Anirudh Parthasarathy, 13 (San Jose, CA) Socialism Reexplained: Age of Reason to Cold War Anirudh Parthasarathy, 13 History of Socialism In order to understand socialism as a whole, we have to understand how nineteenth century capitalism worked, the critiques of uncontrolled capitalism, and the reasoning behind the call for a more equitable economic system that eventually led to the birth of both socialism and communism. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, feudalism and absolute monarchism were abolished with people wanting more liberty, self-determination, democracy, and individualism. These ideals started becoming popular during the Enlightenment of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, which in turn led to the Age of Reason, French Absolutism, and English Constitutionalism. In England, eventually, people were tired of being subjugated by an authoritarian government. Whether the oppressors were a monarch, members of an aristocracy, or even the parliament and government officials, the British people wanted true liberty, eventually leading to a revolution that destroyed the feudal system. England became the first democratic/republican and capitalist country the world had seen since antiquity. Many people probably hoped this new system of governance would be better than the anti-humanistic authoritarian feudal system. They were wrong. England practiced a form of uncontrolled libertarian capitalism in which there was no government intervention. Because of this, nineteenth century England had a small, extremely wealthy capitalist class who owned all the organizations and economic resources—such as land and capital—while the majority were an extremely poor working class who worked very low-paying jobs with terrible conditions. The workers often worked in monotonous jobs for long hours and with wages so low they lived in extreme poverty, while the capitalist class got all the profits and luxury derived from the hard work of the workers! First Socialists This extreme inequality frustrated many people including many intellectuals/philosophers, who became the first socialists. Some of the very first socialists were known as utopian socialists. Such socialists advocated for things like collective ownership of the means of production and enterprises, government intervention (or sometimes even central planning of the economy and of production), solidarity among the working class, a more equitable distribution of wealth, and general empowerment of workers. Another group called the chartists advocated for universal male suffrage (not nearly as impressive as universal suffrage in which females also have a vote). Utopian socialism started with Henri de Saint Simon and then continued with Charles Fourier, Pierre Joseph Proudhon (one of the first anarchists and one who declared “property is theft”), Pierre Leroux, and Robert Owen. Another more far-left brand of socialism called revolutionary socialism believed that rather than creating a socialist system through the cooperation of the workforce, government, and the wealthy, it was up to the workers to launch a revolution in order to completely overthrow the capitalist government and replace it with a socialist system. Communism is a type of revolutionary socialism, but communism and revolutionary socialism aren’t the same because there are other types of revolutionary socialism, some of which have anarchist ideals. A prominent socialist community was the Paris Commune created in 1871. The Paris Commune was designed to benefit the poor and working class over the wealthy. The Paris Commune secularized politics and education, provided subsidized food and housing, created a minimum wage, required private firms to have a delegation elected by the workers, recognized freedom of the press, and made all people legally equal. However, the Paris Commune only lasted for two months and ten days before it was crushed. Despite all the confusion and varying ideas on how to implement socialism, all those socialists were opposed to capitalism and believed the economic system was fundamentally doomed. One problem they believed capitalism had is its competitive nature which led to the continual driving down of profits. For example, suppose one business sells yogurt at $10 while a different business is willing to sell yogurt with the same or perhaps better quality at the much cheaper price of $7. Most people would buy from the cheaper business. The Socialists believed that eventually competition would lead to a decrease in profits to a level that businesses could barely eke out a profit. They also argued that businesses competed to sell their products at the same time workers competed to sell their labor. Socialists argued that this competition among workers was what caused workers to be paid only what they needed in order to afford the most basic food and housing and nothing more. They pointed out that as businesses started making less profits, they’d compensate by paying the workers even less wages until eventually only the most essential workers would be kept with the rest being laid off. Eventually, businesses that weren’t able to keep up would go out of business, causing even more unemployment among both the working and capitalist classes. At this point, socialists believed that either serious reforms or an outright revolution were needed to end capitalism and usher in an era of socialism. Among other reasons, this hasn’t happened in practice in the west because capitalism has been reformed to include elements of welfare and regulation, which has helped reduce inequality. But socialism is unsustainable over time. Drawbacks of Socialism Overall, proponents of socialism argue that it leads to equality, economic security, production for use rather than profit, and the kind of system in which people selflessly contribute to society according to their ability and receive all their needs. As a famous socialist slogan says, “From each according to their ability, to each according to their needs”. However, critics of socialism argue that the system is based on faulty principles and is too utopian to actually happen, and that ultimately the inherent inefficiencies of socialism will lead to major economic problems, with socialism suffering mainly from the motivation and knowledge problem. First, we must understand the motivation problem. One major problem with socialism is that it doesn’t truly reward people with tangible rewards for going beyond the minimum. For example, most people aren’t JUST working in their jobs
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Book Club Report: The Jumbies, Tracey Baptiste
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!
