““Do you still love dolphins?” he asked, shoving a ten across the counter.” Illustrator Celeste Kelly, 13, for “Pennsylvania” by Grace McNamee, 13 Published July/August 2007. A note from Sarah Ainsworth Good morning! Today I want to talk about writing with others. Writing doesn’t necessarily have to be a solitary activity. In fact, it’s very common for screenwriters, who write the scripts for movies, to work with a writing partner. But even with more traditional short stories, either written down or spoken aloud, it can be rewarding to work with others. Have you ever collaborated on a story with friends, classmates, or your family? It may surprise you how much you can learn in the process of storytelling with others. On fun way to create with others is to make a game out of it. When I way young, I would go on hikes with my family and one of our favorite games to play while walking was to create a story, with one person writing a sentence at a time. My older sister would start with a line that seemed straight from a fantasy novel: “Once upon a time, a dragon named George lived in a magical land. And perhaps one of my parents would add some grounding details: “George lived with his family and went to school with three of his closest friends.” Then it would be my turn. What did I want to add to this story? Where did I want it to go? One of my favorite tricks was to challenge the person next in line to create something dramatic. I would say something like this: “George and his family and friends lived happily together in their magical world, until one day everything changed.” And then, it would be up to my younger sister to decide what happened next (sorry, Isabella!). This summer you might find yourself in situations with a group and in need of a way to occupy the time– maybe on a hike, a long bus ride or in line to eat dinner at sleep-away camp. I encourage you to try to create a story this way, and see if it rethinks the way you tell stories. If you write it down on paper and like the way it turns out, please submit it to Stone Soup! Happy weekend, Highlights from the past week online Don’t miss the latest content from our Book Reviewers and Young Bloggers at Stonesoup.com. How much do you know about rats? Read Louis Spindler’s post to test your knowledge. Although most people think of rats in a negative light, Louis points out that there are many benefits associated with the rodent as well. We published a blog about basketball this week by Daniel: “Where’s the Fight, Warriors? It’s all in Game 5 of the NBA Finals.” Though the Raptors may have won, Daniel details how the Golden State Warriors played a great game. Contest and partnership news Contest: write a book! How are your books coming along? You still have more than a month to polish up your work to enter into our contest for book-length writing in all forms and genres by kids aged 14 and under. (We have extended our usual age limit for this contest.) The deadline for entries is August 15, so you have five-and-a-half weeks left to work on perfecting your book, whether it is a novel, a collection of poetry or short stories, a memoir, or other prose. There will be three placed winners, and we will publish all three winning books in various forms. Visit our Submittable entry page for full details. “Do you still love dolphins?” he asked, shoving a ten across the counter From Stone Soup July/August 2007 Pennsylvania By Grace McNamee, 13 Illustrated by Celeste Kelly, 13 I turned to watch the Ohio sign fade, merging with the endless road carrying me away from home. What am I doing? The thought swirled around my head, ricocheting off the few other ideas that popped up, shoving them away Restless, I picked up a book and then threw it aside. I loved to read but was too miserable to do any such thing at the moment. I shifted my favorite toy, Kelly, a dolphin, and spread out. My eyes scanned the car for anything of interest to do, skimming over the notebooks, books, Kelly, and the car upholstery till my eyes settled on the back of my dad’s head. “Remind me why I’m moving?” I asked my father, longing to ask a different question: You left when I was two, why are you taking me away from Mom NOW? But the question remained in my head, jumping around. My father half-turned, lowering the volume on the radio but remaining silent. I flipped through memories in my head, trying to recall something of Dad from when I was two. But I’ve got no memories from before the divorce, before my mom swore she would never see my father again, before my father left in the first place. I knew some things, like the way my parents got into a huge argument and weren’t talking for weeks before the divorce. As far as I was concerned, I never heard of my father except when my aunt told stories, which my mother discouraged. Mom had refused to speak of Dad, hear of him, everything he did was wrong, and I agreed. No nice man would forget his two-year-old; no nice father leaves his daughter behind. . . ./more 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
