A note from William Website redesign: It has been a long time coming! For some reason, web design work seems to take forever plus a day. Our new homepage design just went up! Please visit. The site is now much better at showcasing the writing and art in the magazine and on the blogs. The second and third phases of the redesign are in process. An improved system of navigation and more beautiful interior pages comes next, followed by a portal for the Refugee Project. Our Saturday Writing Workshop and Book Club for Writers is open for registration. This session, Saturdays at 9 a.m. Pacific, runs through December 16. You can sign up for one or more classes through EventBrite. Weekend creativity project: Next week, at the Saturday Writing Workshop, I will be talking about personification. Personification is when you attribute human qualities to inanimate objects. A good example of personification is the recent blog post “Life of a Pencil” by Amruta Krishnan Srinivasan, 9. Imagining you are a pencil, or an eraser, is a common school writing prompt. Amruta’s story goes far beyond anything I have seen anyone do with this idea. Amruta actually makes me care about this pencil! I am going to be following my class on personification with a class on nature writing using personification techniques. So, for this weekend, I would like you sit down with—or at least near—something that means a lot to you. Something to which you have a strong emotional attachment. This could be a stuffed animal, or a tree whose branches you may see projected in shadow against your window. Or something else entirely. Let the spirit of whatever it is that you choose to write about enter your imagination. As always, if you like what you write, then submit it to Stone Soup so editor Emma Wood can read it. Lastly, I know that Jane wrote to you about Three Days till EOC a couple weeks ago, the novel by Abhi Sukhdial, winner of our 2019 Stone Soup Long Form Book Contest. And, I know she gave you the link to Anya Geist’s interview with Abhi. Anya and Abhi are both Stone Soup stars. As an author, all I can say is: support authors, support Abhi! So, if you haven’t already, buy his book! And, if you haven’t seen the interview, please click on the video below. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-susnKavHLY&feature=youtu.be&utm_source=Stone+Soup+Master+List&utm_campaign=66c62ffb19-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2020_09_24_07_00&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_b184558ef7-66c62ffb19-&mc_cid=66c62ffb19&mc_eid=[UNIQID] Until next week, Stay Tuned for Next Month’s Flash Contest Every month we hold a flash contest based on one of our weekly creativity prompts. Take a look at this month’s prompt and the winner here. And keep an eye out for next month’s contest! Highlights from the past week online Don’t miss the latest content from our Book Reviewers and Young Bloggers at Stonesoup.com! Read an update about our Book Club meeting, which was our twentieth (!) meeting. We discussed The War I Finally Won, by Kimberly Brubaker Bradley. Shravya, 11, wrote a poem about her life in quarantine, with lots of sensory details about baking, writing a book, and more. Julia, 13, reviewed Enna Burning by Shannon Hale. Julia explains why she was so captivated by the main character and enjoyed the writing style. Amruta, 9, writes about “The Life of a Pencil” now that she has lately been neglecting it in favor of her laptop. Pragnya, 12, reviewed The Lost Girl by Anne Ursu, which is about twin sisters. Pragnya starts the review with this compelling line: “The Lost Girl is the kind of book you’d want to write but thought you wouldn’t do well enough.” Colored pencil From Stone Soup October 2020 My Life as a Tree By Aiden Chen, 11 (Edmonton, Canada) Illustration by Cecilia Yang, 12 (San Jose, CA) I flew through the brisk, cool air of the morning as a tiny seed, wondering where I would land. With a dull thud that echoed in my ears, I crashed onto the soft, crumbly dirt. The dirt was cool and soothing, and I fell asleep with nothing to do. After a year, I could finally get a clear view of where I had been lodged. Beside me, there was a peaceful lake with muddy brown water. All around me, there was a crowd of towering trees. Even the shrubs were taller than me. I looked around and saw the roots and stems of shrubs. Looking up, I saw their leaves. I looked higher and saw tree trunks. Looking even higher, layers of tree branches and leaves were present, with sunlight occasionally filtering through. Sometimes, small animals from the lake would scamper over the leaf litter on the forest floor. Everything was peaceful, and no bad events happened to me until five years later. . . . /MORE 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’s Advisors: Abby Austin, Mike Axelrod, Annabelle Baird, Jem Burch, Evelyn Chen, Juliet Fraser, Zoe Hall, Montanna Harling, Alicia & Joe Havilland, Lara Katz, Rebecca Kilroy, Christine Leishman, Julie Minnis, Jessica Opolko, Tara Prakash, Denise Prata, Logan Roberts, Emily Tarco, Rebecca Ramos Velasquez, Susan Wilky.
