All Rise For The Honorable Perry T. Cook by Leslie Connor is an amazing book that deserves much praise. The main character, Perry T. Cook, is a perfectly regular kid… except for the fact that he was born in a jail because his mom is an inmate there. He’s lived there all his life, and the bullies at school use that as a way to tease Perry. But Perry will always have his friend Zoey Samuels at his side. It’s true… but not in the way Perry thinks. When Zoey’s stepdad—a law attorney named Thomas VanLeer, who pokes his nose into everything—finds out that Perry is living in a jail, he decides it is unacceptable. Thomas VanLeer has a plan, and it includes adopting Perry T. Cook and uprooting his life as a result. Can Perry save his mom and himself from being separated? This story is really made up of two plots with two settings: home and school. Perry just wants to get to his real home, the Blue River jail, with his mom and the rest of his family, the other inmates. But this plot slithers into the school plot: Perry’s school assignment. Perry has to write an essay or make some other form of project, and it has to be about his family. It’s the same assignment Perry’s class gets every year. Perry’s teacher is super nice, but she’s not going to give Perry a different topic for his presentation. Perry’s going to have to face the fact that his mother is in jail, and he hatches a plan to collect all of the inmates’ stories of how they got stuck in jail. Perry learns his mother’s story and begins to unravel a mystery surrounding it. While I recommend All Rise For The Honorable Perry T. Cook, the story also has several flaws. Some of the life stories are unrealistic. Mr. Krensky, for example, the grumpy, mean inmate, stole money and used it to buy himself a mansion and all sorts of fancy and expensive things. We have to question, knowing that this novel is realistic fiction, would this really happen? However, besides Mr. Krensky, the novel is pretty truthful in the matters of how many of these people are in jail because of need or accident. Mrs. DiCoco is a woman who hurt her back, got addicted to painkillers, and eventually began stealing money so that she could afford more. Mr. Rojas started an illegal gambling ring to get enough money to send his two daughters to college. It is true that United States prisons have more people in them than anywhere else in the world, even countries that have greater populations than we do. A lot of people in jail shouldn’t be there, and should instead have help. While this book addresses this, it addresses it without criticizing the idea of prisons, prison wardens, and other people like that, who make sure that the lives of people in prison are miserable. In All Rise For The Honorable Perry T. Cook, the warden is “kind,” and Perry’s mother eventually becomes the new prison warden after the old warden retires. This seems a bit ironic, seeing as Perry’s mother was an inmate; the oppressed become the oppressors. Overall, while reading The Honorable Perry T. Cook, I want you to enjoy the story while thinking about its problems and the entire world we live in, which forces people to do bad things and then puts them in a “correctional facility.” Still, The Honorable Perry T. Cook by Leslie Connor is an amazing book by an amazing author. All Rise for the Honorable Perry T. Cook by Leslie Connor. Katherine Tegen Books, 2017. Buy the book here and support Stone Soup in the process!
Stone Soup Magazine for young readers, writers, and artists
Weekly Creativity #190 | Flash Contest #40: Write a Story about Somebody Who Falls through a Bowl of Tomato Soup and into a Magical Land
Write a story about somebody who falls through a bowl of tomato soup and into a magical land! To submit to this month’s Flash Contest, click here.
Saturday Newsletter: February 5, 2022
Vibrance | Fujifilm XP Astrid Young, 12 (Brookline, MA), published in Stone Soup February 2022 A note from Emma This is the last newsletter I’m going to write for a few months—soon I’ll be on maternity leave with our second child, a boy! Since first becoming a mother not-quite two years ago, I have found myself especially attuned to the way parents, and particularly mothers, are portrayed in the writing I read for Stone Soup. So I was naturally intrigued by the very complex character of “Ma” in Fiona Clare Altschuler’s short story, “A Time to Run.” “A Time to Run” reads like a fairytale: it takes place in some alternate world, one where magic exists and there’s a city called “Izak,” but, unlike in sci-fi or fantasy–which work hard to “build” worlds–the world is not the focus of this story–it is simply matter of factly presented. As it would be in a fairytale. Hans loves his Ma, but he becomes aware of a darkness in her–she is angry at her brother, and vindictive, and though he loves her, he fears what she will do to his uncle. So, he helps his uncle run away, running away from his own mother to do so. I don’t want to spoil the ending, but I love that this story avoids falling into the black-and-white morality we often see in fairy tales: this character, this character is bad. Instead, each character, Ma included, is allowed to feel full, complicated, conflicted. Following Fiona’s lead, try to write your own fairy tale this weekend or this month, but with real, complex, human characters. Lastly, before I sign off, I want to also share that we have been feverishly preparing for a big relaunch and marketing push to schools: the way we can make Stone Soup sustainable again is by getting back in the schools, as schools never “age” out of us. If you are a parent of a middle schooler, or a middle school teacher yourself, please consider discussing a Stone Soup subscription with your school. Until later this year – Fiona Clare Altschuler, 11 Parkton, MD From Stone Soup February 2022 A Time to Run By Fiona Clare Altschuler, 11 (Parkton, MD) I was five years old when it happened, but I remember it well. I wish I could forget it, but that is not to be. The story begins before I was born, when my ma was a girl. My ma had a brother, Ferdinand, who one day disappeared. Then my ma’s parents died and my ma married my da and had me, Hans. I was like any boy, except that I had magic. One day when I was playing, a clear image of a man flashed through my head, hovered a moment, and flew away, leaving me wobbly and light-headed. I ran inside the cottage, calling. My ma looked up from her knitting. Her dark eyes softened. “My uncle’s at the gate. He’s wondering if his sister Thea is alive!” As always with the magic, the words tumbled out without me knowing what they meant. My ma blanched. “Find your uncle, and bring him here.” “Yes, Ma,” I said, turning, and dashed to the gate where our land ended, my sandals sinking into the sand, my tunic swishing around my legs. There I saw a man, cheeks hollow. I trotted up and said, “You’re Uncle Ferdinand—Ma’s brother?” He reeled back. “You are Thea’s son?” he whispered. “Yes.” I said. “I’m Hans.” Continue reading here… 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 Havilland, Lara Katz, Rebecca Kilroy, Christine Leishman, Julie Minnis, Jessica Opolko, Tara Prakash, Denise Prata, Logan Roberts, Emily Tarco, Rebecca Ramos Velasquez, Susan Wilky.
