Do you like sad books? I can’t stand them. Time after time I try a book and then stop it in the middle because it makes me miserable. It really affects me. I know that bad things happen in real life. People write about them because they actually happen, but how anyone can get through reading about it is beyond me. Now, I am finally starting to realize how, through my friends. My friend often recommends books to me. I love discussing books and look forward to talking about them with her. One time, my friend and I were talking and then she said “I just read a great book. You should read it.” I got the book from the library, excited to try it. I sat down, opened the book, read the first page, and loved it. I read it before bed, when I woke up in the morning and whenever else I had time. Until, somewhere in the middle, there is a car accident. The main character is hurt and very upset. And that’s when I felt despair and stopped the book. I don’t like depressing books. I try to finish them because I want to discuss them with my friend but I can’t. They make me really dejected, so at some point I just stop. When my friend asked me if I finished the book she recommended, I said “The book was really sad, so I stopped it in the middle.” She looked at me and said “Sad?” “It wasn’t that sad. There was only one part that was. Did you get to the sad part?” “What was the sad part?” I asked, thinking that I had probably judged the book too quickly. The part where I stopped was probably the sad part and the book would stop talking about the car accident soon after. “The part where her friend’s brother falls out the window and dies.” my friend says. I was so glad I stopped the book! It’s not like I complain about any book. I love to read. I have read many classics even though most have some boring parts. I am even willing to give sad books a real chance, and I do. I have finished Bridge To Terabithia, a book about a boy whose best friend dies, Walk Two Moons, a book about a girl whose mother left, The Boy On The Wooden Box, a memoir written by a holocaust survivor, and many other depressing books. I even liked some of them. But, when the main character is continuously morose, the book keeps referring to whatever tragic thing that happened, and the book only talks about the dismal thing, after giving it many chances, I decide that it’s not worth it to anguish myself over a book. Especially one that I was only supposed to read for enjoyment. But it seems that none of my friends are bothered by these books. Am I the only one? What do you think? Do sad books disturb you?
Stone Soup Magazine for young readers, writers, and artists
Big Family: A Memoir
I am an Asian-American boy, born in America, but a descendant of China. My dad was born and raised in the Northeast region of China and my mom grew up in the Southwest part of the country. They met at Beijing University, got married in 1998, and moved to America before I was born. I have only been to China twice in my life. The first time my parents took me to their home country I was only five years old, and I don’t remember much about my visit; the last time I was there I was nine, and I remember it like it was yesterday. The flight to China was long… but I remember the excitement I felt inside of me. I bounced in my seat and stared out the little window eager to see the city lights of Beijing. “Prepare for landing,” the pilot finally announced. My heart beat faster. My parents had told me so many stories about China. About the relatives who I barely knew. About what life was like growing up in the big city. And I couldn’t wait to experience it for myself. When the airplane hit the tarmac, I hopped off, eager to stretch my legs and see the country my parents loved. I followed my mom into the lobby. A sea of people who looked just like me buzzed around carrying suitcases and briefcases. I grasped my mom’s hand as she immediately pulled me along to the Starbucks. Wooden counters and bar stools sat to the left of the restaurant beckoning people to stop and rest, yet nobody was sitting down at the tables and relaxing. Customers grabbed their coffee, threw crinkled bills at the disgruntled server, and rushed off to catch their flights. Pushing our way through the crowds, we headed outside with our luggage. My dad raised his right arm to hail a taxi. We stumbled into the back seat, eyes barely open, and drove straight to a nearby hotel. I immediately sank into the couch and fell asleep to the sound of cars fighting in traffic. The next day, I woke up feeling energized. I couldn’t believe we had finally made it to China. After a delicious breakfast of warm pancakes in the hotel’s cafeteria, we took a four-hour train to Anshan – my dad’s hometown. As soon as we got there, we grabbed a taxi and headed over to Grandma’s apartment. It was pouring buckets. Our taxi driver beeped the horn several times. The car in front of us beeped back. Beep! Beep! Then a police car started howling – WOOOooooeeeEEEEE! I shut my eyes and covered my ears. “Good luck,” the old taxi driver muttered as he pulled up to a rusty old apartment building decorated with mildew. The cantankerous rain soaked us to the bone as we ran to a musty old wooden door. Shivering, we climbed up the rotting staircase and knocked on the door. Grandma squeezed me and Max. “My babies!” she cried in Chinese and gave us both a kiss on the cheek. Then, my aunt and uncle repeated the same process. I was feeling less cold after the exchange of affection. We only stayed a few hours in the dim, dingy apartment – enough for Dad and his mother to discuss current events. I lay on a bed and watched TV. A little voice in my head exclaimed, so, this is Grandma’s house? It wasn’t at all what I had envisioned. I sighed. Finally, after lunch, we had some peace and quiet. We walked to the garden behind a hotel, purchased some koi food, and tossed musky brown pellets into the dark pool. Lured by the prospect of food, the fish swam over to the pellets. Only the fastest ones made it to the brown dots of hope. I gazed at them as my brother laughed. The following day, we took a taxi to the airport to head to Chengdu in Southern China. Chengdu is Mom’s hometown. I watched as China ran past, whooshing, eating, yelling. As we pulled into the parking lot, I thought about Chengdu. How Mom kept on telling stories about her family, the weather, and the spicy food. The airplane took off. I bounced on the edge of my seat with anticipation. I couldn’t wait to be with family, taste warmer weather, and eat Kung Pao chicken. Dad handed me a book. I placed it in the seat pocket. How could I read when I could see Chengdu in the distance waiting for me? Finally, finally the airplane hit the tarmac with a whoosh and a very loud bump. My stomach touched my throat and I felt light-headed. My brother clutched an airsickness bag to