A note from William Rubel

Welcome to the new February issue

Before I share with you the letter that Emma has written to introduce the issue I want to say that this February issue is magnificent. The writing is varied, sumptuous, elegant, challenging. While Emma is going to tell you what the issue is about—what she sees as the thematic links between the stories and poems and art she selected for you—I want to emphasize that this is an issue of gorgeous writing and powerful photographs and art. Everyone can access a few free articles a month on our website, so if you aren’t yet a subscriber, check out this month’s issue. It is an issue of creative work by young people at its very best. 

I’ve said enough! Here is what our Editor, Emma Wood, has to say about this issue: 

A princess stuck in a tower. A very ill girl confined to her room. A poem that enacts the feeling of being trapped in a love/hate relationship. A young boy whose fear of heights restricts his movement. A poem that describes beauty as “suffocating.” The stories and poems in this issue are about being confined, trapped, restricted, stuck, suffocated. They are about wanting to escape—either physically or mentally— from that “stuckness.” This is the feeling, to me, of February: it is a time of rain, snow, cold, and wind after the novelty of that weather has worn off. It is a month for dreaming of spring, of an escape.

If that has whetted your appetite, visit our website to read more!

A weekend writing project!

We all have beautiful places we have been, and even beautiful places that we go to relax. Some you will have special places you visit to be in nature, a private spot. When I was your age I went to a vacant lot in my neighborhood. There were violets and a mulberry tree that I remember, still, although it has been fifty years since I have seen it. I have learned not to try to go back and find these places from my childhood. The lot is sure not to be there, and if it is it is unlikely to be as magical as I remember it. I do wish I had written about at the time and could read that text—a story, a poem, even a diary entry—or see the drawing that I might have made, or the photograph I had taken. 

Whether you live where February is cold, and (as it does for Emma) includes a dream of spring; or live where I do and are having an unusually warm winter (it has been like Spring the last few days); or if you live in the Southern Hemisphere and this is your Summer, go outside sometime this weekend to a place that has natural beauty, or a beauty that means something to you, and use your words, your art, your camera, to record and explore the place and your feelings about it. 

As always, if you feel strongly that the work you make is one you’d like to share with other Stone Soup readers, use our online submission form to send what you’ve made to Emma.

From Stone Soup
November/December 2010

Time for Letting Go

By Silva Baiton, 13
Illustrated by Zoe Hall, 12