Flash Contest #32, June 2021: Write a first person story based on a grandparent’s/older friend’s memory—our winners and their work
Our June Flash Contest was based on Creativity Prompt #156, provided by sagacious ’20—21 Intern Sage Millen, challenging participants to interview a grandparent/older friend about a memorable moment from their childhood and to write that memory as a first person story. This clever prompt afforded those who participated with the opportunity to get closer to the elderly than ever before, allowing them to literally inhabit the perspective of their interviewee. These submissions followed no similar narrative arc, though each and every one did provide a unique window into various cultures of the past. Submissions ranged from tales of a smoking car radiator stuffed with gum to a mishap with homemade firecrackers in Taiwan to a poetic vignette about a car crash, plus much, much more. Thank you to all who submitted this month; it was a pleasure to read your work. In particular, we congratulate our Winners and our Honorable Mentions, whose work you can appreciate below. Winners “4 Blocks” by Katherine Bergsieker, 13, (Denver, CO) “Nature’s Lullaby” by Mariana Del Rio, 12, (Strongsville, OH) “Still Life in Which Everything is on Fire” by Arishka Jha, 12, (Redwood City, CA) “A Love that Lasts a Lifetime” by Pranjoli Sadhukha, 11, (Newark, OH) “Rocket Trouble” by Natalie Yue, 9, (San Carlos, CA) Honorable Mentions “My Friend Tommy” by Tilly Marlow, 12, (Bristol, UK) “The Burning Finger Fix” by Nimay Shah, 11, (Portland, OR) “The Stubborn Fever” by Nitya Shah, 11, (Portland, OR) “Across the Fields” by Ava Shorten, 11, (Mallow, ROI) “The Secret Fruit Patch” by Emily Tang, 12, (Winterville, NC) Katherine Bergsieker, 13, Denver, CO 4 Blocks Katherine Bergsieker, 13 “No, I know, and then he said…” “Oh my goodness, really?” My car is filled with laughter as my friends and I drive home from a baseball game. The sweltering St. Louis heat is unbearable, so we decided to come home early. At sixteen years old, I recently received my driver’s license (!), and though inexperienced, I am perfecting my driving skills in our neon orange station wagon. “Alice, I swear I told him that I wasn’t interested..” And soon we were all cracking up, howling with the laughter that comes with hanging out with your two best friends. Tears slipping out of my eyes, we manage to squeak like mice and then choke, causing us to laugh harder. The only things around me are my friends and the aged leather seats of my car. Suddenly, bang!! The force of something harder than life, harder than death, harder than I could ever possibly imagine, pushes me out of my seat belt. Tumbling to the bottom of my car, I am down by the gas pedal, crumpled like a rag doll. The laughter stops, and for a moment it is so quiet you could hear a fraction of a pin drop. “What was that?” I whisper, and peer up from above the driver’s seat. I’m ready to make accusations—who did this, what happened to my car, what even is this? And then I realize it’s no one’s fault but my own. I step out of my car and see the hood of my beautiful, loaned car smashed against a cherry red convertible. “The… c-c-ar is…” I can’t bring myself to acknowledge the destruction of my annihilated car lying in front of me. “Sarah? Alice? Can you come out of there?” Slowly, each of my friends emerge from the car, gasp, and shudder. Finding her ground quickly, Sarah asks, “Is anything broken?” My eyes scan over the car and over the engine and over a piece of metal jutting out from the side. Wait. What? I kneel down and examine the radiator (my driver’s ed class made me memorize all the parts of a car). It’s full of holes. The force from the car accident caused my radiator to tear. “Radiator’s torn,” is all I have to say for Alice, the world-record holder in gum chewing, to get an idea. She hands us each two packs of gum. “Chew.” She spits hers out and gently places it in a hole in the radiator. “Look… we can have the gum patch the hole.” “Why do we need to patch the hole in the first place?” Sarah asks. “We have no other way of getting home,” I reply, the gravity of the situation dawning on me. Soon after sorting out all of the insurance issues with the convertible driver, we’re all chewing gum and patching the holes… first 5 pieces, then 20, then 50. Little wads of pink gooiness stick to the burning, broken radiator. Once we’re ready to start driving, I hop into the driver’s seat and press the gas pedal. I thought it wouldn’t work. I wasn’t half wrong. I thought we were screwed. I wasn’t half wrong. But I was wrong about thinking that it wouldn’t work. Because it did. In a way. The engine whirls to life and we cautiously begin the wild trek back home. The gum serves as a patch and oh my goodness, it actually works. Until we remember