A Wish for a Brighter Tomorrow (IbisPaint on IPad)By Chloe Mancini, 9 A note from Jane Book Contest countdown has commenced! We can’t wait to receive your manuscripts, and we’re sure many of you are taking this part of the summer to work hard on your books—maybe revising, adding some finishing touches, or even adding a whole new section or group of poems. The deadline is midnight PDT on Monday, August 10. Happy writing! One of the things that has brightened up the past few months for me has been working on the Stone Soup COVID-19 blog. You have sent us poems, stories, journal entries, commentaries, cartoons, photographs, and artwork. Some are hopeful, some are sad; some are reflective, others issue a challenge; many are beautiful, and some even make us laugh! It’s so interesting to look back and see what our contributors were thinking and saying about this situation three or four months ago, and what they are saying today—some things have changed, and a lot has stayed the same, and everyone’s feelings are shifting around all the time. But the fact that you are all using this time to create and reflect is really inspiring. We hope you will continue to send us your work and read it on the blog every day, as well as enjoy all the great work in the magazine. Chloe Mancini’s artwork, above, is a terrific example of the power of many of the pieces on our COVID-19 blog. It takes real skill to make digital artwork like this, where you actually sense the emotion of the subject. We all know that feeling when your eyes are just brimming over with tears. I really feel for this girl as she stands in the moonlight wishing on a glowworm (or at least that’s how I read it!), and I sincerely join her in her wish for a brighter tomorrow! Andrew Li’s story, below, is another of this week’s special pieces from the blog. What a creative leap it is to take the perspective of a surgical mask as a way of reflecting on the current situation! We have spent a lot of time talking about perspective and characterisation in our Daily Creativity prompts and at our writing workshop, and this is a really lovely example of taking a quirky perspective in order to look at a known situation in a new way. For this weekend’s activity, I suggest we follow Andrew’s lead and look at the world from the perspective of an inanimate object. It doesn’t have to be anything to do with COVID-19! I think I might try writing something from the perspective of one of my kittens’ toys (Kimchi, now almost 4 months old). When she isn’t jumping on my keyboard or tracing the tracks of my mouse pointer on my screen with her paw, she can chase a ribbon for hours. If that piece of red satin had feelings, I’m sure it would be both exhausted and upset to have been (slightly) shredded by those claws . . . Have some fun with this exercise, and if you are happy with what you write, please send it to us! Until next time, Winners from Weekly Flash Contest #15 Weekly Flash Contest #14: Write a story or poem inspired by a Renoir painting. Our entrants wrote a story or poem inspired by Renoir’s painting this week. We received more entires than we expected and, as always, enjoyed reading all of the writings that were submitted. It was fun to see how differently many of you approached imagining going into the scene in the painting: the judges read everything from mystery stories to poems written from the perspective of the lamps in the trees (a couple of our Highly Commended choices)! One of our winning writers this week also sent an updated version of the painting, apparently made for her by Renoir himself, to go with her story (thanks, Ruby!). Winners “The Brendon Disappointment” by Lucy Berberich, 11, Oxford, OH “Paris in a Painting” by Fern Hadley, 11, Cary, NC “Let There Be Cake!” by James Hou, 10, Short Hills, NJ “Summer Day” by Samuel McMullin, 10, Portland, ME “A Taste of Bal du Moulin de la Galette” & its illustration, Travelling back to Moulin de la Galette, by Ruby Xu, 10, Annandale, VA Honorable Mentions “Lost Lisette in a Crowd” by Joyce Hong, 10, Oakville, ON “Allia T. and the Case of the Disappearing Violinist” by Naomi Kap, 11 “An Atypical Guest at the Moulin de la Galette” by Amruta Krishnan Srinivasan, 9, San Jose, CA “Mama’s Mask” by Michela You, 11, Lexington, MA “The Journal Entry of a Pessimistic Person” by Charlotte Zhang, 11, Portland, OR Congratulations to our winners and honorable mentions, listed below. You can read the winning entries for this week (and previous weeks) at the Stone Soup website. Highlights from the past week online Don’t miss the latest content from our Book Reviewers and Young Bloggers at Stonesoup.com! Amruta, 9, answered the Daily Creativity prompt where we asked you to imagine COVID-19 as a supervillain. Take a look at her illustration on the blog. Callum’s poem “Static” plays with the two meanings of the word. Read the poem and Callum’s explanation of his time in quarantine. Read Anya’s update from the 12th and 13th meetings of the Stone Soup Book Club. Most recently, the book club has been discussing Amal Unbound by Aisha Saeed, and the next book on the list is Harbor Me by Jacqueline Woodson. Daniel, 10, reviewed Kwame Alexander’s The Crossover. Read what Daniel thinks about the book that deals with family, grief, and basketball. Saanvi, 8, wrote an adventure story with an evil Captain Corona as the villain. Can you guess what the character represents? Have you ever been to Portugal? Vivaan continues his travelogue series with a post about his visit to the European country. Check out the post to read about Vivaan’s experiences and see some photographs of notable sights. We published an artwork by Chloe, 9, titled A Wish for a Better Tomorrow. What kind of emotions does the piece evoke for you? Read some of
Stone Soup Magazine for young readers, writers, and artists
Flash Contest #15: Write a Story or Poem Inspired by a Renoir Painting: Our Winners and Their Work!
