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Illustration by Max Strebel for his story, 'A Gated Memory', in Stone Soup Magazine, November/December 2003

A note from William Rubel

This is a "hello" from St. Louis where the entire Stone Soup staff is at the National Teachers Convention, which I talk a little more about, below. None of us have been to St. Louis before. Our hotel looks onto the Mississippi river. It is still a working river. Long barge-trains are pushed by tug boats. Every couple hours a coal barge goes past the window. We can see the base of the St. Louis Arch. It is on the Western side of the river and represents the Westward expansion of the United States from the Atlantic to the Pacific Oceans.

I think I've mentioned that our website is going to be redesigned. The first part of that redesign is now in place. Please go to our homepage, stonesoup.com. As you see, blogs are being given more prominence. We thank our new bloggers for their wonderful work. Blogs enable us at Stone Soup to publish material that wouldn't work in the magazine, but we think is great material that we want to publish. Please read the blogs and leave comments. If you are age 13 or under and would like to blog for us, please go to our submissions page and let us know.

For the adults reading the newsletter. We now have more fully stocked our Stone Soup Store. In addition to the Stone Soup 2017 Annual, you can purchase journals and Stone Soup anthologies.

This week's artworks

Both of the artworks this week have an interesting perspective on the world. Vertiginous. One is of a monumental construction, viewed from the ground up, towering and impressive, conveying the fear of what might happen as people try to build something so huge. The other is on a smaller scale--at least building-wise--but conveys just as epic a perspective. We are looking down on the stage from the point of view of the performer, waiting in the wings, feeling more than a little apprehensive about the stage they have to take in just a few moments. If you are making a drawing or painting this week, try to think about what mood your perspective might convey.

An update from St Louis - book reviewers sought!

This week, the whole Stone Soup team is in St Louis at the National Council of Teachers in English conference (NCTE 2017). It's amazing! Thousands of teachers from all over the country in a huge convention center talking for three days about creative writing, teaching, and books.

We will have lots more updates after the conference is over, but for now, the big news is that we have books for you to read and review--lots and lots of books! Many authors and publishers are here and they have given us some signed copies, and even some signed proof copies of books that haven't been released to the public yet. We (and the authors we spoke to) think the best possible reviewers for all these books must be our Stone Soup readers.

Do you want to review a book for us, and can you commit to read it and send us a review to post on our website before the end of the year? If you think that you can do that, please write to me at newsletter@stonesoup.com. Reply as soon as you can--it's first come first served! We will send the copies of the books to the first reviewers that come back to us. We can't wait to send you the books and hear what you think of them.

Until Next Week

William

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From Stone Soup
September/October 2008

A Sliver of Moonlight

By Aja Corliss, 12

Illustrated by Gwyneth Welch, 13

Click, clack, sounded the dancer’s feet, echoing out in the auditorium. The smooth piano accompanied her and the audience and judges looked very pleased with the performance. I took a deep breath behind the thick velvet curtain. I was up next. My heart thudded louder than marching drums. I had spent months and months practicing to get this far. I was in the National Level Dancing Team. I breezed through the community and state competitions, but the Nationals were a whole different story. I patted my tight bun and smoothed my tutu out. I was a ballerina.

Other dancers around me were quickly reviewing their routine. I was too jittery to do anything. I hoped I would relax once onstage. I was competing with a lot of serious dancers and I had to admit they were looking pretty sharp. The dancer on stage right now was Opal Vasnull. She was a very talented tap dancer. I breathed slowly and tried to soothe my mind by listening to the rhythmic beat of Opal’s performance. I needed to relax.

All of a sudden my mom rushed in. “Mom! What are you doing here? I thought you would be in the audience,” I said.../more

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