that radiators get hot to the touch as they work. So anything on the radiator at the time would melt. Newton would be proud. Alice is not. We stop and chew more gum. Sarah stays optimistic. I face the trepidation of knowing how my parents will react to our childish idea to patch a radiator with gum. Advance 4 blocks, add more gum. 4 more, more gum. When my house finally comes into sight, I breathe a sigh of relief. “Lily Smith! What a disgrace! What happened to you?” my mom calls from the porch, looking up from her knitting. I exchange knowing glances with Sarah and Alice before hopping out of the car. The radiator, and the gum, and the car accident, and the laughter, and how while it was horrible, it was kind of sort of barely worth it. “Well you know how Alice loves gum, right….” Mariana Del Rio, 12, Strongsville, OH Nature’s Lullaby
Book Club Report: Look Both Ways, Jason Reynolds
An update from our twenty-seventh Book Club meeting! On May 29, the Stone Soup Book Club discussed Look Both Ways: A Tale Told in Ten Blocks, by Jason Reynolds. Look Both Ways contains several short stories about what happens to kids on their walk home from school, and offers a variety of perspectives on life. As usual, we started off our meeting by breaking into ARTT rooms. Each room had three or four people in it, and they could talk about whatever they liked. We asked, “what is your favorite thing to do in the summer?” as the prompt. The breakout rooms talked about this as well as the book! When we came back together, we began talking about Look Both Ways. Normally we go into breakout rooms to have more specific discussions, since there are a lot of us, but on Saturday we decided to all stay in the main room. It was nice to have everyone in the conversation together, and we got to talk about many topics, including our favorite characters and stories from the book, as well as what theme Jason Reynolds was trying to convey. Many people agreed that they had found the book slightly confusing, but thought its format (being composed of several short stories) was interesting. Next, we started a fun writing activity! Since, as previously mentioned, Look Both Ways is a collection of short stories, we thought it would be fun to write our own stories about walking home from school, whether fictional or real. In breakout rooms, we talked about our ideas, and then we all came back together to write! After twenty or so minutes, people began to share out. It was really fun to hear everyone’s stories! You can read our anthology here. Remember: if you attended book club and liked what you wrote for this activity, submit it through the Writing Workshop Submission Form and we will post it along with other stories on the Stone Soup website! Finally, we chose our next book! Our next meeting, at the end of June, is the last one of this session. Our Next Book (to be discussed on June 26): The Jumbies, by Tracey Baptiste
How Stories Work-Writing Workshop #5: The Poetic Turn
An update from our fifth Writing Workshop with Conner Bassett A summary of the workshop held on Saturday May 15, plus some of the output published below “The turn is the most important literary effect since Homer wrote his epics… It is the dramatic and climactic center, the place where the intellectual or emotional release first becomes clear and possible.” -T.S. Eliot “If there is no turn, no transformative moment, then the poem is a journal entry, at best a laundry list of reflections and anecdotes, or what I think of as a ‘litany of relapses’–the barren passage of time unthwarted, moving predictably toward a predictable end.” -Gregory Pardlo For this week’s Writing Workshop, Conner turned our attention towards the multitudinous uses of the “poetic turn.” Building off an earlier talk on “veering,” the class began with a group analysis of the poem”Lying in a Hammock at William Duffy’s Farm in Pine Island, Minnesota” by James Wright. We then defined “the turn,” in its purest form, as the point when “a text breaks its deepest and most characteristic habit.” Next, we turned to one of the shortest stories ever written, “The Dinosaur,” by Augusto Monterroso, noting how the story’s independent clause, “the dinosaur was still there,” constituted a turn from the dependent clause, “When he awoke.” Thus, we learned that turns can even occur within a single sentence. We then turned to one of Kobayashi Issa’s haikus in order to denote how turns can constitute hypocrisy and contradiction. Following our discussion of Issa was a reference to Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon, which, in its ending, represented a turn into magical realism away from its prior logic of realism. Our penultimate literary reference was that of Lydia Davis’ short story, “Mown Lawn.” We turned to this story as a depiction of multiple turns within a