Flash contest #15: Write a story or poem inspired by a Renoir painting. The week commencing July 6 (Daily Creativity Prompt #76) was our fifteenth week of flash contests, with a prompt that took us back to the scene of Pierre-Auguste Renoir’s painting, Dance at Le Moulin de la Galette. Our entrants wrote a story or poem inspired by Renoir’s painting this week. We received more entires than we expected, and, as always, enjoyed reading all of the writings that were submitted. It was fun to see how differently many of you approached imagining going into the scene in the painting: the judges read everything from mystery stories to poems written from the perspective of the lamps in the trees (a couple of our Highly Commended choices)! One of our winning writers this week also sent an updated version of the painting, apparently made for her by Renoir himself, to go with her story (thanks, Ruby!). Well done to all of our entrants, and particular congratulations to all of our Winners and Honorable Mentions! See below for all of their names, and keep reading to experience the writing created by our winners. Winners “The Brendon Disappointment” by Lucy Berberich, 11, Oxford, OH “Paris in a Painting” by Fern Hadley, 11, Cary, NC “Let There Be Cake!” by James Hou, 10, Short Hills, NJ “Summer Day” by Samuel McMullin, 10, Portland, ME “A Taste of Bal du Moulin de la Galette” & its illustration “Travelling back to Moulin de la Galette,” by Ruby Xu, 10, Annandale, VA Honorable Mentions “Lost Lisette in a Crowd” by Joyce Hong, 10, Oakville, ON “Allia T. and the Case of the Disappearing Violinist” by Naomi Kap, 11 “An Atypical Guest at the Moulin de la Galette” by Amruta Krishnan Srinivasan, 9, San Jose, CA “Mama’s Mask” by Michela You, 11, Lexington, MA “The Journal Entry of a Pessimistic Person” by Charlotte Zhang, 11, Portland, OR Lucy Berberich, 11Oxford, OH The Brendon Disappointment Lucy Berberich, 11 The music is loud and joyous, and the smell of popcorn and drinks in the air made the occasion all the more bright. The young Wendy Brendon, dressed in a dark magenta gown, is sitting at a table, swinging her legs back and forth to the music, eyes dancing with glee. She was only thirteen, but she’d already attended several festivals like this one. They never failed to brighten her mood, though. Wendy was a cheerful young girl and almost never had a frown on her face. This day was no exception. She was grinning eagerly, taking in everything around her like it was all a new sight. Her parents were dancing off to the side, giving her a sideways glance every now and then, wondering if she was going to do something other than sit and stare. She hadn’t planned on it. She just enjoyed watching. All the happy people, dancing, laughing. It was nice just to see them, even if she didn’t join in herself. As the wind picked up a bit, Wendy felt her hair blowing around her head, the little hat that sat atop it tilting and threatening to fly away. She knew if she let her outfit get mussed up her mother would be livid. Mama Brendon was quite strict and cared an awful lot about her daughter’s appearance. Wendy wasn’t a beauty queen, no boy ever looked twice at her, and Mama Brendon was always trying to find out why, what the reason was for this. Papa Brendon couldn’t care less, and was always taking Wendy out to the market or to work with him to let her get away from her mother’s hovering. Perhaps part of the reason Wendy loved these events was because her mother was distracted and didn’t have time to fuss over her. Her parents were quite the big-shots in the town business. Her father owned a huge company that ran quite a lot of the town, and her mother was a member of almost every club, board, and organization in the vicinity. They were well-known, and were always getting invited to things. Her parents didn’t enjoy them like she did; they just didn’t want to decline and seem impolite. Her parents were obsessed with being polite. So the fact that Wendy never even got up, or danced, or took part in the events at all was quite a disappointment to her parents. She was so carefree and all around un-ladylike that she was ridiculed and looked down upon by most of the residents of the town. Not that it mattered to Wendy. She wanted people to like her, sure. But she wanted them to like her for her, not because she acted like her mother, or, god forbid, her elder sister, who was the perfect child. They didn’t get along, and Wendy didn’t want to be anything like her. Maria was shallow. She had no personality, no ambition, no goals, nothing that she strived for. Wendy didn’t want to be like that, a doormat for people who treated her like garbage because she was “the weaker sex”. That wasn’t who she was, or who she would ever be. She wanted to enjoy life to the fullest, experiencing all the things that men could experience. So for the time being, she’d act the way she wanted to act. Grin from ear to ear, eat whatever she wanted, talk the way she wanted to talk. She was going to be who she wanted to be. People, her parents, her sister, and everyone, would just have to learn to deal with her. Simple as that. Fern Hadley, 11 Cary, NC Paris in a Painting Fern Hadley, 11 I gaze at the painting blankly. Is this meant to be a powerful piece of artwork? I ask myself. Because I’m not feeling its power. Confused, I wonder if I can call myself an art lover if I don’t understand art at all. Making an effort to understand the painting, I study the image before me. My eyes,
