Triangle Man (marker) by Angelo Theodore, 9; published in the January/February issue of Stone Soup A note from Emma Wood Hello from Cincinnati! I am thrilled to announce that Lily Jessen’s The Pipe Tree, the fiction winner of our 2022 Book Contest, is now available for preorder. The Pipe Tree, which tells the story of a sparrow who is captured and caged by a lonely woman, is beautiful and moving, yet also formally inventive and playful. It is a gem of a novel that you will read in one sitting. I hope you will support Lily and Stone Soup by ordering it today! It will be released on March 15. I am also excited to share our latest Stone Soup interview between former Stone Soup contributor Georgia Marshall and Parwana Amiri, a Stone Soup contributor via the Refugee Project. Amiri, 19, recently published a book of poems, We Will Fly Higher, about her experiences living in refugee camps in Lesvos, Greece. Last but not least! A writing prompt for you all. In the January/February issue of the magazine, we published the very short memoir piece “When I Accidentally Drew an Arc around My Butterfly” by Norah Lu, 7. The title is descriptive of the piece: at school one day, Norah is drawing a butterfly when a classmate bumps into her elbow, pushing her hand across the page and making an arc over the butterfly. Rather than trash the drawing because of the mistake, Norah finds a way to make the mistake into something else—a flower. This weekend, I challenge you to either write about a time when you turned a mistake into something else, something new and interesting—or to go back to something (a poem, a drawing, a story, a collage, etc) that you feel has a mistake in it, and rather than try to fix that “mistake,” attempt to make it a feature of the piece! Happy Saturday! Preorder The Pipe Tree From Stone Soup January/February 2024 When I Accidentally Drew an Arc around My Butterfly by Norah Lu, 7 I had just finished sketching a butterfly at my school desk. I grinned and raised my arms over my head, stretching with joy as I looked down at my picture. I had spent fifteen minutes sketching it. I picked up a yellow crayon and started coloring the right wing. Suddenly, Maxine, my friend next to me, bumped me on the elbow. That made an arc around my yellow butterfly picture. Oh, all that work for nothing! But I can’t just start all over again! You have to think of an idea, Norah. I lifted my head and studied my drawing carefully. I thought about places where butterflies land: grass, leaves, flowers . . . wait—flowers? Hmm, that might be useful after all. I said nothing while I colored the rest of my butterfly. But when it was time for the arc I accidentally drew, I smiled a huge smile. First, I drew a circle. (Can you guess what I was doing?) Next, I drew some small half circles. (Can you guess what now?) Then, I drew a stem. (It’s getting obvious.) Finally, I colored it. It was a flower! A pretty, yellow flower! I grinned the biggest grin yet. It was beautiful! To read the March/April issue of Stone Soup, out now, click 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 Magazine for young readers, writers, and artists
A Conversation About Those Little Hearts
All around the world, on February 14, people celebrate Valentine’s Day. Whether it’s giving your partner flowers, or just receiving candy from your parents and friends, it’s a very enjoyable festivity that happens every year. But, the real fact is that, although chocolate is very popular, conversation hearts are actually the most commonly given candy on February 14th! But what is their origin story, and why are these small hearts now so popular? Believe it or not, the production of conversation hearts actually came from a pharmacy! In 1847, Oliver Chase created a machine that could cut medicine into smaller pieces to create a more efficient business. When these ingredients were swapped out for sugar and flavoring, the US got the first candy-making machine. Conversation hearts are made when sugar is crushed into a fine powder, combined with flavoring, then shaped, stamped with words, and enjoyed! In fact, candy heart messages didn’t start out so short. It started with phrases like, “Married in white, you have chosen right.” Later these phrases would be abandoned for shorter, more loving thoughts like “Be Mine,” or “XOXO.” Of course, today’s factories are much bigger, with the Necco company—which was based in my hometown of Boston until it closed in 2018—making about 8 billion of these treats per year! Now other companies like Spangler started making conversation hearts in their place. In 2020, when the factories had more business than any other year, shipping issues resulted in a year of blank (wordless) conversation hearts. No conversations in 2020, I guess! But the future is looking bright for conversation hearts in my mind, now that there’s a digital app that can be used to send virtual hearts and messages to loved ones. The conversation heart powerhouse started by Necco was revolutionary, and they are still very popular to this day.
ROBOMIND Ep. 3: You’ve Got a Friend In Me
https://stonesoup.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/Robomind-episode-3.m4a Episode #3: You’ve Got a Friend in Me Transcript: Hello, my name is Misha Ahmed, and I am your host of this podcast series called ROBOMIND. I know you may be wondering, what does ROBOMIND mean? For those of you who haven’t been here for the last two episodes go check those out, but to get back on track ROBOMIND is a combination of two things: robotics and mind. I love robotics, and I believe that it shapes how you think and it shapes your mind. That is why I called my podcast ROBOMIND. Now, a little about me. I’m 12 years old, and I am an absolute robotics fanatic! I am on my middle school robotics team, and I want to inspire you to give robotics a try too. Episode number 3 of ROBOMIND is called, “You’ve Got a Friend in Me” by Randy Newman that was used in a classic, TOY STORY, by Disney. You know I’m keeping that Disney theme from the other episodes. In this episode I am going to talk about one of the many reasons why I wanted to join robotics and why I love it so much. Before we get to that though it is time to reveal the answer to the riddle from last time. If you don’t remember it was a series of letters, and you needed to find out what letter was going to be next. The letters were F S T F F S S. Now, drumroll please…the next letter is “E.” Now let me give you a little bit of an explanation because that one definitely was hard for me. Basically, the answer is E because the letters are the first letters in the words of numbers in chronological order (first, second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh), which explains eighth, E. Now to get onto the topic. Obviously I love robotics because of well, robotics! What I mean is that I love the engineering, programming, and notebooking aspect of it. However, there is a side that people who don’t do robotics (or don’t have siblings that do robotics) don’t see and that is the family. In robotics you make many friends, and in the hours and hours and hours you spend together you become closer and closer. You become so close that you are basically family. We poke fun at each other and support each other. We all love those late nights when you’re grinding robotics, and you look up at your teammates and you’re just so tired and sleep deprived that even though nothing happened, you all just start laughing. It’s like the sight of each others’ faces makes you guys absolutely fall to the ground laughing. We will always remember when we are all at competitions and crossing our fingers in a huddle that we will score enough points, go up in rank, get another interview, or even win an award. Now that I am in robotics myself, I have learned that even though robotics is a very very competitive thing it is much more of a fun, free, learning environment where you can make friendships that will last forever. For example, when I am at robotics there will be days where we just work work work work, but then there will be days where we are all hanging out and discussing the most random things. So if you are wondering if you should join robotics or not, just remember the amazing friendships you will make. Now it is the time for what is going to keep you on your toes: THE RIDDLE!!! Okay, I am going to go super duper slow so if you need to get out a piece of paper and a pencil to write it down because this one is hard and a little bit tricky. You might need it. Also, this one is loosely-based off of a riddle found in “The Amazing Sherlock Holmes Puzzle Book” EPISODE 3 RIDDLE: There were two men Jeff and Bob. Bob bet Jef that he would be able to hang his hat and then after walking 500 yards turn around and shoot a hole straight through the top of it all while keeping his eyes closed. Despite knowing him to be an excellent shot, Jeff deemed it near impossible and readily accepted Bob’s bet, and yet Bob easily won. How? Okay, well you guys are keeping your gears turning thinking of that. Thank you to all of you guys who kept making comments. I loved seeing your thoughts and ideas. Thank you so much! This is your host Misha Ahmed of ROBOMIND signing off!