Where’s the Fight, Warriors? It’s all in Game 5 of the NBA Finals
Where’s the fight, Warriors? It’s all in Game 5 of the NBA Finals By Daniel Zhu, age 10 They Fought Back… In NBA finals 2019, when Warriors lost both games at their home court, many people thought that Raptors were going to win the series; in fact, a party was about to be thrown to celebrate the Raptors’ first championship win in franchise history. However, the Warriors did not give the Raptors an easy win. Instead, the players and the team played their hardest and didn’t go down without a fight. Both The Players… Many injured players or players that didn’t make much impact earlier in the NBA Finals exploded in Game 5. Without the perseverance of the players, Golden State Warriors would have lost to Raptors easily. As you may know, Kevin Durant was injured during the semi-conference finals against the Rockets. Yet, he played very hard in Game 5, and in 12 minutes, he had 11 points and one block. In fact, he played so hard that he ended up tearing his Achilles tendon. Without Kevin Durant, Warriors would have lost at least 13 points (2 from the block plus the eleven he scored). Also, Kevon Looney, who was injured in the chest in Game 2 when he was blocking Kawhi Leonard’s layup, came back to play Game 5. Although his performance was not as impressive as Kevin Durant, he still scored four points for the team. Sadly, he ended up reaggravating his injury and sitting out of the rest of the game, and probably the rest of the series too. In addition, DeMarcus, who started out really badly in Game 1 of the NBA Finals, ended up scoring 14 points in the twenty minutes that he played as a sub for Looney, along with five defensive rebounds and six total rebounds, the third-most on the team. Finally, and as usual, Curry and Thompson carried the team to its Game 5 victory. Without them, the Warriors would be a jumbled-up mess, without anyone to hold them together. As always, Curry and Thompson were scoring leaders in Game 5, scoring 31 and 26 points respectively, with Thompson hitting the game-winning trey for the Warriors. You might be wondering, “What about Draymond Green?” Though he only scored 10 points, he blocked Lowry’s buzzer three. If it hadn’t been for him, Raptors may have won. So, I decided to honor him here too. As you can see, many of the Warriors’ players persevered, so as to give Warriors its Game 5 victory. And The Team As you probably know, basketball not only requires individual skills but also teamwork. And the best way to see how teamwork is going is by looking at assists, for they symbolize one helping another teammate score. And the person with the most assists on Warriors is surprisingly not Curry, who plays the point guard position and performs the most passes, but Draymond Green, who has 8 assists, while Curry has 7. But they have much better teamwork than the Raptors, whose highest amount of assists are from Kawhi Leonard and Kyle Lowry, with six assists each. You might be wondering, “Why is that?” This may not be true, but I think that it is because Raptors put more emphasis on personal skills than teamwork. You can tell by their player stats; every player that played in Game 5 scored double digits except for three players. Another way you can show this is by looking at the number of people that weren’t allowed to play, because this may mean that instead of creating an opportunity for players that aren’t that good to explode during that game, you only want the players with good individual skills to play. As you can see, only one person on Warriors sat out, Jonas Jerebko, while four people on Raptors sat out. However, an argument that Raptors also have good teamwork is that the player’s scores are very evenly distributed. This shows that passes are being utilized to give different people an opportunity to shoot. In addition, this is very consistent throughout the game. But, as I mentioned earlier, this could also be because each player has a good individual skill, e.g. they are good at rebounding, so that are able to put many shots back up, giving them many points. Although their teamwork in Game 5 is similar to that from the beginning of the NBA Finals, their skill didn’t deteriorate under the pressure of losing 2 games in a row at their own home court. As a result, I am very proud of the Warriors, and I hope their legacy will last as long as possible. Although many people say that the reign of the Warriors will soon come to an end after KD and Klay both got injured, I know that they will fight back, like true warriors. Daniel Zhu, 10, California
Rats, by Louis Spindler, 9
