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 Editors Scroll down to see all the names (alphabetical by section), including book reviewers and artists. ART Isolde Knowles, 9 Tang Li, 8 PERSONAL NARRATIVES Stella Langille, 9 Natalie Tang, 10 Erin Williams, 11 POETRY Isha Patel Ahya, 11 Antoinette Katsas, 10 Iris Kindseth, 9 Dhilan Sethupathy, 9 Ismini Vasiloglou, 11 STORIES Nora Ahearn, 8 Anthony Caprara, 12 Ritam Chakrabarti, 13 Revaya Davis, 10 Colton Etheridge, 11 Olivia Hush, 11 Claudia Laurine, 8 Audrey Li, 12 Mohan Bharghav Rangavajjula, 8
June 2021
Highlights from Stonesoup.com
From Stone Soup Writing Workshop #17: Writing about Music The Writing Challenge Use any musical element—different instruments, arrangements, styles, and settings—to write about music. It could be about how music makes someone feel, or the story of someone involved in music, or anything else you think up. An excerpt from “My Brother Was the Bayou” Liam Hancock, 12Danville, CA “I want to listen to the man tonight,” I said nonchalantly, leaning back in my rocking chair. I glanced over to Mama, who seemed a world away. With needles, and thread, and tablecloths strewn about tables. She sighed, her fingers artfully dancing around one another in a timeless ballet. Needle, thread, tablecloth. Tablecloth, needle, thread. “If Pops is in the mood,” she replied, her voice distant as the indigo sky spanned out about the swaying trees and warming bayou air. A small, wooden raft trundled by. “And it’s up to the man, Jackson, if he wants to play.” I shrugged, grabbing hold of our shambled roof and yanking myself to a stand, nodding in satisfaction as the rocking chair rolled back and slammed headlong into our small swamp cabin, sending the precarious boards shuddering in protest. I leapt down to the muddy banks, swatting away an assault of mosquitoes. “He plays when I want him to,” I pressed, the brown-greenish sheen of river water and soppy dirt seeping into my hunting boots. “And when I want to sleep, he stops.” I hesitated. “I think he likes me.” Mama took a pretty second to cast me a quizzical look. “That’s the most fine dandy and rediculous idea I’ve ever heard with these two ears.” She returned back to her knitting. “Pops should be nearby, maybe on Elkdead Island. Why don’t you take the skiff over?” I grinned. “I knew you’d come around!” I cried, leaping into our humble two-seater skiff and unknotting the rope in a supersonic leap. Pops’ favorite hunting stop was Elkdead Island, and on a good day, he’d return back to the cabin with a hunk of deer meat and some camouflage paint smudged over his nose that Mama would fuss over for the entirety of the dinner meal until he washed up. It wouldn’t take much too long to find him in the shallow sawgrass. The island didn’t offer much in the way of tree cover, naturally making the job of gator hunting much cleaner than on the other side of the river. I was out onto the river with a good shove of the arms and started on my way. Oars in, oars out. Oars in, oars out. And hope none of the gators are about. About the Stone Soup Writing Workshop The Stone Soup Writing Workshop began in March 2020 during the COVID-19-related school closures. In every session, a Stone Soup team member gives a short presentation, and then we all spend half an hour writing something inspired by the week’s topic or theme. We leave our sound on so we feel as though we are in a virtual café, writing together in companionable semi-silence! Then, participants are invited to read their work to the group and afterward submit what they wrote to a special writing workshop submissions category. Those submissions are published as part of the workshop report on our blog every week. You can read more workshop pieces, and find information on how to register and join the workshop, at https://stonesoup.com/stone-soup-writing-workshop.