single space—in fact it was a story made up almost entirely of turns! Finally, as a warm up to our final prompt, we spent a minute trying to write out the last two lines in John Ashberry’s poem, “This Room.” The Challenge: Write a story or a poem that uses a “turn.” For example, this can be a turn like the constant shifting in Lydia Davis’ “Mown Lawn,” Issa’s haiku that had an ironic, imagistic shift, or like the turn in Ashberry’s poem, “This Room,” wherein he turns to address the reader. The Participants: Georgia, Jackson, Lucy, Sophia, Svitra, Liam, Aditi, Emma, Zhilin, Simran, Noa, Julia, Sasha, Sinan, Harine, Isolde, Josh, Sena, Alice, Samantha, Emi Isolde Knowles, 9,(New York, NY) The Bird Isolde Knowles, 9 The bird sat on the branch pruning its feathers. They were brilliant blue like the ocean. A butterfly carefully landed in a flower as its delicate wings beat it down. The beat of a woodpecker could be heard in the distance. A cow moved in a not too distant farmhouse. The bird cocked it’s head hungrily at a trail of ants working their way through the forest, every couple of ants carrying a leaf. A twig cracked under a heavy boot sounding not nearly as sinister as the truth behind it. Swoosh! The bullet struck the tree directly under it. The bird was off its perch and flying into the distance a split second later. The ring of the shotgun seemed to echo out. “Harry,” the hunter’s wife called from inside the cabin. “You’ve already caught us a quail, now leave the poor birds alone.” “Calm down. I can’t seem to catch anything anyways,” the gruff man replied. “There there; you should come inside and get your rest. Do any of your clothes need to be stitched up? I’m going to town to buy some new thread either way.” Aditi Nair, 13, (Midlothian, VA) Abandon Aditi Nair, 13 Bubble. Bubble. She watched her drink bubble. The green clear, plastic container Amazed the little girl. It was so perfect, Yet imperfect. Bubble.
How Stories Work-Writing Workshop #4: Dialogue
An update from the fourth Writing Workshop with Conner Bassett A summary of the workshop held on Saturday May 8, plus some of the output published below This week’s workshop on dialogue was led by the inimitable duo of Stone Soup ’20-21 Intern Anya Geist, 14, and Stone Soup contributor Madeline Nohrnberg, 14. The workshop began with a warm up activity challenging participants to write a scene of dialogue between two characters who hate each other talking about the weather, without ever explicitly saying they hated each other. For the purpose of their lecture, Anya and Madeline focused on various techniques of dialogue, beginning with an excerpt from Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest in order to show the technique of conveying lies. The next technique discussed was how to make dialogue seem realistic. Anya and Madeline had participants pick out lines from an excerpt of S.E. Hinton’s The Outsiders in order to pinpoint instances of realistic dialogue. Following this discussion was an excerpt from The Secret Garden that Madeline used in order to showcase the use of accents in dialogue. The next technique discussed was tone and context. We read an excerpted discussion between Dumbledore and Professor McGonagall from Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, in which Dumbledore’s playful tone and unwillingness to address McGonagall’s more serious topic of discussion conveyed the complexity of subtext within dialogue. Then, in order to convey emphasis, Anya and Madeline utilized an excerpt from Madeleine L’Engle’s The Moon by Night that used italics in order emphasize specific words. In conclusion, Anya and Madeline summarized their techniques by grouping them into two categories; one, by using tone as in the case of The Importance of Being Earnest and Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, and, two, by using informal language to make dialogue sound realistic as in the other three examples. As always, at the end of the lecture we wrote! The Challenge: Either as a stand-alone or as part of a larger work, write a scene where the dialogue and exchanges between the characters are expressive. The Participants: (Anya and Madeline) Georgia, Jackson, Lucy, Sophia, Svitra, Liam, Aditi, Emma, Zhilin, Simran, Noa, Julia, Sasha, Sinan, Harine, Isolde, Josh, Sena, Alice, Samantha, Emi Emma Hoff, 9,(Bronx, NY) Practical Advice Emma Hoff, 9 “I drew a good picture today. You wanna see?” I asked. “I heard that if you cut off a chicken’s head, it’ll keep running. That true?” asked Uncle Morris, puffing on a cigarette. “Why are you asking me? And anyways, what does that have to do with art?” “Know it or not?” “I don’t!” “It’s true.” “What’s the point of this?” “The point of this, Robin, is ‘cause I’m trying to tell you that silly pictures don’t matter. Silly pictures won’t make