Every month I have a habit to plead my parents for a hamster. One cold breezy night, my mom, dad, and I went shopping, and my dream came true. “Hey, look, there’s a PetSmart here, you could go get Adela a hamster, if there are any.” My dad exclaimed. My mom smiled and said she would; I was very thrilled! I was finally getting a hamster! When we sauntered in, my mom inquired about where the hamsters were. I met two Long Haired Syrian hamsters at first. An employee came and helped us choose. “There is also one over there, hiding in his bedding,” the employee said, pointing to a cage. I looked down and saw a hamster staring at me with a pile of paper bedding over his entire body. “What gender are they?” I asked the employee. He answered that they were all male. “The Syrians are more defensive than the other one; the Winter White hamster is a little shyer,” the employee added. I decided to get the Winter White. I named him Oreo because of the mix of colors he has– a soft and fluffy gray coat and a snow-white belly; it looks like an Oreo milkshake. The shape of him when eating looks like a round snowball. When we put Oreo in his new cage, he loved it! After that night, I decided to switch to some hamster care videos on Youtube. I saw a channel called Victoria Raechel. I checked it out and discovered that Hamster balls aren’t safe for hamsters, because their feet could get stuck in the air holes. I quickly told my dad about it and we removed Oreo’s ball. I also learned that hamsters are small animals, but they still need a lot of space; my dad added a big bin to the cage to give Oreo more space. Oreo lives safely upstairs in my dad’s working room which is next to my parents’ room. Every night, my parents could hear Oreo running wildly on his wheel, which made it too noisy to sleep. My parents had to switch it into a different type of wheel, named Silent Spinner. Now Oreo runs on his wheel but doesn’t make a sound at all. So, my parents now can sleep soundly in their room. Every hour I check on Oreo and feed him a little grain mix, popcorn, worms, and broccoli. Oreo has grown twice as big as he used to be! Oreo is living the best life a hamster could possibly have. Oreo is a marvelous hamster; I knew that picking Oreo instead of the others was a spectacular idea. He is lucky to be with me. And I am lucky to be with him.
Stone Soup Magazine for young readers, writers, and artists
How to Sharpen Pencils, Reviewed by Brais, 11
How to Sharpen Pencils: A Practical & Theoretical Treatise on the Artisanal Craft of Pencil Sharpening for Writers, Artists, Contractors, Flange Turners, Angle smiths, & Civil Servants by David Rees, is a gold mine for anyone wishing to sharpen a pencil. David Rees is a celebrated cartoonist, television host, writer, and artist. From listing the essential supplies for pencil sharpening (at a reasonable $1000!) to describing the anatomy of a pencil, to explaining how to preserve a freshly sharpened tip, this manual has it all. This truly is the ultimate guide to pencil sharpening. Rees’s guide walks the reader through different sharpening styles and how they may apply to different styles of people and professions. One of my favorite sections describes how to sharpen a pencil with a pocketknife. For example, he recommends producing a steep-angled pencil tip for people with heavy hands, as this will make it harder to break the tip off. He also advises exposing a lot of the graphite in pencils for artists, as this will make for a light sketch that can be easily erased. Rees’s love of manual pencil sharpening is only surpassed by his hatred of electric pencil sharpening and mechanical pencils. Here is one hint: Rees’s feelings about electric pencil sharpeners involve the use of mallets. Without giving away all of this guide’s secrets, I must mention Rees’s most prized pencil-sharpening possession: An El Casco M430-CN. Created by a company that once made firearms, this double-burr hand-cranked machine, Rees declares, is the best pencil sharpener on Earth. I enjoyed reading Rees’s tongue-in-check manual not just for its jokes and wisecracks, but also for its factual information, and even its lifestyle recommendations. By reading this book, I have learned the proper hand-stretching exercises to do before long pencil-sharpening sessions, that a correctly sharpened pencil is an object of beauty, and that mechanical pencils make for good firewood. This book is where I will always look to for pencil-sharpening guidance and inspiration, and it is where you should too. Recommended for middle school and up. How to Sharpen Pencils: A Practical & Theoretical Treatise on the Artisanal Craft of Pencil Sharpening for Writers, Artists, Contractors, Flange Turners, Angle smiths, & Civil Servants by David Rees. Penguin Random House, 2012. Buy the book here and support Stone Soup in the process!