The Trials and Tribulations of Swifty Appledoe (Part Three)
This is the third and final installment of Ariana Kralicek’s novella. You can read the first two installments in the April and May 2021 issues of Stone Soup, or in its entirety here. Chapter 17 On the way to the hospital, everything is like a jumble. It kind of feels like sorting through old books, if you know what I mean. There are the ones you love, ones you hate, and ones you can’t even remember reading. Like now. We’re speeding along the streets, Grandma at the wheel and me yelling, “Go, go, go!” I hate that it’s uncertain about how Mum and my brother are. I haven’t heard anything about them yet. And I can’t remember what happened at school. It’s like it was one of those dreams you can’t think about after it’s over because you’ve forgotten. Finally, we arrive at the Auckland Hospital. “Hurry, Grandma!” I impatiently beg as she unloads bags upon bags of gifts. She asks me to carry some for her. I do. They probably weigh at least several kilograms, but they feel as light as feathers to me. We race inside the main building, Grandma briskly walking and me pulling her along crazily. When we get to the reception desk, the lady sitting behind it stares at us boredly. How is she not excited?! This is so weird! Ugh, Swifty. Snap out of it! “Purpose of visit?” she blandly asks. “Grace McClean!” My grandma’s dentures nearly fly out of her mouth. She’s really excited. “Okay. That’s level seven, ward three,” she replies. We hurry over to the elevator. I jab repeatedly at the button going up, while Grandma smiles at me, stressed but bursting with excitement, her foot tapping on the hard floor. Oh boy! The elevator finally arrives, and we race inside. I jab at the level-seven button, and slowly but surely, we go up. “H-hurry, hurry, hurry,” I whisper. “H-hurry, hurry, h-h-hurry.” Ding! The elevator doors roll open. Grandma wobbles out, a big smile plastered on her face. “Ward three—there it is!” she shrieks cheerily. But just as we’re about to go in, I feel a terrible nervous pang in my stomach. My throat squeezes shut in panic. I feel like I can’t breathe. I grip my grandmother’s hand tightly, feeling the map of her life stretched across her wrinkled palm. “Hey, sweetie. It’s okay to feel nervous,” she says gently. “Why don’t we just go inside. You can hide behind me if you want to!” She grins cheekily. “Now smile!” I stretch my lips into a fake grin. She nods, and clasping hands, we walk inside. The room is dim and grey. My mum is on a big hospital bed, cradling a tiny lump. My dad walks over to us and gives me and Grandma a big hug. “Come on, Swifty,” he whispers. He sounds quite emotional, but I suppose it IS one of those kinds of situations. I go over and sit on the edge of my mum’s bed. There’s a drip going into her, but nothing is actually that scary. “Swifty, meet your baby brother,” my mum whispers. And then suddenly my hand is stroking my brother. O. M. G. He’s so warm and tiny, wrapped up in cozy pale-blue blankets. He’s silent, but he’s making little tuts as he sleeps. Thin wisps of hair frame his chubby cheeks. And his little pinched face . . . Ughh, soooo cute. No matter what happens, I’m going to do whatever it takes to protect him. This is the moment I want to last forever. I lie on the thin air mattress my grandma set up for me. I need to stay with her until tomorrow because my mum needs to rest at the hospital. Don’t get me wrong: I love my grandma, but I really want to be in my own homey bedroom instead of trying to sleep in the nearly empty, dim spare room in her small house. I check the time on the digital clock propped beside me. It reads 12:01 a.m. I need to get to sleep. Tomorrow are the student council elections, and I have to be wide awake for that. But I can’t seem to shut my eyes. I’m worried about my brother. What if something happens to him in the night? If he gets sick? If the next day he’s given to the wrong people after a test? I squeeze my eyelids closed and for the hundredth time try to fall asleep, telling myself that the people at the hospital know what they’re doing, that he was fine when I saw him, and that my mum will keep him safe. Chapter 18 It’s the day of the student council tryouts. I squirm nervously in my seat, just like at the concerta and while in the car on the way to my first (and last) ballet class. My hands clench sweatily around my cue cards (which are ripped because of my impulsive gripping, just like they clenched the scissors when I cut off nearly all of my hair), and I can’t stop my teeth from chattering like when my baby brother was born. I can handle this. Mrs. Mulberry bounces into class. “Good morning, first of all,” she exclaims, placing her books on her desk. “And secondly, could all of the students trying out for the role of our class councilor please stand up and go outside? Write your names on the board before you go, though,” she adds with a smile. Mrs. Mulberry loves the student council tryouts. Rumor has it she loves it more than watching Keeping Up With the Kardashians. I stand up and shuffle over to the door. I can hear my classmates gossiping. Especially about me. Someone holds the door open, and I quietly walk through. I hear it click shut, and then I look up. Oh . . . kay. All of the popular kids in my class are pacing around in circles or biting their lips,
