In his poem “Dreams,” Langston Hughes puts heart-touching words to address society and the world. Hughes develops the idea that life is hard when you don’t have dreams. He develops this theme by using repetition and metaphors. First, Hughes uses repetition. For example, Hughes restates the line, “Hold fast to dreams” twice. He is trying to emphasize that you should really hold on to your dreams and chase them. You should do this no matter what because otherwise your dreams may slip away. Another way Hughes uses repetition is through his line structure. The first 3 stanzas in each verse start with the same 3 words: Hold, For, and Life. To describe a world without dreams, Langston Hughes uses two metaphors. The first metaphor is: “Life is a broken-winged bird that cannot fly.” Here Hughes compares a frustrating life without dreams to a “broken-winged bird.” When Hughes makes this comparison, I picture a bird’s broken wing who can’t fly but tries his or her hardest. It makes me think life may be hard, but you can still try to make it better. This reminds me of my dad. In 2018, he had a seizure and passed out on the floor. My uncle found him and took him to the hospital. Ever since then, he’s been sick, but he gets better every day. My dad’s situation has demonstrated to me that you can bounce back. No matter what he’s going through he still keeps fighting. The second metaphor Hughes uses is: “Life is a barren field Frozen with snow.” This image makes us see how hard it would be to get back on your feet after losing something as dearly important as your dreams. This reminds me of my cousin. She loved the house she raised her children in. One time her checks came in but they weren’t enough to pay her rent that month. Then the same thing happened the next month, so she got evicted. She felt hurt and cried. She was devastated and forced to stay in a homeless shelter. She went around looking for a new home, but the houses she looked at were too expensive or not available. She went back to the shelter, feeling stuck. Because she remembered her dreams, she never gave up. She realized she had to push herself harder, and eventually she found another house and got on her feet. Both images let us see how Hughes thinks about how life is so hard without dreams. By using repetition and metaphors, Hughes allows the reader to get pulled in to get thinking about the importance of dreams. You have to be diligent to get what you want and you have to prove yourself. Then maybe “the barren field filled with snow” won’t be so hard after all. Read Langston Hughes’s “Dreams” here. The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes by Langston Hughes. VintageClassics, 1995. Buy the book here and support Stone Soup in the process! Have you read this book, or any poems by Hughes? Let us know in the comments below!
Stone Soup Magazine for young readers, writers, and artists
Saturday Newsletter: December 7, 2019
“Fighter Jet” by Ethan Hu, 8 (San Diego, CA), published in Stone Soup December 2019 A note from Sarah Ainsworth As some of you may know, I don’t work for Stone Soup full-time. Most of my time I spend as a graduate student in an archival studies program—in other words, I am training to be an archivist. I’ve written about archives before, if you’d like a brief overview on the subject. As an aspiring archivist, I am partial to cool old stuff. One of my favorite tasks that I do for Stone Soup is looking back in the archives for anything that we might need—throwback posts for social media, images, people who we could interview for our former contributor series. This week, though, I want to spotlight our anthologies. They’re packed with the very best stories from the 46 years of publishing Stone Soup. While there is no shortage of impressive work being published in the magazine now (check out “Sky Blue Hijab” below, which is phenomenal!), it is such a fascinating experience to read one “friendship” story from 1986 after a story from 2003 after a story from 2016. You learned last week that we just released our science fiction anthology, but we have so many others! Holiday, family, animal, and sports, just to name a few. Speaking of our science fiction anthology, we’re currently collecting blurbs from middle-grade and young-adult authors for the back of the print copy, and we’re so heartened to learn that such talented people are impressed with the work of Stone Soup writers. Here’s a preview from a blurb we’ve received: “Hold on to your copy! When one of these young writers wins the Hugo this paperback will be quite the collector’s item.” We wholeheartedly agree! Lots of things have changed since the 1970s, but have stories written by children stayed the same? If you read an anthology, please let us know what you think. Current Contest: Personal Narrative Are you ready