During the summer, I’m sure you are all looking for new summer reads. May I suggest The Adventures of a Girl Called Bicycle by Christina Uss, a unique book that will keep you reading for hours straight. It sure did for me! The book is about a girl (as you may have guessed) named Bicycle. She has lived at the Mostly Silent Monastery for most of her life, a place where near silence is the norm. Bicycle has no friends because she isn’t used to how loud other kids are. Sister Wanda, Bicycle’s official guardian, decides to send her to The Friendship Factory, a camp in Nevada that guarantees she’ll make three friends. But Bicycle has other ideas. On her bike, Clunk, she sets out across the country to cover the 4,000 miles from Washington D.C. to California in order to meet her idol, a famous bicyclist she’s hoping will become her friend. Along the way, Bicycle will encounter a bike burglar, a Civil War ghost, a French restaurateur, a ghost town, a bike-crazy horse and 838 pigs. A central theme of The Adventures of a Girl Called Bicycle is perseverance. Even when she’s faced with difficulties and problems and exhausting miles, Bicycle keeps working towards her goal. In Virginia, she rides up hill after hill after enormous hill. She bikes through the Rocky Mountains. She even treks for hours and hours through a sunflower field. Bicycle stays on a strict 50-mile-a-day schedule for weeks on end, for thousands of miles. You have to work hard to in order to reach your goals, and this book is an excellent reminder of that. Another theme is the importance of friendship. Bicycle sets out on her epic quest in the hopes of making one single friend, but along the way, she makes a lot more friends than she expected, like Griffin, Estrella, Jeremiah, Chef Marie, the Cookie Lady…. I could go on and on. Bicycle’s life is made so much better because of the friendships she develops. Another point the book makes is that friendship can’t be forced. You can make friends unexpectedly and in the unlikeliest of places. I loved all the zany adventures Bicycle has on her trip across the U.S. Few of us have been run over by a parade of pigs, or biked over the Rockies, or won a missile-launching bike at an auction, or accidentally wandered into the Kentucky Derby. Reading this book made me want to take a road trip, and any book that makes you want to go have an adventure is a good book! You will definitely love The Adventures of a Girl Called Bicycle, so ride your bike to the library immediately! The Adventures of a Girl Called Bicycle by Christina Uss. Margaret Ferguson Books, 2018. Buy the book here and support Stone Soup in the process! Have you read this book? Or do you plan on reading it? Let us know in the comments below!
Stone Soup Magazine for young readers, writers, and artists
Saturday Newsletter: August 4, 2018
To our adult readers and supporters… In the eternal words of the song from Cabaret, “Money makes the world go around.” A pledge of the equivalent value of one cappuccino a month from each of you who read this Newsletter would be transformational for Stone Soup. Please join with us to support children’s creativity. Thank you. Donate I sat on my bunk and waited for the dinner bell to ring Illustrator Alondra Paredes, 12, for ‘Last Summer at Camp’ by Eliza Edwards-Levin, 11. Published May/June 2011. A note from William Rubel Summer Journals Only one of you has so far sent me a photograph of your Summer Journal. Thank you Abhimanyu! To the rest of you – please don’t hold out on me! Take a photo of your journal and send it to me by replying to this Newsletter or submit into our blog category clearly labelled as Summer Journal. We posted Abhi’s Summer Journal’s opening pages on our blog last week, and we really look forward to reading more about his summer. What Abhi has given us is a very strong beginning that should be an inspiration to all of us who are not keeping journals to get started! Notice how much information is conveyed though his matter-of-fact voice. In perfect “show don’t tell” style, Abhi discloses that the maid’s social standing is low by mentioning that she sleeps on the floor, while everyone else sleeps in a bed. He conveys the information that the electrical grid is not perfect and the climate is hot by talking about the on-again off-again air conditioning, and conveys the tropical splendor of his Grandmother’s garden by talking about the fruits that he picks there. Abhimanyu has the sense that nothing changes in India where his grandmother lives, and he conveys how comfortable and happy the family’s time there is. It can sometimes be difficult to see change, as it often occurs very slowly, but when you look back twenty years later you see just how how dfferent things actually are. I am sure that Abhi’s journal will make interesting reading in 2038. And so will your journals. Contemporaneous notes tend to have a freshness, level of detail, and level of accuracy that memoire writing doesn’t have. Without a journal, what will you actually remember of your Summer 2018 in 2038? Speaking from experience, I’d say not much! It is still Summer vacation, so take up pen and paper and get to work. At the least, document every day for one week. Then, take stock of what you’ve written and decide whether to push on for another week. If you keep