One of my goals last year was to read a lot of books. I wanted to reach 50, but once I reached it, I knew I could aim higher. I bumped up my goal to 100, and ended up very close. How did I do it? Well, last year, I tried something new: using a reading journal to track all of my bookish data (to-reads, what I read this year, Goodreads challenges, etc.). Here’s my reading journal. I’ve entrusted Mickey with my records… Perhaps you’ve heard of bullet journals, meant as an aesthetic way to portray your life, with mood trackers, movies watched, grades, etc. There’s total freedom in choosing what you want to write about and how you want to write it. Well, a reading journals are bullet journals dedicated solely to books, and work in a similar fashion. You can choose different pages for your journal for different topics, and decorate and design them the way you’d like. Also, don’t forget: half of the fun is choosing the notebook itself! Here’s what I had in my reading journal: The Goodreads 100 Children’s Books to Read in a Lifetime List (edited slightly according to which books I think will interest me) Reading challenges and my progress Books I’d like to read (also known as to-reads) Favorite books of all time More pages of to-reads… I also had a few pages dedicated to writing, but it was mainly for reading. I tried to update my journal as often as possible to keep the most current numbers. So why stick with a journal? There are sites to help you keep track of your reading progress, but I love writing everything down. At the end of the day, it makes me feel more accomplished than a few clicks ever could (however, I do respect if you use websites to help you, because they are quick and simple). In addition, you can bring your record with you everywhere, without having to worry about any Wifi connection. You can even design your own layouts, titles, and fonts in your journal. Also, it’s pretty interesting to see how many books you’ve read at the end of the month and at the end of the year! Most importantly, though, I think it’s important to keep track of what you do, no matter where or how you do it. Keeping track of what I read kept me motivated to keep going. This can be applied to any goal, and I think that you’ll find yourself being more efficient, and happier, by writing/listing/typing out how much closer you are to your dreams. So do you want to start a reading journal? How do you keep track of books you’ve read or want to read? Do you journal? I’d love to hear about it below!
Stone Soup Magazine for young readers, writers, and artists
Guest Post: The Big Split
by Kat J. As I was reading “Seeing Over the Side of the Boat,” a personal narrative written by Benjamin Halperin and illustrated by Kyle Trefny, I started to see myself in the author’s perspective—lost and confused in a broken home. Written from Benjamin’s point of view, readers follow the thirteen-year-old author’s thoughts and emotions as he tries to understand his parents’ unexpected divorce. Starting off the story, Benjamin expresses confusion, a common emotion that families of divorced parents may initially experience. He says, “A few days ago I overheard them fighting over who gets to keep me. That is what I don’t understand. Why would one parent get to keep me?” Once his parents announce to him that they will be getting divorced, Benjamin starts to realize how the separation of his mom and dad will affect his life. He describes behaviors from his parents that have already started changing, such as “My dad came into my kitchen to get dinner started. Mom went to her friends for dinner and to stay the night. She was doing that more and more now.” Although he won’t always have his parents together with him, Benjamin is reminded that he will always have his love of baseball and the comfort of his golden retriever, Lucky. I remember feeling the confusion and sadness Benjamin felt as I was trying to process my parents’ divorce a few years ago. Benjamin mentions, “It was the first time in what feels like forever that they finally agreed on something,” which is a thought I remember having when I was in his position. I would always think after the divorce, at least they won’t fight anymore. Even after years of living with parents that wouldn’t get along, divorce is not something that anyone can easily be ready for. “Seeing Over the Side of the Boat” stood out to me because what the author was experiencing emotionally is very common, but isn’t quite publicly talked about as much as it needs to be. Is it wrong to feel lonely in this situation? Does this mean my parenst love me less now? I resonated with Benjamin as he reflected on these questions throughout his narrative, because I used to ask myself the same thing. With some of the details changed, the story could’ve been of my own experience—from the suspicions of distant behavior of his parents, to the realization that maybe they work better as parents when they’re not together. I would really encourage readers who may be going through a similar situation to read this and have something to relate to. Since it’s so easy to feel isolated in these life changes, it may also help to talk to others, like friends or loved ones. The illustrator really captures the sense of companionship in his beautiful colored drawing. “I felt that she was the only one who cared about me anymore,” describes Benjamin’s relationship with Lucky, who stays by his side as his best friend. Although Benjamin and Lucky are lonely in the kitchen, at least they are each other’s loyal company. Both the story and the illustration capture the feeling of neglect well. The only comment that was submitted under this story is a very important one and stuck to me: “So far I’ve read just one story, about divorce, and it seems that these stories may be for the grownups—messages from children to the people in their world, which is pretty messed up. I’ll be reading more and hoping to get my grandson interested and involved. Thank you!”, written by Miriam MacCarthy. As an adult, Miriam expresses that she gained insight about how children feel during a divorce, which is important for the parents to read. I appreciate this comment because not only can the story affect young readers, but also grownups. I’m glad that older readers are able to connect with the story by seeing through the perspective of the other side. A literary magazine like Stone Soup allows readers to have access to children’s minds — minds that are full of endless questions, observations, and creativity regarding the world that is seen through their eyes. What I like about Stone Soup and about this story in particular is that it’s informative by bringing light to perspectives that us readers don’t realize or pay attention to. Think about a time where you felt like you were the only one going through an event or change in your life, when it seemed like no one around you understood how you felt. What would you want others to know? I encourage you to reach out to others by expressing how you feel in your writing or art, maybe someone out there feels the exact same way! To read “Seeing Over the Side of the Boat” by Benjamin Halperin and Kyle Trefny, visit https://stonesoup.com/article/seeing-over-the-side-of-the-boat/ About the author: Kat is from Los Angeles, CA currently studying Art at the University of California, Santa Cruz. She enjoys photography and making paper collages.
