Kate Messner’s new book Chirp is a captivating story of a cricket farm mystery, summer camp fun, and ultimately, one girl’s journey of finding the confidence to speak up. Mia is a girl who just wants to forget her past. Luckily, she has plenty of new things to distract her ever since she moved to be near her grandmother’s farm in Vermont. Mia’s grandmother is trying to convince the world that bugs can be tasty food. But Green Mountain Cricket Farm is struggling and not only because business is slow. Mia’s grandmother believes someone is deliberately trying to sabotage her cricket farm. Could her grandmother be right? Though Mia’s parents blame Gram’s suspicions on her recent stroke, Mia is determined to get to the bottom of the mystery. Supported by her new friends from summer camp, Mia taps into her detective side to find out the truth about Gram’s farm. But Chirp isn’t just cricket farms and mysteries. It’s also a story of Mia coming to terms with her own secret. Since her time as a gymnast back in Boston, Mia has been keeping a painful secret that Messner masterfully hints at throughout the story. Near the end, Mia relives the memories and we learn what she has been struggling with the entire time. I cheered when Mia was inspired by another female to speak up and come to terms with the secret. Mia’s character development and the overarching meaning of the book were elements I enjoyed. I really loved watching Mia grow and not just because she shares my name. When we first meet Mia, she is underconfident, shy, and hurting from her big secret. As the story progresses, Mia goes through a metamorphosis, slowly coming out of her cocoon. She makes new friends, becomes stronger at Warrior Camp, and makes business plans at her local Maker Space camp. I loved watching Mia grow from a timid little caterpillar into a bold and confident butterfly. The next thing that really stood out was how the cricket farm setting contributed to the greater meaning in Chirp. I learned for the first time while reading Chirp is that male crickets chirp while female crickets do not. This was so interesting and it tied into Mia’s struggles as a girl in our current society. Chirp’s message to harness your voice to make change was empowering and thoughtful. It was so clever of Messner to juxtapose the message of the book with cricket biology. Although Chirp was a great book I think that certain elements were overly simplified. The mystery element of the story was unrealistic and never helped Mia’s character development. And I didn’t like how the dialogue and other characters were sometimes simplified for the message to come across. Mia was about my age but acted much younger. Finally, there was an absence of positive male characters in the story. Chirp had great female friendships and strong female leaders, but the closest we come to a “good” male character was Mia’s father. It’s important that boys have role models that are also respectful and supportive of women. I think it would’ve been better if Messner included some male characters who were supportive of the book’s feminist message. Aside from the minor flaws, I thoroughly enjoyed Chirp. The valuable lessons of the story make it suitable for anyone, although I would especially recommend it to girls who are lacking confidence. Mia’s journey will empower you to be confident and speak up. Chirp by Kate Messner. Bloomsbury Publishing PLC, 2020. Buy the book here and support Stone Soup in the process!
Stone Soup Magazine for young readers, writers, and artists
Kate Milford’s Rich and Realistic Shared World
Kate Milford is one of my all-time favorite authors, and while I love the intricate plots, fleshed-out characters, and how her books read like something out of an Agatha Christie novel, what I love most about her books is the way in which all the books are connected. Many authors set their books in a “shared world,” as Kate Milford refers to it on her website, but Milford’s world is richer and more realistic than most. Her books take place in either the crossroads town of Arcane, Missouri; the Sovereign City Of Nagspeake, near Magothy Bay and the Skidwrack River; or New York City. A few of the books take place in each of these settings, and those books are directly connected by place, but what makes Milford’s novels so unique is that the settings are tied together by characters who move between the places, linking all the books together into her very own universe. As you read more and more of Milford’s books, you stumble upon characters with mysteries you can only uncover by reading other books, or maybe you already know something about a character or place that the protagonist doesn’t know yet because you read about it in a past book. We are introduced to Nagspeake’s smuggling history in Greenglass House, but it is only in The Thief Knot and Bluecrowne that we get a close look at its old iron that as far as anyone can tell, seems to move of its own accord. We find Simon Coffrett in Bluecrowne, but we only figure out what it means for him to be a Jumper in The Boneshaker. We meet Meddy in Greenglass House, but we only realize her amazing capabilities in The Thief Knot, and so on. Every new book you read makes the shared world and the characters that inhabit it feel more and more realistic until readers almost convince themselves it’s real. On several websites, readers have asked if Nagspeake is real, and where it is, and if it’s a good place to take a vacation to, and this striking realism that makes it seem convincing enough to be true stems from the way the shared world digs deeper into Nagspeake (and Arcane) with every book. There are maps of these places, and a tourism website, and countless other things that most people have almost never done with a fictional place. It really goes to show how much the shared world impacts the credibility of the novels, considering that these places are obviously fantasy. There are ghosts, there are magical entities, there are machines in places set hundreds of years in the past so advanced that we don’t have the technology to build them today- and yet people still believe in the possibility of these places being real. The shared world that all of Kate Milford’s books are set in makes the plots more compelling, the characters more relatable, the settings more lifelike, and the books more electrifying.
