She loves the entire, magical process of making a journal—which is what made her want to get involved with Stone Soup. This spring, Allison graduated from UC Santa Cruz. She plans to pack up her two rabbits and her ridiculous amount of used books and move to LA.
