An update from our twenty-eighth Book Club meeting! On June 26, the Stone Soup Book Club met for its last meeting in this session. We discussed The Jumbies, by Tracey Baptiste, a book about Caribbean folklore and a girl named Corinne who must save her home from the evil jumbies. After our usual ARTT rooms, where our participants were given the prompt of talking about what books they planned to read over the summer, we had a whole group discussion about The Jumbies. Our conversation ranged from our favorite characters, to the complexities and nuances of the book’s villain, Severine, to the setting described by the author, and to themes within the story: such as family and bravery. Next, we brainstormed to think about what other fairy tales we know—and what cultures they are from. We compared various myths/stories, including those from Europe and China, and analyzed their similarities, differences, and how they connected to The Jumbies. Overall, we decided that most fairy tales have some sort of lesson—about wit, bravery, moderation, or family, for example— and many of them include supernatural or nonhuman elements; but they also vary in some ways. Some stories are about princesses and princes, while others are just about regular people. In some stories, the main character needs saving, and in others, it is the protagonist who is doing the saving. With all of this in mind, we set out to write our own fairy tales—about ourselves. Our participants were given the prompt of writing about something that happens to them in the summer, but with a fairytale twist of their choice. We shared out our stories and ideas in breakout rooms; they ranged from ones about mysterious forests, to characters who read a fairy tale—and then get sucked into it. It was really fun to hear what everyone thought of! Our final activity was more relaxed. Everyone went into breakout rooms for a few minutes just to talk about what books they liked, and then we switched the rooms around a few times. By the end, most people were able to find someone who liked the same book as them! Because Book Club will not be running over the summer, we did not choose a new book; a new book will be decided on in the fall. Stay tuned for information about our fall classes of Workshops and Book Club over the summer!
Workshops
How Stories Work-Writing Workshop #9: Dreams, Visions, Hallucinations
An update from our ninth Writing Workshop with Conner Bassett A summary of the workshop held on Saturday June 12, plus some of the output published below We began this week’s workshop with an excerpt from the first two paragraphs of Colm Tóibín’s novel, The Master, in order to highlight how dreams are an essential function in writing used to tell us, or, rather, to foreshadow elements of character and or plot. We went on to distinguish the logic of dreams from the logic of reality, noting, in particular, how within art and literature dreams can be used to introduce a sense of unreality, reveal a character’s fantasies or inner desires, show how characters are haunted by past events, foreshadow future events, create a mood, create symbols, represent a theme, or show how real life is influenced by dreams. We then looked at a few representations of dreams/visions in art (Moses at the burning bush, Moses looking at the top of Mount Sinai, Ezekiel’s vision of a strange winged being in the heavens, and Ezekiel’s vision of bones reconstructing themselves in the desert) in order to demonstrate the full spectrum of feelings dreams can convey. Next, we close read two paintings according to their representation of dream logic—Rousseau’s The Sleeping Gypsy and Fuseli’s The Nightmare—noting how the former portrayed a more neutral, poetic vision, while the latter portrayed the potential for darkness and horror in dreams. Finally, after our discussion of these paintings, we moved into the realm of literature with a reading of two Mark Strand poems—”Clear in the September Light” and “Eating Poetry”—and James Tate’s poem “The Cowboy.” The Participants: Madeline, Svitra, Aditi, Liam, Harine, Sena, Sasha, Emi, Isolde, Audrey, Simran, Helen, Zhilin, Josh, Julia, Lucy The Challenge: Write the opening to a longer story that begins with a character dreaming. Isolde Knowles, 9New York, NY Dream Isolde Knowles, 9 I walk around the strange world. The people of it all have different reactions to my existence. Some notice me, some just continue on. The people here are blurred and foggy. They are graying and any color they barely have is muted. As if they are on the verge of disappearing. I keep on going. Until I find someone different. Their colors are bright. When they notice me their colors change. Their skin goes bright yellow, their hair is now a startling purple and their eyes are pink. Suddenly they pivot and run through a shortcut which I will swear on my life hadn’t been there before. I start to jog and then run towards the shortcut. I am a foot away when the shortcut closes up, turning into a solid wall. I groan in defeat until I notice an alleyway. I follow it, and suddenly I’m chasing the strange person again. The terrain seems to be evolving to help the runner by creating paths and ramps for them, but only hurdles and hills for me. I run and run until I fall down panting as the runner disappears. I wake up in a cold sweat. Sena Pollock, 14,Madison, WI The Worst Rehearsal Sena Pollock, 14 I am in the dark and the dark likes me. I have forgotten the song for the talent show, so I make up my own. It goes like this: “I am in love with a squid, I will live in the sky, I have flowery eyes.” I will sing this and they will love my act. I shove the dark away and sing: “I am in love with a shark, I will live underground, I have a candy bar in my pocket.” I don’t pay attention when the dark comes even closer. “I am a stiiingraaaay, I will drive a plane, I will kill the rain.” Wait, this is a happy song, no killing. “I am a fist- no, no fists either, I am a fish in the lake, I like to eat cake, a rabbit I will bake- no, none of that, think happy!!! I am eating pie, I will surely die- WHAT IN THE WORLD IS WRONG WITH MEEEEE!!!!!!! Why can’t I think of anything happy?!?” I look and the dark is hugging me like a long-lost friend. The dark says, “Come with me and I will give you everything.” I say, “NO! I will sing in the talent show and win and they will all love me.” “Your life is empty without me,” says the dark, “You need me.” “What’s in it for you?” “We will have fun together,” says the dark, “we will have the most fun and your life will be complete! I know that you do not believe