The 2017 Stone Soup Annual has arrived at many of your homes. You see here in the photograph Kathleen Werth, the young artist who painted our beautiful cover, reading her copy. Note the bookmarks at all of the stories she wants to get back to! At 370 pages the Annual provides hours of reading. If you don't have your copy yet we will be able to ship it to you after Christmas. And, the 2018 Annual can be pre-ordered now as a stand-alone volume or as part of a digital print bundle.

For those of you who prefer reading the issues as issues we have just put up a page under the main menu bar containing all the issue PDFs for 2017. This page is only available to subscribers. Subscribers can go to the page and download the same PDFs used to print Stone Soup issues and which make up the print Annual. I think the best way to read PDFs is on your iPad or other tablet. So, if you have a tablet, look at this page from your tablet. I have an iPad. I read my Stone Soup issues in iBooks.

It was Christmas Eve, and everything was ready. Presents had been purchased with great care months before. Yesterday they had been wrapped in dozens of pretty papers and decorated with beautiful bows. Now they sat like sparkling jewels in a pirate’s treasure chest, under the fragrant boughs of a giant spruce. The farmhouse was filled with tinsel and holly and light.

The dining room table was covered with a white tablecloth, and red and green candles stood in silver candle holders waiting to be lit. Golden streams of light poured down from the dining room chandelier onto plates heaped high with frosted cookies in the shapes of snowmen and reindeer and elves. Soon these plates would need to be moved to make way for the huge Christmas Eve feast that was almost ready.

From the kitchen came the smells of cinnamon, nutmeg and vanilla, and of a golden brown turkey almost too big for the oven. On the stove, every burner was in use. Steam was pouring out from underneath the lids on various pots, fogging up the windows in the farmhouse kitchen. The sink was filled with pots and pans and utensils, and the counters were happily cluttered. As the mother worked, chopping, stirring, and checking the pots, she sang along with the Christmas carols coming from the nearby radio.

Suddenly the door to the outside burst open and happy voices filled the air. Having finished their evening chores, the children rushed into the house, each trying to be the first to reach the Christmas cookies in the dining room. Max, thinking himself too old for such childish behavior at twelve, slowly removed his shoes and walked seriously into the kitchen. He called out to his younger sisters, “You leave those cookies alone! You’ll all spoil your appetites for supper!” His mother grinned.

“Now you sound like me,” she said. “Before I know it, you’ll be taking over my kitchen and doing the cooking as well.” .../more