Stone Soup Magazine for young readers, writers, and artists
The Lost Girl, Reviewed by Pragnya, 12
The Lost Girl is the kind of book you’d want to write but thought you wouldn’t do well enough. Luckily, we have Anne Ursu who skilfully spins us a thoughtful, emotion-provoking yet engaging tale. The Lost Girl by Anne Ursu is a weirdly beautiful Magical Realism novel about Iris and Lark Maguire, twins who are identical but not alike, with completely different personalities, sort of like relatable alter egos. Lark is the dreamy, imaginable, shy character and Iris, the solid, sensible one. Both of them have been inseparable and thought they would always be, until the day they walk home to find themselves in different classrooms. At first, it doesn’t seem like a big deal, but as you delve deeper into the book, you seem to understand their past, (which was excellently blended into the plotline), and how difficult it was for them to cope with their change. The twins seemed to be separated more that year, with Lark taking art classes and Iris joining Camp Awesome, an all-girl after school activity group which Iris has some trouble fitting into, which I can totally sympathise with. Then there is the “magical” part of the story which is Treasure Hunters, an all-around mysterious antique shop, with its mysterious signs, and its owner Mr. George Green, who holds much more than what meets the eye. Although I personally love the build-up of the story, I feel some backstory chapters may require some careful reading, as this book is like a puzzle, where you have to place everything correctly to get the picture, which, here is the marvellous, insightful world of Iris and Lark Maguire. That being said, I constantly admire the author’s ability to maintain just the right balance between the past and the present, and the smooth changing of scenes, which kept myself itching to just skip to the end of the book. However, the thing which I find most interesting and something which isn’t found in most books is the fact that flipping to the end, just to find out what happens next doesn’t work out. Every single word on every single page seemed to have a role, either towards the character growth, or towards the future, even to the next page. I would recommend this book to anyone and everyone, simply because it has something appealing to all kinds of people. Its connection with traditional fairy tales, relatable scenes, and some incredibly thoughtful statements like “Don’t let your sister get so stuck inside her head that she can’t get out” which Iris’s mother tells her make this book something you can’t take your hands off of the second you start reading it! The Lost Girl by Anne Ursu. Walden Pond Press, 2020. Buy the book here and support Stone Soup in the process!
Life of a Pencil by Amruta Krishnan Srinivasan, 9
Amruta Krishnan Srinivasan, 9San Jose, CA Life of a Pencil Amruta Krishnan Srinivasan, 9 Man’s best friend is a dog. Amruta’s best friend—a pencil. Well, I used to be. I used to be her treasure, a creator. Her creativity flooded through my tip. I made stories, I made artwork. Now, I am left forgotten like an old toy. I am rarely picked up these days. I wait around all day to be picked up. It is all about that good for nothing laptop and his even worse keyboard. Pen(cil)manship means nothing. Just choose a better font is all there is to it. She has traded a perfectly fine pencil like me for a keyboard. Well, what is there to complain. My buddy paper is traded for a screen and worse, a mere backspace button has replaced eraser. As fancy gadgets waltz in, we are pushed to a corner of the table. And that is how life has been for the past few months—in the shadow of a gadget never been able to show my true colors. Can this pandemic end?
