Saturday Newsletter: June 3, 2023

A note from Tayleigh Greene

Hello,

Although it’s not yet officially summer, it certainly seems it here in Houston. Many of our schools are already out on vacation. And it’s hot. Really hot. For that reason, Christopher Zhang’s Peaceful Pond, featured above, beckons me to sit beside the cool water with a good book. Speaking of which, Sarah Hunt’s Foxtale and Sabrina Guo’s Catalogue of Ripening have been announced as finalists in the Next Generation Indie Book Awards Young Authors Category. If you haven’t read them yet—and even if you have—you will want to add them to your summer reading list.

If you’re looking to sharpen your writing skills this summer, look no further than our virtual studio camps, which we’re offering collaboration with fellow literary nonprofit Society of Young Inklings. Next week, Stone Soup Book Club Facilitator Maya Mahony will be teaching Middle Grade Fiction Writing. Later this month, Stone Soup Production Coordinator Carmela Furio will be teaching Intro to Publishing, and Stone Soup Editor in Chief Emma Wood will be teaching An Introduction to Poetry: The Image and the Line. For more details and our full summer course schedule, please see below.

One great way to escape the heat is to visit your local, air-conditioned library and read the latest issue of Stone Soup! On behalf of the entire Stone Soup team, I’d like to thank all of the generous donors who contributed to our library campaign. Last month, we donated over 1000 issues of Stone Soup to libraries and schools across the United States and Canada.

I’d also like to thank everyone who attended our 50th Anniversary Open House and Giveaway. It was so fun to celebrate with you all, to learn more about what Stone Soup means to each of you, and to hear some of our truly brilliant contributors read their work. It’s hard to believe that Stone Soup has been in print since 1973. It’s a testament to the hard work of our dedicated staff, and also to the importance of an organization that takes children and their work seriously. As part of our fiftieth anniversary celebration, we’ve been interviewing past contributors in a project we’ve titled Fifty Years of Excellence: From the Archives, published exclusively on our Instagram and Facebook profiles. One sentiment we’ve heard again and again from our former contributors is that there really was (and is) nothing like Stone Soup. Rather than seeing children’s writings and illustrations as transitional works to be passed over, we see them as finished statements in themselves, having an intrinsic value that can be appreciated by adults as well as children. As Emma Catherine Hoff, winner of our 2022 Annual Book Contest, said, “Stone Soup doesn't ask that I ‘grow up’ before becoming a writer. It encourages and respects me, as a writer, today.”

Cheers to 50 years,

Explore our summer camp offerings