Girl with Daisies By Jane Wheeler, 13 (Boxford, MA), published in the Stone Soup Blog March, 2022 A note from Caleb Happy Saturday! I’d like to begin by congratulating Abhi Sukhdial—Stone Soup contributor and winner of our 2019 Book Contest—whose novella Three Days Till EOC was recognized by the 2021-2022 Scholastic Art and Writing Awards in the novel writing category. As per the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards, “This year the Scholastic Awards received nearly 260,000 entries nationally; 20,000 entries were from the Remote Programs alone! In the Remote Programs, only 9 percent of all works received a Silver Key. And only 12 percent of all works submitted to our Remote Programs received an Honorable Mention. Receiving a Silver Key or Honorable Mention is an incredible achievement.” Weekly Writing Workshops There are two of (William Rubel’s) and three of (Conner Bassett’s) classes left in the Winter session. The Spring program begins after Easter. If you would like a free trial in one of the remaining classes this session, please send an email to tayleigh@stonesoup.com. Below, you can find a video of one our students—Zar, 11—delivering an incredible reading during the February 12th Workshop on Parables & Paradoxes. Summer School Registration On top of the inimitable Naomi Kinsman’s Design a Novel weekend workshop, which takes place Saturday March 26 and Sunday March 27 from 1-4 pm eastern time, you can now begin registering for the Young Author’s Studio Summer Camps offered by the Society of Young Inklings! A few members of the Stone Soup team—Book Club Facilitator Maya Mahony, Refugee Project Coordinator Laura Moran, and myself—are all offering classes. Maya’s class on Identity and Imagination takes place July 25-28 at 1-3 pm pacific time, Laura’s class on the Anthropology of the Everyday on June 13-16 at 9 am pacific, and my class on Literature in Miniature on June 27-30 at 9 am pacific. More classes will go live as we get closer to summer, so make sure to look out for updates! This week, I’d once again like to direct your attention to the Stone Soup blog, though this time my focus is on our fabulous COVID blog that we began way back in 2020. The purpose of this blog is twofold; it’s primary purpose is to allow children to filter their complex feelings about the pandemic through art, but it also acts as a sort of ongoing time capsule with which to capture the cultural zeitgeist of the COVID-19 pandemic. Jane Wheeler, 13, writes of her beautiful piece Girl with Daisies, “We have all used different styles of face masks throughout covid to keep ourselves and others safe. This art represents the way we can find beauty even when covering up part of ourselves.” And Graham, 12, writes of his stunning poem “Life in the Time of COVID-19,” “Because of my mom’s job, I was living in Peru when COVID-19 started. The country locked down because of COVID. I couldn’t leave my apartment for forty-eight days. It was really hard. Things deteriorated in Peru and we had to be evacuated back to the United States. I returned home to Montana where there was no lockdown and I could finally go for a walk and be outside. My poem tells this story in half acrostic form and half free verse to help show the isolation and then freedom.” Both Jane and Graham turned to art in order to represent their unique perspectives, and in completely different forms. This weekend, I’d like you to think deeply about the pandemic and how it is affecting you most in its current form. Then, think about how you might capture this unique moment in time through your art. Like Graham altered the form of his poem in order to express the nature of its content, try and come up with an art form that mirrors your feelings about COVID. For example, if your experience with the pandemic is too difficult to express in the second dimension, create a sculpture or some other form of three-dimensional art. Be creative, think outside the box, and if you like what you write, please submit it to the COVID blog for consideration. Until next time, Contest News Fourth Annual Book Contest Every year we recognize the top novel or poetry collection submitted to this contest. The first prize is for your book to be published by Stone Soup. Books by previous winners like Abhi Sukhdial, Tristan Hui, and Anya Geist, have garnered important national recognition. The deadline is Sunday, August 21, 2022 at midnight in your time zone. There is a $15 filing fee. The winning book will be published in September, 2023. To submit to this contest, please visit our Submittable page. From the Stone Soup Blog March 2022 Life in the Time of COVID-19 By Graham Kosnar, 12 (Billings, MT) I t started—the disease that just kept coming S taying in Peruvian lockdown O ften complaining about Zoom