his chest, groaning. Dad glanced at him with concern as we exited the plane. An old man was waiting outside the packed airport, dragging on a cigarette. “Jiu jiu!” my mother exclaimed. I wondered if he was related to us as he lovingly squeezed my brother. He threw our luggage into the backseat of a new gray car and drove us to our rental apartment. We passed by a metropolis that rivaled Beijing. Commercials blared exotic-looking products, people were again rushing around, and cars fought, honking. There was a swimming pool in front of the tall granite building. “See you at the reunion!” he called, waving. Reunion? I wondered as the elevator hummed up to floor 26. Creeaakkk… the door went. I gasped. The light blue walls! The plump bed! The bird’s-eye view of downtown Chengdu! It smelled fresh and inviting. The fridge was humming. I put my nose on the frosty glass of the window and stared at the ants marching on the roads and sidewalks. Metal candy bars peeked up at me. “Wow,” I breathed. This was modern, clean, and fresh, the antithesis of my grandma’s apartment. We hung out in the apartment for a couple hours. Then Mom looked at the clock on the wall. “It’s time to call
Saturday Newsletter: November 17, 2018
“Mountain Dweller”, by Eva Stoitchkova, 11, Ontario, Canada. The cover art for the Stone Soup Annual 2018. A note from William Rubel It’s Thanksgiving in the United States this Thursday! We hope you all have a wonderful time. We have received the proof copies of this year’s Stone Soup Annual. It is so exciting to hold the whole year’s published work in our hands in one fat book! We are very excited that we will soon be able to send it out into the world and into your hands. We also loved being able to look through a year of writing and art on the pages of the magazine. You have made such wonderful work this year, all of you. Congratulations. This week I want focus particularly on the fantastic artwork by 11-year-old Eva Stoitchkova, “Mountain Dweller,” that makes the striking cover for this year’s Annual. We used another of Eva’s collages, “Forest Creature,” as the cover of our March 2018 issue, and I urge you to visit it at our website to look closely at that one too. Every time I look at Eva’s beautiful images, I’m impressed by her bold, expressive lines and the creative way she uses collage to both create and embellish the picture. She uses the underlying found images in the usual way, to add color and texture to her work, but at the same time she chooses those images to add meaning and contextual references as well. It’s both clever and beautiful, and all of us at Stone Soup are so proud to be able to share Eva’s art with you. Thank you, Eva! Copies of the Stone Soup Annual are available for pre-order now in the Stone Soup online store, and will ship in the first week of December. There you can also find back issues of the 2018 magazine in print. What we learned this week We attended the California Library Association conference in Santa Clara, California, last weekend. Truly great response to our renaissance! Librarians loved what they saw. Here is the takeaway idea from the conference: we should think of Stone Soup as a bridge between being a consumer of literature—a reader—and being a producer of literature—a writer and an artist. While every writer is a reader, every reader is not a writer. Childhood is the time to get into the habit of being a creative person—a writer and an artist. Stone Soup is there for kids to help them synthesize their reading and personal experiences through creative writing and art. William’s Weekend Project Which gets us to today’s project: a close-up portrait of an animal. I mean “animal” in its largest scientific sense, the kingdom Animalia. We are mammals. Flies are insects. Along with fish, birds, and other types of creatures, we are all within the group of organisms scientists classify as animals—“Animalia.” When you stare into a dog’s eyes, the dog stares back into your eyes. There is human-dog bonding through the eyes. There is no bonding between humans and flies. With most other animals it is unclear to us humans just exactly what the eyes we’re looking at are actually seeing or communicating. But eyes are so important to how we humans interact with each other that for us, a face with the eyes always captures our attention. Even when it is the face of an insect. Working from pets or domesticated animals you may have access to—dogs, cats, rabbits, goats, chickens, cows, pigs—and from animals you can usually only see up close in photographs—elephants, flies, fish, etc.—I want you to make a drawing or painting that fills the entire page just with the creature’s face. I’m thinking of a full-on, face-forward portrait that fills the entire page. Most animals display symmetry—the left and right sides of their faces mirror each other. Eye-migrating flatfish like flounder are an exception. Both of their eyes are on the same side of their head! The illustration you see in this newsletter is the face of “Mountain Dweller” created using collage by Eva Stoitchkova. Be bold. Be brave. Fill the entire space. As always, if you create something that you are happy with, send it to Emma via our submissions portal. Be bold! Until next week, Highlights from the past week online Keep up with the latest posts on our blog. In Santa Cruz, where Stone Soup is based, we have been very aware of all the fires in California over the past weeks. They are hundreds of miles away from us, but the smoke fills the atmosphere, so we are constantly thinking of those for whom it is closer to home. Our blogger Lukas Cook wrote a thoughtful piece, My Soccer Game Went Up In Smoke, on the fires, their causes and effects, this week. Don’t miss it. Have you ever seen a poetry animation before? Have you experimented with Scratch? Check out the animation that Vandana R made and posted this week. Plus, the latest review by Nina Vigil: this week, of a documentary film called Science Fair. On the basis of Nina’s review, we can’t wait to see it! Partnership news Secret Kids contest Did you know the Secret Kids Contest was mentioned in the New York Times this week? We hope that means we will get lots more entries to this fantastic competition for young, long-form authors that we are running in partnership with Mackenzie Press. All of the details are on our website–suffice to say, that if you are under the age of 18 and working on a book-length piece of writing, you should be thinking about getting it ready to submit by the end of the year to be in with a chance of winning one of the amazing prizes–a publishing contract. Miacademy We have an exciting partnership in place with Miacademy, the interactive learning site for K-8th grade. Writing from Stone Soup is being featured on their site, and Miacademy subscribers have the opportunity to submit their work to us. As part of
