Stone Soup contributor and 20-21 intern Anya Geist (14) interviews Stone Soup contributor Lena Aloise (11). They talk about artistic freedom, writers as composers, the online community of the Stone Soup Writing Workshop, and so much more! Watch the video to hear what Lena has to say. Read some of Lena’s writing here and here. 0:18 – How were you introduced to Stone Soup? 1:20 – What were your favorite parts about the Writing Workshop and Book Club? 2:08 – What is your favorite thing about writing? 3:53 – How long have you been writing? 5:00 – Do you have any writing advice for your peers? 6:22 – Do you think the writing you do for fun is different from the writing you do for school? 7:41 – If you could tell somebody about Stone Soup, what would you say?
Stone Soup Magazine for young readers, writers, and artists
Yom Kippur through the ages
When I was little, I didn’t have to go to temple on Yom Kippur. I got to go to the basement and make cool crafts. Every year, I would watch my sister and my parents walk into the big room with the colorful windows and get jealous. I would always wonder why they got to go into the cool room but I had to stay downstairs. I might not have known what actually happened during a service, but I knew it was exciting. When I turned five, I finally got to come with my family into the cool room! It was even better than I thought it would be! The ceiling was one million feet tall with huge lamps all over! Rows and rows of benches filled up the huge room, and there were tons of huge flower pots with flowers to match. Finally, I got to put on a cool dress and sit on a bench next to all of the other fancy-dress people too! I was so excited! I didn’t understand exactly what was happening or what people were saying, but I knew it was cool. The next year, I started to miss the days when I could go to the basement. I quickly learned that you’re not supposed to fidget or whisper during services, you need to follow along in the books with the backwards pages, and you have to sit and stand a lot. I had to find silent ways to keep myself busy. Using my boredom busters, I figured out that there were 217 wooden boards on the ceiling with 32 lamps hanging from them, and there were 58 flowers in each flower pot. I guess that nobody cares if a six year old doesn’t pay attention during a Yom Kippur service. A few years later, I started to understand and follow along. I flipped the pages with everybody else, tried to figure out where we were in the book, and mumbled along to what everybody else was singing. I’m not sure if I was doing a good job of hiding my boredom, but I was glad to participate. Fast forward just a bit to 2020. Six years after my first Yom Kippur service, we’re going to temple in our living room in sweatpants. No fancy dresses. No room with a tall ceiling. No stained glass windows, no big lamps, no wooden boards, and no backwards book. Just a TV, some comfy chairs, and wondering how much longer you need to stare at the screen for. What was the point of this story? I guess it’s that you should make the most of what you have, because you never know what you’ll have later. Savor your metaphorical crafts and be grateful for your boredom. What if you aren’t Jewish and haven’t gone to temple in your life? This applies to everything, not just religious services! I think we’ve all been in school and thought, “Wow, I wish I could go home and watch TV all day.” Of course, the second that we couldn’t go to school anymore, all we wanted was to go back! Nothing will ever be perfect, so try to be happy with good enough.
Kind of A Big Deal, Reviewed by Pragnya, 12
How cool would it be to live inside a book? Where everything is planned out for you to have a happy ending. In Kind of A Big Deal, you get to experience what living inside a fantasy really is like! Kind of a Big Deal, written by Shannon Hale, is a beautiful mess of a story about the intricacies of high school, and finding yourself through the power of stories. The protagonist, 18 year old Greek-American Josie Sergakis, had just fallen down from fame. In her words, “there’s nothing worse than peaking in high school.” An aspiring Broadway singer, her choir teacher believed in her talent so much that he sent her to audition in big, bright New York. Unfortunately, her audition failed miserably, the judges dismissing her within the blink of an eye, leaving her alone, lost and with absolutely everything left behind. She decided to move to Missoula, Montana, and grabbed the first job opportunity she could get, babysitting 5 year old preschooler Mia, a superstitious, inquisitive toddler who develops a sisterly bond with Josie throughout the story. One morning, while dropping her off to school, Mia forces Josie into a bookstore, with the superstition that it was unlucky to walk past a bookstore without stepping inside. Not the biggest fan of books, Josie reluctantly steps inside and meets Deo, the charming teenage owner who convinces her to pick up her first book in a long time, The Highwayman Came Riding. But once she turns over the first few pages, she starts to get lost into them-literally! She finds herself as one of the characters, with snippets of her friends from past and present playing supporting roles, and she slowly starts to discover the beauty of books and immerses herself in them. There is a huge variety of books that she finds herself into; romance, dystopian, horror even a graphic novel, and in each one she learns something, either about herself, or on how to grow from her situation, and even we can learn a lot from Josie’s internal adventures, as her situations and characteristics are very relatable. Of course, it all seems too good to be true, and Josie starts to have increasing difficulty with getting out of the books to get back into her real life, and the line between fantasy and reality is rapidly thinning for her. Is she to continue living out her dream life, or stick to the reality everyone is accustomed to? I enjoyed reading about all the characters, with their quirks and delicate personalities that make you remember them for a long time. For example, the contrast between younger 8 year old Josie, broken from her family issues, and the wall or persona she built around herself that seemed to make her look more mature, broke at times, and is a very intriguing sub-plot that readers will definitely want to savor. Her love for singing also shines through in a lot of humorous ways, as she breaks into a medley of “Wannabe” while destroying zombloids with her magenta-coloured powers in a post-apocalyptic zombie world. I can also relate to the protagonist in a lot of ways, specifically the love she starts to develop for reading. For me, it feels like I am doing the reading process all over again, but now along with someone else! This book has a little bit of something for all kinds of readers, romance, mystery, fantasy, action, even comedy at some parts, but I am sure you will feel as though you lived inside a lifetime of books from the second you open this one! Kind of a Big Deal by Shannon Hale. Roaring Brook Press, 2020. Buy the book here and support Stone Soup in the process!