meetings L osing our minds A t home day and night T rees and parks are bare I t drove everyone into despair O bjects became our closest friends N obody outside walking, walking, walking, Walking in Montana Trekking through Yellowstone The sky is blue Trees sway. I smell wild sage and mint. I can follow Whatever trail I want Passing birch trees Traversing hills Hiking D o w n Into valleys Entering a stream, The water, cold on my feet Feels good. I am home. I am finally free. Click here to read more from the COVID blog Stone Soup is published by Children’s Art Foundation-Stone Soup Inc., a 501(c)(3) educational nonprofit organization registered in the United States of America, EIN: 23-7317498. Stone Soup’s advisors: Abby Austin, Mike Axelrod, Annabelle Baird, Jem Burch, Evelyn Chen, Juliet Fraser, Zoe Hall, Montanna Harling, Alicia & Joe
Stone Soup Magazine for young readers, writers, and artists
How Stories Work—Writing Workshop #30: Character Description
An update from the thirtieth Writing Workshop with Conner Bassett A summary of the workshop held on Saturday March 5, plus some of the output published below We began this week’s workshop with an exercise; first, we chose a character from a story or novel we had been writing and then made up a new character in our minds. Once we had this new character envisioned, we wrote 3-4 sentences describing this character. From there we entered into a discussion centered around the question, “how does description work?” The answer: when a writer transforms a physical or psychological reality into written language. Our first literary example was the novel Anna Karenina as it is a classic example of a well-wrought character, however based on the book What We See when We Read by Peter Mendulsund, we found that even with a plethora of character descriptions it is difficult to create a true image of the character. This observation led us to our first basic “rule” of character description: behavioral descriptions are more effective than physical ones. We then read a few specific examples including this sentence, from Don Delillo’s White Noise, “He moved with a loser’s hunch.” Other examples came from Anna Karenina, East of Eden, and The Sound and the Fury. The second “rule” was that minimal description makes for easier visualization, that a good description withholds as much as it reveals. One such example of this came from Jonathan Safran Foer in the sentence, “He looked like nothing special.” Another, from Barbara Kingsolver: “There she was. Her elbows stuck out like wings.”The third and final “rule” of the day was that good description teaches us how to pay attention, best exemplified in this sentence from Guy de Maupassant: “He was a gentleman with red whiskers who always went first through a doorway.” The Participants: Zar, Penelope, Nova, Emma, Sophia, Alice, Josh, Amelia, Ellie, Gwynne, Chelsea, Quinn, Anna The Challenge: Write a full scene in which you describe the character(s) without naming his/her physical traits. To watch more readings from this workshop, like Sophia’s below, click here. Sophia, 12
Our Ocean Wildlife
Poorvi Girish, 8 (Fremont, CA) Our Ocean Wildlife Poorvi Girish, 8 When I was about 4 years old, I used to wonder in bed at night “Are oceans dangerous or is it the oceans that are in danger?” As an 8 year old, I have learned about the ocean’s alarming rates of pollution. Grown turtle on the shore of Black Sand Beach in Hawaii Lately, scientists have noticed how this has an effect on ocean wildlife. The 5.2 trillion pieces of trash affects ocean wildlife; it’s painful. Our world is in severe danger. So much is happening to our once peaceful mother earth. If we do not know, we can’t understand. If we can’t understand, we can’t care. If we can’t care, we can’t love our oceans. Make a change. Our world needs it. With so much trash in our ocean, it’s nearly impossible to completely rid our oceans from it, but also impossible to ignore. We can’t get rid of all the trash but we can reduce it. So, what can we do to stop this phenomenon called ocean pollution? We should lessen the use of plastic. With the world’s population, an ounce could count as a ton. There are a lot of things scattered around the environment that could harm many different species of ocean wildlife. Start using reusable bags. Plastic bags harm 100,000 marine organisms each year. Karate chop those plastic bottles into outer space (just stop using them, don’t actually do the former). Pretend plastic straws never existed. Use steel, glass or any other material that could be reused. Have you heard of the time when a plastic straw got stuck in a sea turtle’s nose? Do the right thing and help our earth—not doing so is like leaving your house looking like the landfill. Change the world for the better, together.
