A note from Sarah
When I saw Destan’s wonderful cityscape of New York from the February issue, I was reminded of the power of landscapes to depict a place so specifically, even if you've only been there a handful of times, or maybe not at all. Destan’s piece doesn't include the classic New York landmarks that identify the city right away, but it does convey Destan’s interesting impression of the city through its composition and colors.
I decided to make this newsletter more about images rather than words, so I’ve chosen a few pieces of art from the Stone Soup archives that also illustrate a place. Scroll down to see them, and visit the website if you’d like to see more.
Of course, you don’t necessarily need to rely on the world around you to create art—it can be fun sometimes to imagine new worlds. But, sometimes what is in front of you is a good place to start. Try to describe your environment or represent it in an art piece, and please consider submitting your work to Stone Soup!
Until next week,
Highlights from the past week online
Don't miss the latest content from our Book Reviewers and Young Bloggers at Stonesoup.com!
Daniel writes about “a shocking study” that shows that excessive cell phone use is . . . good for you?! Read “Phone Addiction is Strengthening Our Brain” for Daniel’s satirical take on our phone-obsessed world.
Another travelogue from Vivaan on the blog! This time, he’s in Venice, Italy, a floating city where you take boats instead of buses. Read Vivaan’s account of his time in Venice, plus some history of the “magnificent” city.
Try out a new game where you are a stem cell scientist and review it for the Stone Soup blog!
Dish Life, a new, free game (“part Sims, part Tamagotchi”) was launched this week by researchers at Cambridge University. Dish Life is “a lab in your phone” designed as a fun way for young people to learn more about stem cells, and about what it’s really like to be a scientist working with a team in a lab. They want it to offer new ideas and tell new stories for imagining what a scientist does and looks like.
We know that a lot of today’s Stone Soup readers are going to be tomorrow’s great scientists, and that you all appreciate a good story, so what do you think? Does Dish Life give you a new insight into the scientific life? Did it spark some new ideas in a subject area you didn’t know much about before? Is a game a good way to share this kind of information and build experience?
The creators made a Youtube trailer where you, your family, and your teachers can find out more about the game, and there are preview versions for Android and iOS that you can download for free. So, if you decide to give it a try have something to say about it, why not write us a review? You can submit a review of Dish Life (or any other game!) to the blog category on our submission page. If we like it, we’ll publish it online.
From Stone Soup February 2020
The Life of Beverly Henderson
By Jamison Freis, 12 (Thousand Oaks, CA)
(Illustrated by Destan Cevher, 7 (New York, NY))
I was born in 1950 and a few hours after I was born, my mom died—or so I was told. We were in Ketchum, Idaho. My name is Beverly Henderson. I am part Irish and the rest of me is all American. My father was disappointed when I was born because he wanted a boy.
He put me in an orphanage. I never saw him again, but I have small pictures of him in my head. He was handsome, with brown hair, brown eyes, and tan skin. His skin was so smooth that it made butter feel rough. I lived with him for three years.
At the orphanage, I went to a cheap school, and they fed us cold food, they had rats in the classroom, and I was one of the only girls. The only other girls were Lily and some other girl I never learned the name of. She was quiet as a mouse and graceful as a pigeon. Lily, however, was nice. She was nine years old at the time. Lily lived with a poor family, and she had one brother, two sisters, and her mom was pregnant with one more. .../MORE
Stone Soup is published by Children’s Art Foundation-Stone Soup Inc., a 501(c)(3) educational nonprofit organization registered
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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.
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