A drop
A splotch
A paintbrush gone astray
A crash
A puddle
A mug of milk collapsed on the table
A shriek
A fault line
A gaping tear on the paper
A kid
A toilet break
A sister folding artwork into a paper plane
A bin
A careless hand
A father throwing the masterpiece into the trash
After much gasping and searching and berating,
After much crying and panicking and apologizing,
You lose hope, you feel resigned:
You think the artwork is terrible, the biggest disgrace of all time.
i want to sit in the art room
where no one thinks to check on me
i want to sit in the art room where no one dares to enter
without knowing what they are going to say
and say quietly
i want to sit in the art room so there is no room
for anyone else
i want to sit in the art room
so there is room
for myself
Every Child Has a Story.
At Stone Soup, we believe that within every young person lives a storyteller, an artist, and a dreamer waiting to be heard.
For more than fifty years, Stone Soup has been a home for those voices. Founded in 1973, we began with a simple yet radical idea: that children's creative work deserves to stand on its own, to be celebrated not as practice for adulthood, but as art in its purest form.
I.
I used to confuse coffee grounds
with the dirt in flower pots,
the earthy scent overtaking
the musky flowers.
A bird nest lies on a shelf in our garage.
I do not have the heart
to close our garage door at night,
to move the nest:
the blue eggs unhatched,
cushioned in the leaves—
unable to escape
their home.
II.
More pressure, my teacher says.
I tilt my index finger,
clasping the bow
skimming the strings of my violin.
Life is good.
Don’t be like a piece of wood—
motionless,
silenced.
Life is good.
The rain steadily falls,
against the roof of my bus stop.
The air is so cold I can see my sparkling white breath.
I can already tell it’s going to be a long dreary day.
When it rains, nothing goes my way.
The weather makes my spirit drop,
like the temperature when summer slips to autumn.
The sky is gray and fierce,
so the sun has a difficult time shining through,
and showing its warm face.
A cloud of darkness looms over my head.
I am stuck in its shadow.
In the savanna a tiger prowls,
but once tamed it can’t ever regain its power.
It will sit behind the man,
whose eyes will be glued to his paper,
his blank paper with no writing,
because his hand does not move.
A child will stand there for eternity,
not growing,
eyeing the man and his tiger,
with a puppet,
which she wanted to bring to her special spot
that is taken forever,
her flower crown dangling in sadness,
unable to take another step.
Welcome to Stone Soup
The web portal by and for young writers and artists
This site is being actively revised! New material is being added. Old material is being re-arranged. AI search is being added and refined. We expect this process will take another month. We are making every effort to be finished with this revision around March 1, 2026. Thank you for your patience. StoneSoup.
By Mathilde Fox-Smith
Illustrated by Anika Knudson
He had decided earlier that he wouldn’t do it tonight. This nagging annoyed him profoundly. Though now that he was already plastered against a wall, inches from the swerving shaft of police-car headlights in the city, it might as well happen. As soon as the tires rolled over the crumbly pavement, he crept from the shadowed wall, slipping down the road.
On a cold winter morning I have a class
At the Museum of Fine Arts.
The frosty wind awakens me.
I turn to the river and there,
Like a still life created overnight:
Muddy ice, shaped like dirty brushes,
A mallard crossing to the other side,
A plastic bottle floating in the water hole.
As I run up the granite steps
I know what to paint today.