you a living.” “Artists make money.” “Not with silly pictures. Not with silly childish pictures.” “I’m not a grownup yet! I’ll get better as I grow! Anyways, you haven’t even seen the picture!” “It of a chicken?” “NO!” “It of a cow?” “Stop playin’ around, Uncle Morris!” “I ain’t playin’, Robin.” “Then what are you doing?” “I’m here to take care of you, you know that, Robin. Your parents said that if something ever happened to them, I gotta take care of you. Something happened. You’ve been on this farm for months, and you still don’t understand that you gotta be a farmer. Everything else, too dangerous. I want to keep an eye on you. I don’t want you to die like your parents did!” “I’m not going to.” “How do you know?” “I just do. Drawing isn’t dangerous. Loving doing what you love to do isn’t dangerous.” “Robin, let me tell you a story. About your parents.” “I DON’T WANT TO HEAR IT!” “Have it your way.” “Uncle Morris, don’t you understand? Being a farmer… it might not be dangerous, but no one likes farmers. No one I know, anyways. The kids at school call me Pork, because of how I hang out with the pigs, and draw them.” “Don’t listen to them kids. They don’t know anything. You, however, need to know that you are a farmer, through and through!” “But I’m not! I love animals, but I don’t like butchering them. Heck, I’m a vegetarian! I don’t want to work in fields all day. I want to draw nature, but not harvest it!” “Lazy girl.” “I’m not lazy! I just like drawing! Don’t you understand?” “I don’t. Not at all. But I’ll agree with you… for now.” Sena Pollock, 14,(Madison, WI) Somebody Else’s Sister Sena Pollock, 14 “Come on, we’re going to be late.” “Okay, okay. I’m coming. Just let me finish the chapter.” “No, you can’t. You have to come right now. Otherwise I’ll miss the first part.” “It’s just your stupid dancing rehearsal. It’s not like a job interview or anything.” “It is not stupid. And at least I have the courtesy to not make you late to one of your playdates with your weird friends.” “They aren’t playdates, we just go to the park and hang out. And they aren’t that weird.” “Sounds like a playdate to me. And what do you mean, they aren’t weird? You spend all your time talking about how weird they are.” “That’s different. I mean it in a good way.” “What
Flash Contest #31, May 2021: Write a story based on a terrible book title—our winners and their work
Our May Flash Contest was based on Creativity Prompt #151, provided by the brilliant Molly Torinus, challenging participants to come up with five “terrible” book titles and write a story based on one of them. What followed was an avalanche of submissions boasting the most creative, eye-catching titles many of us had ever seen. Of course, the exemplary work that followed the titles broke the moniker of “terrible,” and provided us with a lifetime supply of imagination as no one story followed a similar arc. We found ourselves immersed in dramas set in the far reaches of outer space, character driven vignettes set in a classroom, rich narratives told from the perspective of a dog, and much, much more. A big thank you to all who submitted this month; it was a pleasure to read all of your work. In particular, we congratulate our Winners and our Honorable Mentions, whose work you can appreciate below. Winners “The BWBM Students” by Ritobroto Roy Chowdhury, 10, (Riverside, CA) “T.L.G.E.Y.5.T.” by Darren Fisher, 9, (Portland, OR) “Connecticutians, I Ate the Grape” by Rex Huang, 11, (Lake Oswego, OR) “The Book Without a Name” by Serena Lin, 10, (Scarsdale, NY) “The Pheasant Was Delicious” by Juliet D. Simon, 11, (Santa Monica, CA) Honorable Mentions “Once Upon a Time a Friendship” by Sophia Wong, 9, (Short Hills, NJ) “Chocotalia and Hideous Dragon Monster” by Sophie Liu, 9, (Surrey, BC) “When a Chicken Says ‘SQUAWK!'” by Olivia Luan, 11, (Great Falls, VA) “Cats, Dogs, Dragons, and Other Household Pets” by Atalie Lyda, 12, (Portland, OR) “You Are NOT Reading This Book Cover” by Joycelyn Zhang, 11, (San Diego, CA) Ritobroto Roy Chowdhury, 10, (Riverside, CA) The BWBM Students Ritobroto Roy Chowdhury, 10 Hello, I am Mr. Wats. I have a class of very, very, very, very, very, very different 3rd graders. This is a review of school and their life from their perspective. John School? What school. I’m John. Do not like school. No read. Bad write. Annoying math. That school. I tough. I known as bully. John big. Known as bully. First bad write. Second annoying math. Third horrible grammar. Only lunch recess. School BAD. BAD stand for Boring, Annoying, Dumb. I bully. Recess I say to Johnny. You dumb because you love school. Get it? BAD. Last letter stand for Dumb and Johnny like school. Move on to Johnny Mr. Wats. Johnny I love school. School’s the best. I read John’s section. I can hear you. You’re saying that John’s section has horrible