An update from book club! Today we discussed Kelly Yang’s award-winning novel Front Desk, which follows Mia Tang, a ten-year-old girl who immigrates to the U.S. from China with her parents, and now helps them run a motel in California. Kelly Yang wrote the novel based on her real childhood experiences. Mia and her family struggle with poverty and their mean boss, Mr. Yao. They also secretly hide other Chinese immigrants who are struggling, letting them stay the night in their motel. Mia has to deal with school, where the kids tease her for being poor and Chinese. Mia loves writing and English, although her mom wants her to focus on math, thinking that, as an immigrant, Mia won’t ever become good at English. Things get a bit better when Mia befriends a girl named Lupe, who understands what she’s going through. Mia also befriends the weeklies, the people who live permanently in the motel, including Hank, a Black man whom Mia helps exonerate from a wrongful accusation of car theft. The story comes to a climax when Mr. Yao wants to sell the motel, and Mia organizes all her new friends to band together to buy it from him. We had a lively discussion of Front Desk. Some students loved the book, and one student didn’t enjoy it because it was sad to read about all the hard things Mia and the other immigrants go through. One person loved the happy ending, while others found it unrealistic that Mia and her friends would be able to get together enough money to purchase the motel. We brainstormed different ways we would end the novel if we were writing it! We also talked about our favorite parts of the book, our favorite characters, and what we thought about Jason, Mr. Yao’s son, who has a real character arc throughout the novel, going from a bully, just like his father, to standing up for what’s right. We discussed Mia’s relationship with her mother and father; Mia’s friendship with Hank; and how lying functions in the story. Mia’s friendship with Lupe improves when they stop lying to each other about their lives; however, Mia uses lying for good when she writes a pretend reference letter for Hank, and a pretend letter from a lawyer for one of the immigrants whose passport was being withheld. People chimed in with their opinions about when it is right and wrong to lie in our own lives. Finally, we finished off with a creative writing activity. We had two prompts to choose from: writing a story about a kid put in charge of their family business for the day; or writing a list of customs and phrases for an imaginary place (like the list Mia writes about the U.S.). It was fun to see what people came up with! We’ll be back next month on November 26th at 9:00am PT to discuss Flora and Ulysses by Kate DiCamillo—looking forward to seeing you there! Our Next Book (to be discussed on November 26th): Flora and Ulysses by Kate DiCamillo
Stone Soup Magazine for young readers, writers, and artists
Writing Workshop #72: Pseudowords (Revisited)
An update from our seventy-second Writing Workshop A summary of the workshop held on Saturday, October 22, plus some of the output published below In this workshop, the participants learned to say the unsayable by using pseudowords: made-up words that aren’t part of any real language. William discussed how the sound of these words should have the power to express the piece’s meaning and feeling as well as the personality of the character. Examples such as “Jabberwocky” by Lewis Carrol, the avant-garde poem “Seepferdchen und Flugfische” (“Seahorses and Flying Fish”) by Hugo Ball, and scat singing by Ella Fitzgerald and Mel Torme were used to demonstrate. As a mini-writing challenge, the participants wrote pieces entirely with pseudowords, focusing on sounds that would match their characters’ personalities. The Challenge: Use pseudowords in a story or poem. Use them as suits your vision. This can be one word, a few words, a dream sequence, or a language. The Participants: Anya, Ava, Celia, Crystal, Katelyn, Kristen, Liam, Pearl, Rachael, Reethi, Yueling, Zar Strawberries and Ghosts Pearl Coogan, 10 The breeze swished in Amy’s hair as she skipped cheerfully along the forest path. “Limbeb, limbeb,” she sang, skipping rocks into the small creek. Amy’s best friend, Kat, who always dressed in black and was extremely gloomy, appeared from behind a tree. “Kilzek. Kox,” she spat. The two were in the forest looking for ghosts as always. Amy thought that they would find a friendly baby or puppy ghost and Kat thought that they would find an evil, scary, ghost. “Lo, borium!” Amy bent down and picked a strawberry from a bush, “Ram lom borium!” The fifth-grader hugged the berry to her chest, like it would