to submit your entry? Have you been using the amazing FREE series of tips for improving your writing, made specially for this contest? Even if you are not entering this contest, if you are a writer you should take a look at the fantastic materials developed by Young Inklings. The video series is focused on personal narrative, but a lot of the advice applies to any form of writing—and the tips for revision are great rules for life for any writer, at any age! Remember: for this contest, we are looking for excellent, innovative, moving, playful personal essays or mini-memoirs. We want to hear about any of the biggest moments in your life—the scariest, the saddest, the happiest ones—as well as about some of the smallest—your walk to school or a regular Saturday at home with your brother. Make us laugh! Make us cry! Make us feel like we know you! Read more on our contest page, and submit at the link here. Highlights from the past week online Don’t miss the latest content from our Book Reviewers and Young Bloggers at Stonesoup.com! Do you like to eat pasta? Well, our new blogger Ezra became curious about his favorite food and decided to investigate! Check out “A Brief History of Pasta” to learn more! Colored pencils From Stone Soup, December 2019 Sky Blue Hijab By Seoyon Kim, 10 (East Greenwich, RI) Illustrated by Ethan Hu, 8 (San Diego, CA) I twist the fake wedding ring on my finger nervously. It’s a cheap copper ring that I superglued a rhinestone to. Back and forth. Back and forth. It’s supposed to arouse sympathy if someone tries to kill me. It’ll convince them that I have someone back home I love and need to get back to, my colleagues had assured. Though it’s likely that I won’t be killed by an assassin. If I do get killed, it’s more likely to be by a bomb or a missile. I’m pretty sure my ring won’t convince anyone to refrain from blowing up everything in a five-mile radius. Unless it’s a magical shield ring. You never know. The countryside spreads outside the window. I peek outside, but the dizzying height quickly gets me sick, and I close the window blind. I don’t have time to get sick. Plus, the airline doesn’t seem to have any barf bags. Syria. Syria. I have to get to Syria. To the war. To the story…/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.
A Brief History of Pasta
Pasta is one of my favorite foods. For years it has been an easy, convenient meal for me and my family. Recently, I was boiling some pasta and I was wondering, what was exactly the history of this tremendously tasty food. I did some research and discovered the long, complicated past of noodles. Pasta is traditionally made from wheat, water, eggs, and salt. The first pasta dish was made in Sicily and dates back to 1154. Historians have noted that this first recipe was closer to a lasagna than to what we know today as our traditional noodles because it had a meat stuffing. Another difference of this dish from modern day pasta is that it is not cooked like either fresh or dry pasta. With that said, there is no concrete evidence of pasta up until the 13th or 14th century. The first pastas were made by boiling a big sheet of dough, but as time progressed people decided that was not efficient enough. According to Greek mythology, the first mention of a pasta maker was when the god Hephaestus make long strands of dough and compressed them through two rotating tubes. In the 14th and 15th centuries, pasta became extremely popular for its easy storage. This allowed people to easily transport pasta with them on their journey to the New World. Once voyagers made landfall, pasta was spread across the world. Pasta manufacturing machines have been made since the 1600s on the coast of Italy in a city named Sanremo. This over time made the Sanremo area one of the world’s most famous food destinations for tourists and locals alike. If pasta was good before, things were just getting started with the introduction of sauces. You could have pasta with tomato sauce, or with three-cheese sauce. You could have it with alfredo sauce or barbecue sauce if you are into that. A fun fact about pasta is that an average Italian person consumes about three times more pasta than an average American a year. Another fun fact is that pasta is so beloved in Italy that individual consumption exceeds the average production of wheat in the country; thus Italy frequently imports more wheat from other countries to make pasta. Pasta was originally only part of Italian and European cuisine, but immigration caused the food to spread to the U.S., Canada, and many more countries. The food was also taken so far away that it was an essential part of South African cooking. Thank you for reading this article and I hope after reading it you can know and remember the history of pasta every time you have it for dinner.
