Letter From the Editor
You’ll quickly notice this issue is more than a bit different than our other issues. There are no stories, artworks, or poems—only reviews! (I talk about the value of critical reading and reviewing in a longer note on page 4.) The other thing that makes this issue different is the way we put it together: [...]
Letter From the Editor
In addition to being Editor of Stone Soup, I am also a university instructor. When I teach creative writing, I like to tell my students that the most important part of the class is not writing but reading because reading will you teach you how to be a writer. As you sit there, eagerly turning [...]
Honor Roll
Stone Soup Honor Roll: July/August 2019
Welcome to the Stone Soup Honor Roll! We receive hundreds of submissions every month by kids from around the world. Unfortunately, we can’t publish all the great work we receive. So we created the Stone Soup Honor Roll. We commend all of these talented writers and artists and encourage them to keep creating. – The [...]
Book Reviews
Before I begin this review, I want you to think of everything you think you know about Frankenstein. What comes to mind even when I think of Frankenstein is the classic depiction from the old horror movies. The insane doctor with a German accent screaming, “It’s alive!” as lightning lights up the sky and magically [...]
Book Reviews
What does a person really need in order to be happy? If you were to lose every tangible thing which gives you joy now, what intangible things would make life still worth living? The novel A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett answers these two questions from the point of view of an eleven-year-old with [...]
Book Reviews
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith is the story of a Brooklyn girl with Irish ancestors who grows up at the beginning of the 20th century with all the hardships that come from not having enough money in the house, a drunkard for a father, and a mother who prefers her son to [...]
Book Reviews
From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler
Raise your hand if you like art. Yes? Good. Raise your hand if you like adventure. Excellent. Now raise your hand if you like books. Spectacular! As it happens, there is a book that can satisfy all of those things—From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler by E. L. Konigsburg. A blend of [...]
Book Reviews
My mother always told me tales from her childhood. Most were happy stories that made me laugh. Others were sad and made me worry about her. Sometimes she told me stories about her own mother, my Yiayia, who had an even harder childhood, raised in a small village in Greece. My mother told me that [...]
Book Reviews
Number the Stars is about Annemarie Johansen, a Christian girl living in Denmark during World War II. She is best friends with Ellen Rosen, a Jewish girl. When the Nazis decide to “relocate” Denmark’s Jews, Annemarie and her family hide Ellen to keep her safe. Later, Annemarie helps get Ellen’s family and other Jews across [...]
Book Reviews
A snow-clad cemetery in Germany, a few months before World War II. A girl cannot believe her brother has just died, as she and her mother witness the burial. A black book drops to the snow without the owner’s knowledge. The girl picks it up and clings to it. Her debut in the career of [...]
Film Reviews
When Marnie Was There is the last movie released by the famous Japanese animation studio called Studio Ghibli, and the first I saw that got me hooked on anime, a style of Japanese animation. The story follows Anna, a young teenage girl suffering from asthma, who is sent to the country by her foster parents [...]
Poetry Reviews
“Hope” is the thing with feathers
“Hope” is the thing with feathers by Emily Dickinson, from THE POEMS OF EMILY DICKINSON, edited by Thomas H. Johnson, Cambridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Copyright © 1951, 1955, 1979, 1983 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College. What is hope? Why do we feel hope? And why is hope [...]
Poetry Reviews
“The Road Not Taken” by Robert Frost, from THE POETRY OF ROBERT FROST: THE COLLECTED POEMS, COMPLETE AND UNABRIDGED, edited by Edward Connery Lathem, New York: Henry Holt and Co., 2002. From choosing what clothes we wear to the career path we devote our lives to, life will always be full of choices. “The Road [...]
Poetry Reviews
Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening
“Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” by Robert Frost, from THE POETRY OF ROBERT FROST: THE COLLECTED POEMS, COMPLETE AND UNABRIDGED, edited by Edward Connery Lathem, New York: Henry Holt and Co., 2002. In the spring of 2017, I traveled with my father as he was doing research on the former death camps in [...]
Poetry Reviews
“Nothing Gold Can Stay” by Robert Frost, from THE POETRY OF ROBERT FROST: THE COLLECTED POEMS, COMPLETE AND UNABRIDGED, edited by Edward Connery Lathem, New York: Henry Holt and Co., 2002. I first came across Robert Frost’s “Nothing Gold Can Stay” two-and-a half years ago, nestled in a copy of S.E. Hinton’s novel The Outsiders. [...]
Poetry Reviews
“This is Just to Say” by William Carlos Williams, from THE COLLECTED POEMS: VOLUME I, 1909-1939, ©1938 by New Directions Publishing Corp. Reprinted by permission of New Directions Publishing Corp. “This is Just to Say” is a wonderful and detailed imagist poem by William Carlos Williams. After it was published in 1934, it became one [...]
Poetry Reviews
Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird
“Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird” by Wallace Stevens, from THE COLLECTED POEMS OF WALLACE STEVENS: THE CORRECTED EDITION, edited by John N Serio and Chris Beyers, New York: Vintage, 2015. Wallace Stevens was an American modernist poet who was born in Pennsylvania in 1879. He worked as an executive for an insurance company [...]
Poetry Reviews
“One Art” from POEMS by Elizabeth Bishop. Previously published in THE COMPLETE POEMS 1927-1979 by Elizabeth Bishop. Copyright © 1979, 1983 by Alice Helen Methfessel. Reprinted by permission of Farrar, Straus and Giroux. We’ve all lost something at some point in our lives, from keys to wallets to homework assignments. Sometimes we lose bigger things: [...]
