Stone Soup Magazine
— A peaceful pond scene transforms when a dead swan is discovered, prompting questions about death, grief, and the aggressive mourning behavior of its companions.
— Little Audrey, by Ruth White; Farrar, Straus and Giroux: New York, 2008; $16 I never imagined that people could live in a coal mining camp until I read Little Audrey....
— A young cellist faces performance anxiety before a school concert, finding that the music transforms his fear into something better than summer itself.
— A single yellow leaf spirals down in an autumn forest, becoming a bright spot of color among the brown fallen leaves on a cloudy day.
— The Dragonfly Pool, by Eva Ibbotson; Dutton Children’s Books: New York, 2008; $17.99 I’m not a big fan of fantasy books. So when I flipped through The Dragonfly Pool and...
— A seventh-grader with a lifelong crush on her neighbor plans to reveal her feelings at the Valentine's dance, but gets the flu and misses it—until a midnight mailbox exchange changes...
— A girl finds an abandoned black lab in the woods with a note asking someone to care for him, then encounters him a year later, happy with a new family.
— A seven-year-old in New Delhi sees street children from her car window and understands for the first time what her mother meant about children dying in the world.
— A boy hiding in an abandoned Paris theatre discovers ghostly musicians are his mother's orchestra, leading him to his grandfather, the famous conductor Alexandre Mierceles.
— A sparrow clan leader, haunted by his mate's death, flees when his son faces the same predator—but the son survives to lead the clan home while the father finds healing...