How Stories Work-Writing Workshop #8: Memory
An update from the eighth Writing Workshop with Conner Bassett A summary of the workshop held on Saturday June 5, plus some of the output published below Memory—fragmentary, incomplete, unreliable, contradictory, a key to explaining the present or future. “For me, there has been no difference in remembering something and creating something. When I wrote my fictional novels they always had a starting point of something real. Those images that are not real are exactly the same strength and power of the real ones and the line between them is completely blurred. When I write something, I can’t remember in the end if this is a memory or if it’s not – I’m talking about fiction. So for me it’s the same thing.” -Karl Ove Knausgaard This week, we began workshop with a light analysis of a few tenth century Chinese landscape paintings, thinking about the techniques at play, how they made us feel, and the words we may use to describe them. After a few minutes of thought, we connected how these paintings, specifically their relatively barren space, the emphasis on blank space over detail, and an inability to tell what’s what, enacted the function of memory. Most important to our discussion of memory in this week’s workshop was the fact that memory, often times, is in fact creation, as brought up in the quote by contemporary writer Karl Ove Knausgaard above. Jumping off from this concept, we moved towards a discussion of memory in the films The Tree of Life by Terrence Malick (a conflation of memory of the past and memory of the future) and Citizen Kane. We watched two clips from Citizen Kane, from the beginning and the ending, in order to show how Kane’s memory before death, that of him sledding, represented a key to understanding his character and the tragic function of memory. The next segment of the workshop was devoted to a discussion of artwork, beginning with a few landscape paintings by Pieter Bruegel the Elder in which the details were not cast in great focus, another function of memory in art. We then took a prolonged look at two surrealist paintings: Magritte’s Memory, and Dali’s The Persistence of Memory, both of which seemed to portray the obfuscation of memory. The final segment of the workshop focused on literature, more specifically the tradition of the “I remember” text, beginning with an excerpt from Joe Brainard’s memoir I Remember, and ending with Mary Ruefle’s essay “I Remember.” The Challenge: Write your own “I Remember” piece. You may write it as fiction or nonfiction, as poem, short story, or essay. The Participants: Josh, Georgia, Emma, Harine, Svitra, Simran, Sinan, Sophie, Sena, Liam, Anya, Madeline, Zhilin, Isolde, Noa, Joy, Olivia, Alice, Samantha Isolde Knowles, 9New York, NY I Remember Isolde Knowles, 9 I remember the days when dragons and phoenixes swarmed the sky. I remember the days when giants shook the ground. I remember the days when mermaids splashed in their ponds. I remember the days when ghouls and ghosts haunted the night. I remember the days when I fell asleep listening to goblins and imps crackling. I remember waking up to find it was all a dream. Svitra Rajkumar, 13,(Fremont, CA) Memories Svitra Rajkumar, 13 Puffs of Jenna’s breath clouded her vision as she rushed down the road. It was a frosty winter day in Mridaria, and the bustling streets were crowded with multicolored gowns. The cozy smell of nutmeg fit the winter mood perfectly. It was her best friend’s birthday, and Jenna needed to get there quickly, although the crowd wasn’t letting her through so easily. Winter in Mridaria was usually not that cold, considering that it was near the coast, but today delicate snowflakes were drifting down from the sky. The dark, paved roads were covered in a blanket of snow. Citizens had tried to clear them in vain; the snow was overpowering. Jenna weaved through the barrier of people, careful not to be noticed. Jenna worked at a part-time job that required a lot of stealth, so she was a master at being furtive. She stopped to check the time, but the impatient Mridarians kept moving. A lady in a silky red gown knocked Jenna over, in an attempt to get to Charlotte’s Jewels, a very popular jewelry shop. Unfortunately, they were having a Black Friday sale today. “Ouch!” Jenna cried out in pain, picking herself off the snow. Her calf had hit a sharp stone on the ground and was now sporting a large gash. Ugh! Now I’ll be late! She looked up to see people staring at her. The Mridarians were awful gossipers. Sure enough, she could see many of them whispering to each other. Ignoring all this she turned around to yell at the woman who had bumped into her, but her silky red gown was no longer in sight. “This is the worst day ever!” Jenna grumbled while looking around for her watch, which had fallen off when she was shoved onto the ground. Ah! There it is! She picked up the watch that was now cold and wet, and stuck it into her coat pocket. Jenna looked up and began to move forward, but tall horse legs blocked her path. “Hello Miss, you look like you need a ride,” an amused voice chuckled. What now?! Jenna looked up, and to her surprise, a boy sat high on top of a white horse waved to her. She recognized that voice, and the crest on the horse’s saddle gave it away. Jenna was standing in front of the heir of Mridaria, the king’s son, and Mariel’s older brother. * * * Before she could figure out what she was doing, Jenna found herself inside the warm palace, sitting on an oversized chair that smelled like her grandmother. What am I doing here?! How did I get exactly where I needed to be? She racked her brain and thought back to the last thirty minutes with the heir. Being with the heir added many risks to Jenna’s situation, but