Saturday Newsletter: October 6, 2018
‘Steam’, by Sabrina Guo, winner of our 2018 Concrete Poetry Contest A note from William Rubel Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! In last week’s newsletter we announced that print is back. Over the past week, orders for home delivery of the print Stone Soup have been coming in, and October print issues will shortly be winging their way through the mail to those who have signed up for the new print subscription. Thank you. I know that not all of you read the newsletter every week—so if you didn’t read the newsletter last week, that is the news. You can order your print subscription at our website. We have also received lots of questions about print (and other subscription-related things) from people replying to this newsletter. We try to respond to everyone who writes to us, but our customer service team has more of the answers. They also have direct access to all the systems needed to confirm your subscription status and make any adjustments. You can contact them here: Email: stonesoup@icnfull.com (response usually within 24–48 hours) Phone: 215-458-8555 (between 7:30 a.m. and 10:00 p.m. ET, Monday through Friday) What’s coming up? There will shortly be more items available in our online store. My colleague Jane Levi has been revising our themed print anthologies and working with our fabulous London book designer, Joe Ewart, to redesign them. New editions will start going to press next week, so we will soon be able to offer them for sale. Jane has merged old and new volumes and added material not included before—for example, there are fifty more poems in the Stone Soup Book of Poetry and eighteen additional stories in the Stone Soup Book of Friendship Stories—which we think has improved them. We are also working with a local (Santa Cruz, CA) printer to refresh our art print program, which offers beautifully printed copies of our extensive collection of twentieth- and twenty-first-century children’s art for your home. And we have plans for lots of products that we at Stone Soup would like to have for ourselves, such as cards and bookmarks, so we hope you will like what we come up with. We will keep you informed. You will find the project for this week—for newsletter readers of all ages—in a separate box below. Plus, of course (it being the first week of a new month), don’t forget to check out the wonderful October issue of Stone Soup, available now on our website and in the print edition at our online store! And now, over to our editor, Emma Wood. Until next week, Announcing the winners of the Concrete Poetry Contest! First Place “Steam” by Sabrina Guo, 12 Second Place “Moonlight” by Ashley Xu, 13 Third Place “Octopus” by Marco Lu, 12 Honorable Mentions “Snowflake” by Emma Almaguer, 13 “A Tree” by Andrew Lin, 8 “The Cloud” and “Disappearing” by Madeline Nelson, 12 “Seeing the Sea,” Maya Viswanathan, 12 Congratulations to the winners, and thank you to everyone who participated; we all had fun reading and simply looking at your creations. The pieces that ended up standing out to us were the ones that not only showed us the writer had a clear understanding of the concrete poem but that used the shape of the poem to emphasize and illustrate the text. For instance, in “Steam” by Sabrina Guo, a poem in the shape of a steaming cup of tea, the word “interrupting” is itself interrupted by the handle of the mug: “interrup” is on one side of the handle, and “ting” is on the other. In that poem, Guo writes of “slow curling spirals” of steam, just as the text itself spirals around, forcing the reader to turn the page, creating a dizzying effect. What I love about the concrete poem is that it brings the relationship between the form (or shape) of the poem and its content (or text) to the forefront. Sometimes when we are writing, we simply default to the “usual” form without thinking about it. But in the best pieces of writing, the form is something that emerges from the ideas and narratives represented in the text. You can usually tell if this is the case by trying to rewrite the poem or story in a different form. If your poem feels the same in prose as it does in stanzas with lines, then it probably doesn’t need to be in stanzas! I hope you will try this with a piece of writing you are struggling with, and see if it opens up more ideas. We will publish the winning submissions in Stone Soup in 2019. Best, William’s Weekend Writing project Where I live, in Santa Cruz, CA, we have what is called a Mediterranean climate. This is the climate around the Mediterranean Sea; around Cape Town, South Africa; and here, on the California coast. We have a single rainy season and then no rain for most of the year. This evening, as I write this, the air is heavy with moisture. Smelling rain, I looked online and, indeed, the first rainstorm of our rainy season is supposed to come tonight. Wherever you live in the world, whether in the US, Canada, the UK, Singapore, South Africa, India, New Zealand, South Korea, China, Sweden, or Kenya—I am mentioning here the home countries of Stone Soup readers—the weather is changing. Here, in the northern hemisphere, from warm to cool or even to cold, and in the southern hemisphere, from cool to warm. For the writing project this week, I’d like each of you—and this includes adult newsletter readers—to sit down to write about how you observe the changing seasons. I don’t want to suggest anything programmatic. I want you to feel free to write what you want. If you are totally stuck, then start by writing about your observations of how the season is changing. Then, let yourself be free. If you like what you write, and you are under the age of 14, then go online to our submission page and send us what you wrote. On