A Day in the Life of a Mask, a story by Andrew Li, 11
Andrew Li, 11Ann Arbor, MI A Day in the Life of a Mask Andrew Li, 11 A used face mask lay in the biohazard bin, where it had been placed once the doctor had finished his workday. He remembered the days of when he had just been created and was waiting to be shipped away. He was loaded into a box with other masks, then loaded into another box, then those boxes were loaded into a large steel shipping container. The containers were put on trucks. The trucks drove to the port, and the containers were loaded onto a large cargo ship. The masks sailed for about a week and arrived in Seattle. They were unloaded from the ship and taken from the container and loaded onto trucks. They then were driven for a few days and arrived in New York City. They were unloaded from the truck and stocked into a Walmart. A few days after the masks’ arrival, before the pandemic, in the small pharmacy section of the Walmart, the surgical masks were being bullied. “You’re worthless!” sneered a bottle of Tylenol. “And useless!” agreed a box of Band-aids. They were stuck on the bottom shelf, while the bullies were on the top. The masks were at the bottom of the pharmaceutical hierarchy, and they were bullied by nearly everyone: the painkillers, bandages, vitamins, shampoo, and even the adult diapers. Most customers walked past, and barely anyone even looked at them. Those who did were mostly kids who were playing while their parents picked up a prescription. The masks endured weeks of this teasing and neglect until finally, they were bought. They sat in a garage cabinet for a few months. They were then loaded into a bag along with other masks and boxes of rubber gloves, and driven to the hospital. They were bookended on one side by boxes of pizza, and on the other by jugs of water. The trunk also smelled of wet dogs and mold. The pizzas kept singing the word “pizza” to the tune of Nessun Dorma, and the jugs kept rolling around the trunk, slamming into everyone. “Will you please stop rolling around?” the masks pleaded. “Gwe gwant gwap gwolling garound! Gwe gware gwottles, gou gnow!” (“We can’t stop rolling around! We are bottles, you know!”) the jugs responded, in a very bubbly way. Once the masks arrived at the hospital after what seemed like hours, they were dumped into a box marked “Donations.” They sat there, quite uncomfortably, for the night, then they were unceremoniously yanked out of the box at an ungodly hour, and plopped onto a table by the receptionist, then distributed to the doctors. The masks had been taken by a Dr. Smith. Dr. Smith took them back to his office and put one of the masks on. He was walking down the hall when a fellow doctor stopped him. “Hey, John, your mask isn’t tucked down right. Remember, these are dangerous times,” the doctor said. Dr. Smith fixed his mask and thanked his colleague. He then went to check on his patients. He first stopped to check on some elderly flu patients. There were flu viruses in the air, but they were blocked by the mask. Suddenly, the hospital PA system called him to the ICU ward, where the coronavirus patients were being treated. “Dr. Smith, please report to ICU ward 3. One of your patients is vomiting,” the voice said. He rushed down the hall and down a flight of stairs. The room was full of patients. Most were coughing and were running a fever, as shown on their status monitors next to the beds. One or two had bottled oxygen, and in the far corner, away from everyone else, were a few patients with ventilators. Dr. Smith leaned in to administer some anti-nausea medicine to the patient, whose name was Bill, as shown by the ID tag on his wrist. Bill coughed, and some virus particles floated onto the doctor’s mask. The mask went into action as the viruses flowed in. Some of the larger particles had too much inertia and crashed into the filter’s fibers. The smaller ones spun out of control, being buffeted by the air molecules, and they too crashed into the mask. Only a few middle-sized viruses remained. Luckily, just at that second, Dr. Smith sneezed into his mask. The viruses were repelled back out, and the doctor was not infected. The patient’s stomach had also calmed down, possibly because it had nothing left to regurgitate. The doctor finished checking on some other patients, completed some paperwork, and finally took the mask off. He then washed his hands and face and took his temperature before finally leaving. The mask lay there in the biohazard bin and was nostalgic for his old pharmacy days. He missed being able to sit around and be carefree, without the threat of a virus.