grammar. I agree. My section is going to have way better grammar than John’s. Here are some things you should know about me. 1. I’m Johnny 2. I love school 3. I love math 4. I love grammar 5. I love school Hopefully now you know a little more about me. There’s just 1 thing I didn’t include on the list. You may be wondering what it is. I love reading. Yep. That’s it. You know almost everything about me now. Since I have to make this a little more interesting and longer I’ll talk about other things. Did you know that the cafeteria food is the best food in the world in my opinion? The pepperoni pizza is delicious and anyone who says it’s not, they’re wrong. Well, Mr. Wats says that I can go to recess now. BYE! Rick Since I don’t want to make this long, I made a list of everything you should know about me. 1. I’m Rick Dodder 2. I’m always late to school 3. Recess is my favorite thing about school 4. I’m lazy 5. I don’t do my chores 6. I have glasses 7. I play video games 8. I watch TV 9. I don’t like Johnny or John Those are the things you should know about me. Any questions? Send me an email at… “Rick your time is up!” Oh that’s Mr. Wats. Well, I guess you’ll never get to know my email. Jorge You’ll never guess my name. What do you thing it is? Sure, it’s spelled J O R G E but how do you think you’re supposed to pronounce it? If you guessed George you’re wrong. If you guessed Hor-hay you’re right! If you took Spanish lessons or know Spanish or Portuguese then you should have had no problem. If you pronounced it wrong I suggest you take Spanish lessons. I have lots of siblings. 2 older twin brothers, 1 sister in college, a younger sister, and baby brother. My sister goes to college in Northern California. My twin older brothers both go to Martin Luther King Jr. High School. As you know, I go to 3rd grade and my younger sister is
Saturday Newsletter: May 1, 2021
“Hat Girl” (Acrylic) by Keira Callahan, 12 (San Francisco, CA) and published in the May 2021 Issue of Stone Soup A note from Sarah Have you had time to read the May issue of Stone Soup? I want to draw your attention to a story that caught my eye: “Awaiting a Letter” by Lila C. Kassouf, excerpted at the end of the newsletter. Though Lila doesn’t identify the time period in which “Awaiting a Letter” is set, there is something about the word choices and style that makes it seem like it may be a historical fiction story. Perhaps it is the beginning of the story, where the main character, Celeste, reads the newspaper at breakfast, or the fact that the story revolves around the anticipation of a letter in the mail. For this weekend’s activity, I want to challenge you to write a historical fiction story. You can make it clear in your narration or through the story’s events that the time period is not the present day, or you can make it more subtle, like Lila does, and never explicitly address it. What clues can you leave the reader to point at when the story is taking place? You may want to think about technology, like letter writing, or language, like speech styles and slang. There have been so many great Stone Soup historical fiction stories published over the years that you can use as inspiration. In addition to “Awaiting a Letter,” you can also check out the “Historical” category on the website, or get a copy of our anthology The Stone Soup Book of Historical Fiction, available in print or as an e-book. If you give the historical fiction genre a try, please submit what you’ve come up with! Can’t wait to see what you create. Until next week, Writing Classes and Book Club Are you looking for classes to inspire, improve, and practice your writing with great teachers and a group of like-minded young writers and readers? Join us! We do charge fees for our clubs and workshops, but we try to keep them as low as possible, and we offer discounts to subscribers and scholarships to students who need them. Contact us at education@stonesoup.com with any questions. Writing Workshop: we have two new writing groups for spring/summer, starting April 17, that will meet via Zoom every Saturday except for the last Saturday of the month. Come write with us and share your work with your peers. Find out more and register for a workshop at Eventbrite. To see some of the great work produced by current workshop members, read contributions published at Stonesoup.com, or join us at one of our free public readings! Book Club: a book club for writers that meets via Zoom on the last Saturday of every month, with a new season starting on April 24! Find out more and register for book club at Eventbrite. Check out which books we are reading on our website. Young Author’s Studio Summer Camps: we are offering a wide range of classes through the summer jointly with the Society of Young Inklings. Each camp runs for two hours per day, Monday