what they say. And you are right, their praise is hollow. Come with me and have a real life.” “What do you mean!!! My life IS real!! I AM happy!” I say, trying to convince myself as much as the dark. “You are lying to yourself,” says the dark and I know that it can see my innermost thoughts. “All right,” I say, feeling at the moment that this is what I truly want. The dark shouts with glee as we fly off a cliff I hadn’t noticed before. “CRASH AND BURN!!!!” The dark screams as we fly into an unknown future. Svitra Rajkumar, 13,(Fremont, CA) In Another Dream Svitra Rajkumar, 13 Rose was running. Although she didn’t know what she was running from and where she was going, she just couldn’t stop running. Her heart pounded like it was going to burst out of her chest. She bent down gasping for breath and trying to make sense of her surroundings. Her brain was working slower than usual and her head felt dizzy from all the continuous running. She stared up at the bright blue sky. It was an unreal blue, like the color of the ocean except burnt. The ground beneath her began to crack and split apart, and soon she was falling. Rose felt as if she had been falling for hours but the scream couldn’t make it
Book Club Activity: Making Our Own Anthology
At our most recent Book Club meeting on May 29, the Stone Soup Book Club read Look Both Ways: A Tale Told in Ten Blocks, by Jason Reynolds (you can read about the meeting here). As a writing activity, we decided it would be fun to make our own Look Both Ways, an anthology by our participants about what happens to people on their walk home from school. Each of our participants wrote their own stories, and then several of them submitted their writing to be published in an “anthology” format, right here. Below you can read some of the writing from this Book Club. Some of the stories are based on real life, and others are fictional. Enjoy! Jared Ashman, 14San Diego, CA 1. Untitled – Jordan and Jared Ashman, 14 Jordan was your average 12 year old kid. He walked home from school alone each day, and got home to play video games and eat candy. One day, after a particularly tiring day at school, he decided he wanted to take a shortcut home from school. Before, his mother had warned him about taking this shortcut, for she said it could be dangerous. However, Jordan was particularly tired today, and ignored his mother’s warning. He started walking into the forest, and after only a few steps, he found himself lost in the forest. Was he supposed to turn left, or right? There was barely even any light here. After almost an hour, he discovered a thin path of pebbles that he decided to follow. At the very end of the path, he discovered a temple! After pausing for a moment to take it all in, he walked inside. When Jordan walked inside, he found a deep tunnel going down to what he could only imagine was a secret layer. Walking down, he heard weird sounds inside. Coming to the bottom of the tunnel, he paused to stare in awe at the massive gate that hadn’t been there before. Walking in, he saw a massive monitor with arrows pointing all over… was that the world? He barely had a chance to register what he saw, before he was hit on the head by something from behind. He woke up in his bed, and realised it must have all been a dream. Or so he thought… Anya Geist, 14Worcester, MA 2. Apricot Street – Anya Geist, 14 I walk quickly down Main Street, joining the crowd of kids rushing toward the buses. Main Street’s not an actual street; it’s a hallway in my school (and it smells like a subway station), but because it’s a pretty big hallway, everyone calls it Main Street. Outside, the roar of the buses, all lined up in a row, threatens to drown out the joyful laughter and yells of high schoolers out of school for the day. I find my way over to my friend Lily, standing with a boy on our bus, Owen. “Is the bus here yet?” Lily shakes her head. “Nope. I walked all up and down the line with Sara.” “Again? Really?” Lately bus 51 has been coming later and later. I think our driver is kind of senile. “At least we didn’t miss it,” Owen says, half-jokingly; a few weeks ago the bus left me and him at school and the assistant principal had to give us a ride home. “That’s true,” I laugh, “but still.” Eventually the bus does arrive, though, and we load onto it. There’s not a ton of kids, because of COVID, so it’s pretty quiet as it barrels down Apricot Street, where our school is located. In middle school my bus took a different route, one that went up Goddard Memorial and Airport Hill, then through the traffic jam that is Tatnuck Square. I liked that route. I liked when the bus drove past the airport; on clear days, you could see Boston from up there (or at least that’s what Liam Forester said; I never saw it myself). But now we go down Main Street (a real street this time), alongside the rest of the buses from school, until they each break off to drive their respective routes. I think it’s pretty funny how all of the buses drive together at first; it’s like a big, yellow army, slowly separating to carry out different missions. My bus’s mission has only a few stops. Owen’s is the first. “I wonder what happened with your neighbor,” I ask him when the bus is pretty close to his corner. This morning he came to school saying the police were looking for his neighbor; it was all he could talk about in first period. “Yeah . . .” he says, “I wonder if all the cop cars are still there. No kidding, it was scary when they showed up this morning, just knocking on the door, asking if we’d the guy a few doors down. I bet he did something pretty bad, though. It wouldn’t surprise me.” “Well,” I tell him, as the bus pulls to a stop, “let me know what happens.” “Yeah, I will. Bye!” The bus shakes as he and a few others get off. Coes Pond flies by as the bus navigates the city, and the rows of grey seats slowly empty, till it’s just me and Lily, talking about our classes. “Where’s your class in Romeo and Juliet?” I ask. Our English teacher is making us read it. “Act 3, I think.” “Okay. Okay. George and Jonathan” (they’re two best friends in my class) “read the balcony scene the other day—they insisted on it.” I’m laughing now. “But Jonathan couldn’t stop cracking up, so he totally ruined it. He also pronounced Capulet wrong, it was hilarious—everyone in our class was trying so hard not to laugh.” “No, really?” “Yeah, he said, like, Capultet, or something. It was so funny.” “That’s great.” Now the bus is wheeling through Newton Square, down Pleasant Street, where Berry Fusion is located—a frozen yogurt place all the kids in