Writing Workshop #26: Horror
An update from our twenty-sixth Writing Workshop! A summary of the workshop held on Saturday October 24, plus some of the output published below This week our founder William Rubel and Stone Soup contributor and Writing Workshop member Liam Hancock, 13, led a workshop designed to get everyone ready for Halloween–on horror writing. We talked about the differences between the merely scary and the truly horrifying, and discovered that our members are uncannily good at writing fiction that can keep us all up at night! Read on below for some chilling examples (and you would be well advised to read them on a sunny morning, not immediately before bed…). The Writing Challenge: Write a terrifying piece of horror fiction! The Participants: Nami, Charlotte, Madeline, Margaret, Anya, Emily, Lina, Samantha, Janani, Lucy, Tilly, Gia, Olivia, Jonathan, Enni, Juniper, Charlotte, Rithesh, Ma’ayan, Nova, Liam, Lena, Maddie, Tegan, Ava, Hera, Lena, Nico, Peri, Elbert Ava Angeles, 12Chicago, IL The Dream Ava Angeles, 12 It started out as a regular day. The sun was shining and a cool breeze was blowing. It was a perfect day for a spring festival. But this would not last. I remember—for some reason—that there were tables, round tables, with tablecloths that draped over their sides, standing there in the green grass. For another unknown reason, there were also white plates, napkins, and glasses set upon the snow-white tablecloth. It was like a restaurant, but outdoors. As we set up the last of the chairs, people began to arrive. They found their seats. It was a picture-perfect setting. I remember going into the building. It had a canopy in front, with a single step leading up to the door. Inside this particular building, there were mats—long, colorful tumbling mats—lining the walls and the floor. I played with the rest of the children on these mats, hopping and jumping, knowing that the mats were there to cushion our fall. But we didn’t get to play on them for very long. Suddenly, clouds rolled in, and it began to rain lightly. I watched the adults take the tables and chairs into the building, while sitting on the single step below the door. Some people began to leave, seeing that the festival was cancelled. I remained on the step, watching the rain gather into puddles around the canopy. Then, I suddenly heard crying. It wasn’t a baby crying, but a child, desperately crying, as if crying was its last hope. I turned my head to the right, where the sound was coming from, and felt shivers come over me. There—in front of another building with many gigantic steps—was a younger version of myself. Its face was blurred and distorted, and I could not tell whether it was where the crying sound was coming from. I saw its clothes clearly—it was wearing a gold coat that my mother had bought for me, as well as a light blue pair of pants. Its hair was in ponytails—my usual childhood hairstyle, with blue bows at the roots. It looked normal—like me—but something was wrong. As I stared at it, frozen, terror struck me. The uncanny feeling of staring at your own, younger self, but knowing that it wasn’t your own, younger self washed over me like a wave. I couldn’t tear my eyes away from it, and my mouth opened to form three words—“Who—are you?” My horrified whisper must have been heard, because the creature shook its head slowly. As I realized that I wasn’t going to get an answer, feeling came into my legs, and I ran, ran away from the mysterious, uncanny creature that I thought I once was. The mats inside the building were gone, replaced by a wide marble stairway that I dashed down, not feeling the tips of my toes touching the marble, just running, running, running— I woke up, staring at the plaster ceiling. It was just a dream, I reassured myself, just a dream… As I lifted myself up from the bed, I came face-to-face with that same creature from my dream, standing just a few inches away from the side. As I froze with petrified horror, the creature’s mouth broke into a maniacal grin, and it said, in a high-pitched, chilling voice, “Who are you?” The House Lena D., 12 I was going on a hike in the forest by myself. The skies darkened. Rain clouds appeared. Wild rain poured down. I had to turn back, but it was too dark. I wasn’t afraid. How could I be afraid? The dark deep forest. Nothing scary. Just dirt and trees. Then I saw it. There it was. A house. I walked towards it. I knocked on the door. But nobody answered. I waited and waited. Nothing. I had to find shelter. Fast. I shivered. It was so cold. I opened the door. CRRRREAAKKKK! I entered, my hands shaking wildly. The floorboards moved. “Huh?” I gasped. Rats skittered across the floor. “Whew, those were just rats, of course, this is not haunted,” I said, nervously. I stepped on the stairs. CREAK! CREAK! CREAK! I opened a door. It was a bedroom. It looked like it belonged to a girl from long ago. There was a broken bed. It had stuffed animals on it and a pillow that was ripped. One of the stuffed animals looked right at me. I looked away. How odd, I thought. It’s probably not looking at me. Stuffed animals don’t move anyway. I heard some walking. I turned around. The stuffed animal fell off the bed. That’s weird, I thought. It was in the middle of the bed, not hanging off. How could it fall off? I looked away again. The stuffed animal moved towards me on the floor. It smiled at me. Not a happy smile, a scary one. I shrieked. I grabbed my flashlight to defend myself from it. “Back off!” I shouted at it. The stuffed animal’s thread came off. Stuffing was spilling all over. Yet, it was still walking. “AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!” I