through Thursday. All details and bookings via Society of Young Inklings. Book Contest 2021 For information on submitting to the Stone Soup Book Contest 2021, please click here. To submit your manuscript, please visit our submittable site. Highlights from the past week online Don’t miss the latest content from our Book Reviewers and Young Bloggers at Stonesoup.com! Young Blogger Allison Sargent wrote an impassioned poem, “If I Could Write a Letter to the World.” Pragnya, 12, wrote a review of historical fiction novel Echo by Pam Muñoz Ryan. From Stone Soup May 2021 Awaiting a Letter By Lila C. Kassouf, 12 (Towson, MD) Illustrated by Keira Callahan, 12 (San Francisco, CA) Eighteen-thousand dollars were stolen from the Bridgeham Regional Bank on Nov. 2. Eyewitnesses say the robber was a man wearing all black, carrying a gun. “He had a slight figure and he ran very quickly,” said one woman who had witnessed the event. This is the third armed robbery this week. Witness reports from each of the robberies confirm it was the same person. —Page 1 of The Bridgeham Times “Maman,” I said, looking up from the newspaper. “Did you hear about the robbery?” “What is it, the third one you’ve told me about this week?” my mother asked, washing dishes at the sink. . . . /MORE Stone Soup is published by Children’s Art Foundation-Stone Soup Inc., a 501(c)(3) educational nonprofit organization registered in the United States of America, EIN: 23-7317498. Stone Soup’s Advisors: Abby Austin, Mike Axelrod, Annabelle Baird, Jem Burch, Evelyn Chen, Juliet Fraser, Zoe Hall, Montanna Harling, Alicia & Joe Havilland, Lara Katz, Rebecca Kilroy, Christine Leishman, Julie Minnis, Jessica Opolko, Tara Prakash, Denise Prata, Logan Roberts, Emily Tarco, Rebecca Ramos Velasquez, Susan Wilky.
Book Club Report: Where the Mountain Meets the Moon, Grace Lin
An update from our twenty-sixth Book Club meeting! On April 24, in the first meeting of our new session, the Stone Soup Book Club discussed Where the Mountain Meets the Moon, by Grace Lin. In the book, a girl named Minli embarks on an adventure filled with mythical creatures and interwoven stories to find the Old Man in the Moon and change her family’s fortune. After coming up with a few “ground rules” for our new session to make sure we all have the best time possible, we split up into breakout rooms of three and four to get to know each other. The prompt for these rooms was to talk about your favorite book, and it seems like there were a lot of similarities between people! Then, back in the main group, we quickly discussed our general impressions of Where the Mountain Meets the Moon, before heading into two breakout rooms (led by myself and one of our Book Club facilitators, Lucy) to talk more in-depth. We had fascinating conversations about the characters, setting, plot, and theme of the book! One of the most distinct things about Where the Mountain Meets the Moon are the illustrations featured throughout it. We agreed that the drawings helped us picture the scenes and the characters, and that their style fit in with the writing in the book. This prompted a conversation about art in books, and how art is utilized in stories. We looked at the art in books such as The Inquisitor’s Tale by Adam Gidwitz, Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll, and The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick as examples. Our last activity was regarding the presence of Chinese mythology in Where the Mountain Meets the Moon. We talked about how the mythology fit into the story, whether we like having mythology in stories, and what the best way to include mythology is: literally or interpretively. Finally, we chose our next book for Book Club, which is listed below! Our Next Book (to be discussed on May 29): Look Both Ways: A Tale Told in Ten Blocks, by Jason Reynolds
Writing Workshop #30: the Literary Vignette
An update from our thirtieth Writing Workshop! A summary of the workshop held on Saturday December 12, plus some of the output published below This week William presented on the idea of the vignette: a focused piece of writing, often in the midst of another longer, piece, but that is somewhat outside time or narrative. A vignette adds color or shape, but doesn’t necessarily move the story forward. After an introduction on the meaning of words (contrasting Humpty Dumpty declaring that words mean whatever he decides he wants them to mean with the codified wavelengths of colors, which simply are what they are), he showed some early photographs, pointing out that the photographic vignette is always presented in an oval: there is a focus on one thing, and no other context to distract. The Writing Challenge: Write a vignette: – a focused description of place – landscape, interior – or character – a focused look at a scene that implies a