save her life. Amy and Kat had been looking for ghosts every day for months but hadn’t found any. “Ram lom borium!? Kix rik!” Kat said, with a dramatic flick of her long black hair. Suddenly a strong wind howled through the trees, sending Amy flying onto the ground and Kat grabbing onto a tree branch. “Ium… ium…” Amy whimpered, but her whimper quickly turned into a screech as her strawberry flew away from her “BORIUM! BORIUM! HIKZ!” “Borium xiz! MIVC!” Kat shouted, the branch she was on swinging wildly, “RAM!” Red eyes peered at the pair, somehow suspended in midair and still against the wind. Slowly a body formed around the eyes, a milky white body with long, grasping arms and lanky legs. The ghost slowly moved forward, snarling and reaching out towards Amy. “IUUUUUUUUMMMMM!!!!!!” Amy screamed as she tried to scramble to her feet, only to be pushed down by the wind. The ghost reached out with greedy eyes. “YIKUZ!” Kat tried to run towards the ghost, but instead moved right through him. The ghost let out some sort of evil cackle, arms reaching up into the air, ready to slam down on Amy. “JIZX!” Kat jumped in front of Amy, pushing her best friend out of the way. And the ghost grabbed Kat instead. “KOOOOOOOOOOOOOV!” Amy shouted, the wind tangling her pristine blond hair. She was waving her arms at Kat as if that would somehow magically make her come down from the ghost. “LOPC!” Kat said, trying to wiggle out of the ghost’s grasp. But the ghost poked and prodded her, his long claws ready to tear off her legs. Amy was frantic, pacing in circles as leaves slammed against her smooth face. But then her face lit up, her eyes bright and her face blushing like how it always did when she had an idea. “Borium!” She smiled, fighting against the wind to get to a strawberry bush that was halfway out of the ground. “HIJ HIK!?” Kat peered down at Amy, the greedy ghost lifting Kat towards his mouth. “Seeeeeeelllll oolllllllllllllllpppppp,” the ghost spoke for the first time, his voice sounding like a zombie that found a buff, delicious, person that was perfect for eating and about to die. Amy picked up a couple strawberries. “Ram lom borium!” She smiled, throwing the strawberries into the forest. Kat furiously shook her head. The strawberries would only make this worse. They would agitate the ghost! And, just like Kat predicted, the ghost opened his mouth wide, teeth pristine and sharp, ready to eat her. The the ghost didn’t. Instead he dropped Kat onto the ground and ran after the strawberries, taking the wind along with him. “Kuu—uu—cc…” Kat stammered, lost for words. The ghost had just dropped her. And was now cheerfully munching on strawberries. Amy smiled, skipping towards her best friends. “Ram lom borium!”
How Stories Work—Writing Workshop #46: The Villanelle
An update from our forty-sixth Writing Workshop with Conner Bassett A summary of the workshop held on Saturday, October 22, plus some of the output published below This week Emma Hoff, 10, led her third class since joining the Stone Soup workshops, and taught us all about the form poem known as the Villanelle. First, we went over the requirements of a villanelle: A villanelle has 6 stanzas First five stanzas have three lines Last stanza has four lines First and last line of each stanza rhyme First and third line of te first stanza repeat alternately in following stanzas as the final lines, until they both appear in the final stanza The four villanelles we read were “The House on the Hill” by Edward Arlington Robinson, “One Art” by Elizabeth Bishop, “The Waking by Theodore Roethke, and “Do not go gentle into that good night” by Dylan Thomas. In all four poems, we noted that the poets had the option to play with the form by using off-rhymes and sometimes they didn’t adhere to the rhyme scheme at all. The Challenge: Write a poem in the form of a villanelle. It can be about anything you like and you should feel free to tweak the structure of the poem. The Participants: Anushka, Benedetta, Savi, Arjun, Aditi, Samantha, Robert, Alice, Allie, Russell, Shelley, and led by Emma Quiet Night Emma Hoff, 10 It’s a quiet night, alone, ashes on the ground instead of leaves, cities turned to bone. A voice, speaking over the phone, the little girl, laughing, it’s a quiet night, alone. The scraggly pyramid shaped like a cone, in front of which sits the hunched old man, cities turned to bone. On the clock the time is shown, you sigh and admit its existence, it’s a quiet night, alone. You need to go home, but you chew on your pen, cities turned to bone. You want to write one more poem, but you can’t think of anything to say, it’s a quiet night, alone, cities turned to bone.