it up, then journal writing will become a habit. Keep it up for a lifetime and you will have created something of real value that might even make you famous! Concrete Poetry Contest – nine days left to submit! Don’t forget to enter our concrete poetry contest. The closing date 15th August, so you still have time to get your creative juices flowing! Read Editor Emma’s advice in our Submittable portal and who knows, you might submit one of the winning poems. Happy writing, and good luck. Recipes for our Food Issue If writing a summer journal isn’t your thing, maybe spending some time in the kitchen is. We are looking for your recipes to include in the Stone Soup Food Issue. For a chance to have your recipe included in our special December issue you’ll need to get it to us before September 15th. You can read some good advice on recipe writing in Submittable. Until next week Highlights from the past week online Don’t miss the latest content from our Book Reviewers and Young Bloggers at stonesoup.com! Little Stories is a lovely set of drawings from Annalise Braddock, You can also hear her talking about them via a piece of audio we have loaded on the page. Don’t miss it! In our review section, this week we have a movie review by Abhi Sukhdial, of The Breadwinner (readers of his journal will know that he watched quite a few movies on that long flight to India…). “I… I’ve been writing a little…” she said, “and I was wondering… if you could read it?” From Stone Soup May/June 2011 Last Summer at Camp By Eliza Edwards-Levin, 11 Illustrated by Alondra Paredes, 12 The boat thrummed, vibrated for a few seconds, then stopped completely. “All right! All right! Everybody out! Everybody out!” yelled the driver. The whole scene made me think of some classical book or movie. But I liked it. It made me think of how much I loved camp last year—how excited I’d been for months leading up to now to go back. I shoved the little sliver of homesickness that was already crowding into my throat and grinned. Things were starting to look familiar. There were hills covered in tiny dots of brownish-gray that would be our cabins. There was a colorful, big dining hall, big enough to feed eighty kids three times a day, with signs all over it that said Recycle or Camp Three Rivers 1990. And the counselors were lined up on the dock, ready to meet and greet us, ready to attempt to impress our parents. All of them wore T-shirts that said Camp Three Rivers on them in big blue block letters. Counselors. Last year I’d had the perfect counselor. Pretty. Young. Sweet. Smart, but not nerdy. Cool, but not stereotypical. I hoped for her. I prayed for her, despite my not being religious. I… “Zoe? Are… are you Zoe?” asked a voice, rapidly cutting off my stream of reminiscence. I looked up. It was a counselor. She was on the chubby side, smiling, and young. Looked nice. I nodded. “I’m Lyla,” she smiled-said. You know what I mean. When people say something, but you could really tell what they’re saying even if they weren’t saying it. Only people with big smiles can do this. Definitely not me. “It’s great to meet you,” Lyla said. “I’ll be your counselor this year!” I had no idea what to say.
The Breadwinner, Reviewed by Abhi Sukhdial, 10
“Life isn’t always fair.” Remember that when you watch The Breadwinner. On the long Emirates flight to India, there were a lot of movies to choose from, but this one caught my attention. Emirates even recommends the movie! The Breadwinner is a 2017 animated drama about a poor family under Taliban rule. After her father mistakenly gets captured, Parvana, an 11-year old girl (and the story’s main character!) cuts off her hair to look like a boy. Why? Because even today, in many parts of the world, girls don’t have the same rights as boys. As a boy, she is able to go freely to the market and buy groceries to support her family. At times, the movie is very exciting and fun, but there are also some very scary scenes that show her family members as well as random people getting beaten and whipped. Even though this is an animated story, it’s not like the Disney movies. I felt very sad and mad after watching it – sad to see the suffering of kids and adults… and mad that today, people can treat each other like that. This movie has a lot of great themes, like teamwork, bravery, kindness, and grit. It really shows that even in the darkest of times, we can still look for hope and light. Most adults and even us kids will face difficult problems in our lives. But we can always figure out how to solve them. I’ve faced many hard challenges (but not as bad as Parvana’s!). However, this movie has a downside, and that is the way the story ends. It wasn’t really surprising and shocking, and not as creative and satisfying as I had hoped. I don’t want to be a spoiler, so go see the movie for yourself to learn more! Regardless, The Breadwinner is extremely good, and I’m not the only one who thinks so. This movie was nominated for an Oscar for Best Animated Featured Film. I recommend all tweens (10-13 years old) to watch this movie. The Breadwinner (2017) was based on the best-selling novel of the same name by Deborah Ellis (published in 2014). The animated film was made by Cartoon Saloon. Director: Nora Twomey. Executive producers Mimi Polk Gitlin and Angelina Jolie.