story The Participants: Charlotte K, Madeline, Lena A, Anya, Sophia, Georgia, Rachael, Lena D, Olivia, Peri, Tilly, Helen, Madeline S, Liam, James, Hera, Lina, Olivia, Janani, Margaret, Angela, Lucy K, Juniper, Samantha, Ava, Ma’ayan, Nami, Jonathan, Nova, Enni, Leah, Rithesh, Emi, Charlotte M, Emma. Anya Geist, 14Worcester, MA Ships in the Night Anya Geist, 14 Tick. Tick. Tick. The passing of mere seconds seemed eternal that night. The sea was dark and still; its waves rolled peacefully, quietly. On its surface, the only motion exhibited was the dainty reflection of stars on the water, which twinkled much like their counterparts in the sky; and the horizon seemed invisible; the sea and sky were the same on this night. The air was warm and salty, perfectly neutral, perfectly tranquil. Not a soul was heard. Tick. Tick. Tick. And then out of that endless depth of horizon came a monster. Cloaked in thick smoke it glided silently, stealthily across the water. You wouldn’t have known that behind its black walls was a hub of activity, men in sailor’s uniforms who pushed the mechanical beast along. Men who pored over maps, and scrutinized enemy war plans. Men who worked fluidly together to prepare their cannons to fire. Soon came another creature, another ship, similarly bloodthirsty, similarly silent, similarly hidden. But neither would be hidden for long. Neither would be hidden for long. Peri Gordon, 11Sherman Oaks, CA Stars Peri Gordon, 11 A star. A crystal, with a life of its own. White spikes gleaming, dancing, smiling in the sky. Teasing the moon, competing with the other nighttime jewels. Flashing silver, flashing gold. Brightening the sky for hours without tiring. Showing, disappearing, colorful, plain. Glimmering with life. Dappled with the colors of the rainbow, but transparent when you look right at it. Always changing, always morphing. Shining, glowing, ready for an adventure. Millions of these, twinkling, sparkling, winking at you. Dazzling us with flips and jumps and shimmers. Captivating; hypnotic; endless. Elizabeth Hwang, 10Great Neck, NY Becoming a True Hero Elizabeth Hwang, 10 Ruby was an 11 year old trained warrior. She had glossy red pinkish hair with beautiful soft, pure skin, and shining emerald eyes. One evening, she was lying down on her bed thinking about what she could do to be a better warrior. Then she heard her mother scream. She rushed over to her room and saw her intense, challenging master, a gigantic spider, who never backed down during a fight. He said, “Ruby, to show the true skills of being the next warrior and hero of our nation, you must capture the diamond of Everest and place it on the podium at the magical secret garden. This is found through the mystical white gates that will appear after you receive this powerful diamond to get your mother back. You will have three challenges. To pass the challenges, you must go against the giant sea serpent, retrieve the fang of the poisonous, purple spotted cheetah, and find the sacred golden leaf hidden in the village of Arcaria.” The giant spider opened up a secret portal. This was no ordinary portal. It had a purple swirling entrance with pink sparks coming from it. In the middle, was a little sphere that was the color emerald, just like her eyes. Once again, he said, “ You must take that little emerald and say, mission start. Once you say it, the timer is on and you must race to finish these challenges on time. When you go into this portal, the battlefield will appear and you must face these three creatures to receive the diamond of Everest. And one more thing, you have until tomorrow afternoon to retrieve the diamond. If you don’t make it, then your village will be in danger and your mother will not return.” “What!” Ruby exclaimed. “That’s not enough time! I’m just a child. I’m not ready yet. Why did you choose me when there are so many other warriors that are better!?” “Rules are rules, you cannot disobey them,” said her master. “There is no need to answer you now. If you pass, I will give you the answer you seek. If you don’t it will remain a secret. Let this be a little motivation for you. I will send you off with one more tip, look at things around you. They can help you survive. Now go.” Right when Ruby was going to argue to give a different warrior this mission. But she knew that he wouldn’t let that happen, so Ruby grabbed the little emerald sphere, and yelled, “Mission START!” Ruby ran to the portal as fast as she could hoping to not waste her time. She was starting to get a little nauseous from all the swirling from the portal. As she walked closer and closer, the colors seemed to change from purple, to blue, slowly to green, then yellow, to orange, and finally to red. Scared, a little dizzy but determined, she got her weapons ready to face her first creature, the giant sea