Rats by Louis Spindler, age 9 When you think of rats you probably think of them as just a filthy animal living in the sewer and searching for food. But rats aren’t quite what you think. First of all, rats are in the family of rodents along with mice, gerbils, porcupines, chipmunks, beavers, muskrats, prairie dogs, guinea pigs, gophers, woodchucks and squirrels. Capybaras are the largest rodent and they can weigh up to 110 pounds. The point is there are many different species of rodents. In fact, there are 4,000 types of mammals and 1,500 of them are rodents. Rats have managed to reproduce and survive for many years because they are the champions at survival. Rats can scale straight up a wall, and drop from a five story building and live. They can also be flushed down a toilet and survive and they can even climb straight up a drain pipe. Another amazing feat of rats is that they can stand on their hind legs and box with their front. Also, unlike us humans, rats’ teeth won’t stop growing. If their teeth grow too large the rat will die. They stop this by gnawing which wears down their teeth. Gnawing is very easy for rats because they can gnaw through almost anything, and this is because they have teeth as sharp as chisels. They can bite down at a force of 7,000 pounds. That is as powerful as a fully grown crocodile’s jaws force. By comparison, humans can only bite down at 270 pounds. This means rats can chew through steel and even concrete. Humans and rats have constantly been at war with each other mostly because we eat the same food and rats steal it. So over the years humans have learned to hate rats. The word rat even means evil, which was originated in Asia. Also in Asia, rats stole a massive amount of food. They stole enough grain to fill a freight train as long as the U.S.. Overall, rats have stolen a fourth of the human food supply. This has caused humans to hate most rodents as we tend to generalize or stereotype rats, or rodents, as evil creatures. Because of this, people have been cruel to rats. For example, there was a very popular sport called rat baiting which took place in America and Europe. People would gather in a large room where there were rows of benches set around a pit. Workers emptied bags full of rats into the pit. Then a fierce dog called a ratter would be tossed among them. People from the audience bet on how many rats the ratter could kill in a certain amount of time. Some breeders would breed albino rats so the audience could see the blood better. In 1895 Jenny Lind killed five hundred rats in just over an hour. Around the same time, Joco The Wonder Dog earned the world record for killing one hundred rats in five minutes. Of course this cruel sport is now illegal and nowadays breeders breed rats for pets not for killing. In fact, more than 550,000 American families own pet rats and mice. From hearing this you probably want to hear a less gross story so that’s what I’m going to do. Rats and humans have also befriended each other. For example, during the Vietnam War there was an American prisoner who was very lonely and he could only talk to the guard. But one day a rat came in and the prisoner fed the rat. Very soon the rat and the prisoner became very close. Later, the prisoner said, “The rat seemed to understand me when I talked.” Also, rats have proven themselves very useful. For example, there are landmine problems in many places because in war nearly every army uses landmines. In fact, the world has about 100 million bombs that have been buried causing the death of many innocent people. Thankfully the African giant pouched rat can detect a landmine more easily than a human’s technology ever could. Because of this, people use these rats to detect bombs and every time they find one they get a treat from a trainer. Weighing just three pounds, these rats are too light to set off any landmines. Another example is recently, scientists have used the rats’ marvelous sense of smell to cure TB, a disease that killed two million people in 2005. Because of rats’ amazing sense of smell, they can smell out TB in saliva samples from suspected victims. Laboratory workers can only analyze twenty saliva samples a day with microscopes but a trained rat can analyze one hundred twenty to one hundred fifty an hour. In many places people eat rats and other rodents. Roman emperors used to serve their guests rodents dipped in honey. Another place where they serve rats is a restaurant in China that has a menu which mentions rat many times. Their menu includes rat with chestnut and duck, lotus seed rat stew, black bean rat, deep fried lemon rat, rat soup (with potatoes and onions on the top). Also there are many other rat-related foods. Some nutritionists think that rats are a solution for solving world hunger because there are so many rats and rat meat is rich in protein. Most people would think it is gross to eat rat but a rat raised for eating isn’t any more harmful to eat than a cow or chicken raised for the same purpose. In conclusion, there are good things about rats and there are bad things about rats and I think we should focus more on the good things. Sources Marrin, Albert.(2006) Oh,Rats! New York: Puffin Books Louis Spindler, age 9, Texas
