An update from our forty-seventh Writing Workshop with Conner Bassett A summary of the workshop held on Saturday, October 29th Excess: more than necessary—exaggeration, extravagance, exuberance, abundance, unnecessary, overload, overkill, surplus, luxuriance, improvisation, unrestraint, ridiculous To kick off this week’s workshop, we began with four artworks—Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s Dulle Griet, Peter Paul Rubens’ The Garden of Love, Jackson Pollock’s Convergence, and the Sistene Chapel—all of which illustrated, in one way or another, the theme of excess. While we technically defined “excess” as “more than necessary,” the purpose of this workshop was to show how sometimes excess is necessary in order to create the feeling of being overwhelmed or overpowered or repulsed, an idea perhaps best encapsulated in the work of Peter Paul Rubens: he emphasized movement, color, and sensuality. We explored two more of Rubens’s paintings: Daniel in the Lion’s Den and The Tiger Hunt. Once we finished looking at these paintings, we looked at the art of contemporary Australian sculptor Ron Mueck. We looked at a few of his hyperrealistic, larger than life works in order to demonstrate how something almost “too real” becomes grotesque. Following our discussion of Mueck, we looked at examples of Baroque architecture, a style associated with ornamental excess as is the case with St Peter’s Basilica and La Sagrada Familia. We also discussed a piece of Postmodern architecture, the Lou Ruvo Center for Brain Health in Las Vegas, a “non-functional” building more characteristic of a dream or a work of science fiction than reality. The last section of the Writing Workshop was devoted to examples of excess in writing as we looked at an excerpt from Bunyan and Babe the Blue Ox (exaggeration, hyperbole), Lewis Carroll’s The Jabberwocky (pleasure in its own silly sound making), and, finally, an excerpt from Cormac McCarthy (functional resistance to grammar, repetition of the word “and”). The Challenge: Write as much as you can, as fast you can, without worrying about making sense; write excessively. The Participants: Benedetta, Savi, Anushka, Ella, Tate, Robert, Samantha, Alice, Russell, Josh
Stone Soup Magazine for young readers, writers, and artists
Congratulations to our Book Contest 2022 Winners!
We’re thrilled to announce the results of this year’s Stone Soup Annual Book Contest. It was a pleasure and an honor to read and consider all the manuscripts as well as incredibly difficult to select our two winners. We are excited to share more about the authors and their books in the coming months—stay tuned! Winners Poetry An Archeology of the Future, Emma Catherine Hoff, 10 Fiction The Handkerchief Woman, Lily Jessen, 14 Finalists Poetry REALITY IS HERE FOR YOU, Analise Braddock, 11 Imagination, Bethel Daniel, 12 Sunny Fitting Sangeeta, Raeha Khazanchi, 13 Simply Complicated, Madeline Male, 14 Scenes From Before, Pauline McAndrew, 14 Fiction Cousins, Emily Chang, 14 Let Me Go, Ariadne Civin, 13 Shattered Moon, Ivy Cordle, 13 Autumn Floods and Winter Fires, Nami Gajcowski, 12 In the Secret Cedar Woods, Elena Gil, 13 The Roaming Realm, Madeline Longoria, 14 Norcelia, Sabrina Lu, 14 These Words That I’ve Written, Jenna Reenders, 14 Maple of the Moss Folk, Kana Shackelford, 13 Overthrowing Antecessum, Isabella Washer, 13 Sparks, Eleanor Wernly, 11
Jennifer Chan Is Not Alone, Reviewed by Pragnya, 13
Jennifer Chan Is Not Alone is very experimental in the way its lens plays with the reader’s perceptions throughout the story. The character through whom we experience the sleepy town of Nowhereville, 13-year-old Mallory Moss, arguably isn’t the protagonist of this story. The character arc she undergoes as the story progresses is very nonlinear due to the nature of the storytelling. Told in flashbacks from days leading up to “The Incident,” while switching to its aftermath (in the present), Mallory attempts to find her missing friend with the help of ex-friends Ingrid and Kath. When Jennifer goes missing, the entire town is shaken up. Mallory, our narrator, is at the heart of the tragedy. The book starts out framing Mallory as a popular girl at the top of her middle school social hierarchy, with Reagan and Tess as her closest friends. As both plot lines progress, however, Keller’s clever narrative choices carefully examine themes of change, social structures, bullying, and friendship through a realistic, honest point of view. The storyline leading up to “The Incident” starts when Jennifer Chan moves into the house across the street. Mallory’s lens through which she views the world shifts. Jennifer Chan is, as the book describes her, extraterrestrial. Mallory befriends her when she first moves to Nowhereville, but soon feels like she is forced to cut her off in order to maintain her perception in school. Mallory brings her past decisions to light and navigates her friendships with Ingrid and Kath, Reagan and Tess, but more specifically, her short-lived initial friendship with Jennifer, the titular character of the story, who believes we are not alone in our existence. She believes there are aliens somewhere, out there, and we learn about her backstory through snippets of her diary, titled “Jennifer Chan’s Guide To The Universe, Vol 1. through 7.” Jennifer Chan Is Not Alone is an incredibly relatable and gripping mystery/middle school drama that uses its narrator to weave together a story about self-identity, and I found myself and my friends throughout the pages of the book. I would highly recommend this book to anyone and everyone. Jennifer Chan Is Not Alone by Tae Keller. Random House Books for Young Readers, 2022. Buy the book here and help support Stone Soup in the process!
