Stone Soup Magazine
— A sixth-grader watches her imaginative pioneer game fall apart when popular kids mock it, realizing she and her friends are growing up and leaving childhood behind.
— A five-year-old girl sits by a lake at sunset, contemplating why everything in life requires waiting, until her father helps her understand its purpose.
— A young artist who draws the sunrise every morning struggles with her mother's acting ambitions for her, then finds hope after losing an art contest when her grandmother offers to...
— Eight-year-old Soon-Soon Wang flees Cultural Revolution China for America after her parents are taken by the government, leaving behind her best friend Xiao-Long.
— A young climber encounters a cougar on a mountain ledge and saves herself by singing the same lullaby she once used to tame her childhood cat.
— Night sounds — crickets chirping, owls hooting, wind whispering — create a sensory portrait of darkness falling, mixing beauty with an undertone of cold unease.
— After surviving a plane crash, a boy struggles with trauma while his friend's family hobby store faces closure, both learning to face uncertain futures.
— A wild African horse is captured, shipped to America, and passed between owners until she escapes during a film shoot and returns to freedom on the African plains.
— A puzzle-loving girl falls asleep on an unfinished jigsaw and wakes up inside it as a colonial farm girl, discovering she must complete the puzzle from within to escape.
— A tall, insecure fifteen-year-old faces pressure to cheat on a state test from a classmate, but finds courage through her childhood teddy bear to do the right thing.