When Ecláir the sparrow is forcefully shoved into a life in a cage, it is like a storm has come and swept away everything he has ever known. After years of living free in the wild, Ecláir is now entrapped inside an constricting and inescapable prison. But when his captor, a woman coined as “the handkerchief woman,” starts bribing Ecláir with muffins and bombarding him with stories from her daily life, he starts to grudgingly make a hesitant friendship with her. Such begins The Pipe Tree, the moving debut novel by Lily Jensen. It portrays the protagonist coming to terms with an uncertain future and friendship, with the easy choice between freedom and life behind bars suddenly becoming almost impossible as the relationship between the two becomes more and more complex. In short chapters set at Ecláir’s present-day Portland, Maine, he narrates the story of how the friendship between him and the handkerchief woman came to be, and what further steps he should take to gain trust- and potentially a route to freedom. Some of the novel, however, addresses the question of freedom itself, and testing whether their friendship is strong enough to hold themselves together. As a wild, pastry-loving sparrow, Ecláir easily falls to the temptation of a sweet treat, especially ecláirs and blueberry muffins. When he arrives at the apartment, he easily feels out of place, trapped in a mysterious world. Looking for potential ways to escape, he starts closely observing the woman’s routine, and the house around him. When, on the first few days after capture, he immediately notices the lack of extravagance in the apartment, especially when it comes to the dinners, in which the woman eats cereal. But Ecláir is particularly moved by the way the woman seemed to be missing something, just like he himself, something expressed in the way she talks and sings. Ecláir sees the sadness in her actions. Over the course of the next year or so, Ecláir and the woman find themselves intertwined in a friendship and history with connections far deeper than what meets the eye. Both sacrifice what is quite dear to them for the other in this heartbreaking friendship that was not meant to be. Ecláir sings for the woman every day, staying obedient otherwise, while the woman spends her tight supply of money for pastries and food for Ecláir. But escape is imminent as time ticks before a new cage is built, one with no physical bars anymore- but instead mental ones. As Lily King, the author of Euphoria and The English Teacher stated perfectly: “The Pipe Tree is a powerful act of imagination. Through the eyes of a bird, Lily Jessen explores the truths and contradictions of human nature in a tale full of humor, delight, and deep understanding.” While the Pipe Tree lies from the viewpoint of a carefree sparrow, Lily Jensen has tapped into a universal connection facing the importance of freedom and friendship with consequences and if well-meant acts of love can actually hurt the other, as well as yourself. The Pipe Tree by Lily Jessen. Children’s Art Foundation – Stone Soup Inc., 2024. Buy the book here and support Stone Soup in the process!
Stone Soup Magazine for young readers, writers, and artists
Weekly Creativity #304 | Flash Contest #67: Write a Story Based On One of Your Favorite Songs
Write a story based on one of your favorite songs. Include the title of the song at the top of your submission.
Rescue, Reviewed by Emily Ke, 12
You’re running in a dark forest, the full moon’s light illuminating spots of the ground through the trees. Fallen leaves crinkle under your feet as you sprint mindlessly. You’re just trying to get anywhere away from your enemies; they’re out to get you. Suddenly, the sounds of a truck echo through the woods, causing a galvanizing feeling of panic to pass through you. Well…I’ve never been this nervous holding a book. Like many gripping accounts from World War II, the characters all had a universal fear looming from one towering figure of antagonism: Nazi Germany. To be honest, it never gets old. As horrible as it was for people to be locked up in concentration camps back then, each story – imagined or true – needs to be retold. In the amazing historical fiction titled Rescue by Jennifer A. Nielsen, I am rooting for Margaret to escape for freedom—but the many challenges she endured really speaks to what humanity means to us all. In this review, I want to share some of it with you. Margaret, also known as Meg, lives in France at the time of the war. She and her father would play a game where one of them creates a code for the other to decode. They would do this every day, until Meg’s father got drafted into the war. Her father’s parting gift was a jar full of tiny paper slips with many codes written on them, each for her to decode. Her father had promised her that by the time she finished the last riddle, he would come back. There was only one slip of paper left, and her father still hadn’t come back for three years. Already, I’m thinking to myself about impossible choices. Even though the reality looks grim, why are we so driven by the small sliver of hope? An injured British pilot shows up to Meg’s family’s farm, and the catalyst begins. Basically, she was told this: Decode the last riddle. If you do, it’ll likely cost you your life. If you succeed, however, you can maybe have eternal freedom. In times of struggle, when it’s so easy to give up, why do we make the illogical choice of bravery and sacrifice? Of course there are those who do give up, but Meg is the symbol of determination for many. When we look at history, we sometimes forget how brave some of these people were. Helping strangers along the way? Even braver. I look at our world now. Do we have what it takes to be brave? If our comfortable lives were turned upside down suddenly, would we fight for freedom again and save each other? I think about this often when I read historical fiction, the fun what-ifs. The plot twists in this book seriously deserve a gold medal. I think Nielsen’s portrayal of humans – sometimes the people that you trust the most end up betraying you – made me accept the good and the bad parts of being human. It hurts, like war itself, but that is something we cannot run away from. It might be practical to be selfish, but in the end, what makes us unreasonable is also the thing that makes us chase for what’s worth fighting for. When you’re ready to escape for that something, join me in reading Rescue. Who knows, you might even rescue yourself? 🙂 Rescue by Jennifer A. Nielsen. Scholastic Press, 2022. Buy the book here and support Stone Soup in the process!
