Stone Soup Magazine

Story·Benjamin Halperin, age 13 — A boy learns his parents are divorcing, finds solace in his golden retriever Lucky, and escapes into baseball—both through books and a Giants game.

Story·Sandra Detweiler, age 12 — Two sisters saying goodbye to their favorite cloud-watching spot before moving discover a bird-shaped cloud at their new home by the ocean.

Story·Megan Lowe, age 13 — A newly adopted Japanese girl struggles to adjust to her American home until her museum-worker father brings her a tiny tea cup from a Japanese Friendship Doll exhibit.

Book Review·Suzy Zail, Reviewed by Sophie Beatrice Cooper — Playing for the Commandant, by Suzy Zail; Candlewick Press: Massachusetts, 2014; $16.99 When Suzy Zail, author of Playing for the Commandant, details how Hanna, our young Jewish protagonist, was shipped...

Poetry·Alden Powers, age 12 — A speaker deliberately ignores the decay around them—dirty dishes, holes in walls, a broken fishbowl—because noticing would make it feel less like home.

Story·Maisie Bilston, age 11 — An English girl grieving her father's death moves to Germany and creates a magical world in the apartment building's garden, finding friendship through imagination.

Poetry·Gabrielle Mott, age 8 — Peace arrives like moonlight through a window, then expands into visions of mountain streams, glass-still pools, and fields where doves coo sweetly.

Poetry·Wujun Ke, age 13 — Dawn breaks through trees as birds find their perches, while the speaker breathes in the ancient scents of maple and oak between dreams and waking.

Story·Joshua Heaps, age 11 — During the Civil War, eight-year-old Tom struggles to support his mother after his father and brother join the Union army, culminating in a Confederate raid and miraculous reunion.

Book Review·Jeanette Ingold, Reviewed by Sohee Kim — Mountain Solo, by Jeanette Ingold; Harcourt, Inc.: New York, 2003; $17 When I first read the back cover of the book, I was so thrilled. Since I began playing the...