Stone Soup Magazine

Book Review·Ann Rinaldi, Reviewed by Ashley Johnson — An Unlikely Friendship by Ann Rinaldi; Harcourt Children’s Books: New York, 2007; $17 Imagine a lonely white girl, raised in a wealthy and prestigious family, who lived her dream of...

Story·Katharine Pong, age 12 — A girl runs eleven miles to the beach without planning, where observing oysters making pearls from irritating sand grains helps her reframe her frustrations with home life.

Story·Erin Cadora, age 10 — A stray cat with a bell that prevents her from hunting gradually learns to trust a grieving woman who feeds her, eventually becoming a beloved family pet.

Poetry·Sophie Anne Ruehr, age 11 — A child navigates a Cape Cod beach as high tide transforms the landscape, jumping ice-covered islands while observing the retreating wildlife and encroaching sea.

Story·Emma Dudley, age 12 — A star basketball player tears her knee in the championship game, faces losing her scholarship dreams, then finds purpose coaching young players while beginning her recovery.

Poetry·Nina Wilson, age 10 — A morning routine transforms when a redwing blackbird's song stops time on the way to the bus stop, breaking the monotony with wonder.

Story·Jonathan Morris, age 12 — An elf boy searches for rare ashberries to save a dragonfire victim, remembering how the same berries failed to save his father years before.

Poetry·Alice Provost Simmons — Blizzard white snow twirling dancing like another kind of ballerina. I see a girl she is white— seeing something I can’t see— a white hawk circling

Story·Bailey Bergmann, age 12 — A girl struggles with her rebellious golden retriever until he falls through ice into a river, and she jumps in to save him, realizing she loves him as he is.

Story·William Gwaltney, age 12 — A young man becomes a rodeo bullfighter on the anniversary of his best friend's death, facing the same bull that killed him a year earlier.