Stone Soup Magazine for young readers, writers, and artists

Her family had done nothing wrong, why was she so angry? Illustrator Tiger Tam, 13 for The Gap and the Gift by Shannon Jin, 12. Published November/December 2011 A note from Jane Levi This week’s illustration from the archives is a fantastic snapshot of a family dinner—the different generations around the table, each person caught in a moment of action, whether eating, pouring tea, or turning their head to talk. The bold use of color and the gorgeous detail in all the elements of the picture place us firmly in the dining room with this family and tells us a clear story of a meal—from the different foods on the table to the serving dishes and utensils. The picture also starts to tell us the rest of the story about this family (immigrants to the United States from China) and the different experiences every individual has, no matter how close they are to one another. We hope seeing this image this week will whet your appetite for our December Food Issue. Last year, we devoted our winter holiday issue to food and drink, for the first time in Stone Soup’s history. And we enjoyed it so much we decided to do it again in 2018! So, to all of our readers and contributors who love to cook, eat, and write about it: please fasten your aprons, polish up your pans, stretch those typing fingers, and get cooking! You need to send us your recipes along with photographs of the results by September 15 so we can consider which ones we are going to include in this year’s food issue. Happy cooking, and bon appétit! What makes a good recipe? On the surface, the answer to that question might seem easy: a good recipe is one that (a) works and (b) tastes good! But the best cookbooks, and the best recipes that make it into Stone Soup, have an extra ingredient: a great story. Besides clear instructions on what to do, we want to know where your recipe comes from, why you care about it, and therefore why we should care about it enough to want to try it. Our blogger Sarah Cymrot did this beautifully last year in her piece about her family’s monkey bread tradition. Skylar Carriosca told us a lively tale of pie crust disaster averted with the delicious Very Berry Pie she baked with her grandma. Charlotte Weimer made her best ever brownie, free from every possible allergen, but tasting as though it had every delicious thing in the world in it. And everyone laughed along with Evelyn M. Kelly’s Disaster Raspberry Smoothieadventure. You’ll see in all these different approaches that there are many ways to express who you are, all while telling us what you love to cook. This year, we’d also like you to send us a picture of your dish (last year we only used the images from the Stone Soup test kitchen). All the details and more advice are on our Recipe submission page. Please use the summer to get cooking, and send us the results. I can’t wait to read—and taste—everything you send us! Until next week Where do you write? We’ve loved seeing some of the pictures you have sent us of where you write. We all envied Nina Vigil’s porch last week! This week, we are sharing with you an image of the place our very own Emma Wood, Editor of Stone Soup, writes (complete with her very cute dog). But hers is strictly the only adult writing space we are going to share on our Instagram feed! Like the rest of Stone Soup’s content, #whereIwrite is for those of our readers who are aged 13 and under. As an added incentive for you to send us your photos of your writing spaces, we are going to give free submissions in all categories for the rest of the summer to the first 10 writers who send us pictures of their writing spots. You can check all the details by looking at our special #whereiwrite submission category. “Dad, why did you bring me here?” From Stone Soup November/December 2011 The Gap and the Gift By Shannon Jin, 12 Illustrated by Tiger Tam, 13 Sherry had not returned to her home country in years. In a way, it was no longer her home country. What had been home is now the past. Father was the one who had insisted on the trip. She had been indifferent at first, but her father had persisted. China had changed; no longer a third-world country, it was now a Mecca of wealth. Yet once in a while, Sherry would catch a glimpse of the slums, normally overshadowed by the forever reaching skyscrapers. The day after their arrival, Sherry’s father had purchased a round-trip train ticket to his hometown. Sherry watched the city view zoom by, crushing the assumptions and conclusions Sherry had carefully welded from outdated books and movies on modern China. She closed her eyes, and a billion years seemed to float by, accompanied by the soft rumble of a train and a low patter of words she once knew. * * * * * TEN YEARS AGO A six-year-old Sherry knelt in the garden, dirt tickling her bare knees. Her grandmother knelt beside her, her fingers skillfully separating weed from vegetable. Sherry’s grandmother did not believe in planting flowers. “They only feed the eyes.” Instead, the two planted a wide array of vegetables to supply the family kitchen. So many wonders were cultivated in the garden, tomatoes for pasta, cucumbers destined to fulfill a delicious egg drop soup. Sherry relished the moment, the day was warm but not stifling; her backyard was well shaded by the great oaks behind her. Yellow orchids framed the old wooden fence wrapped around her backyard. Sherry liked spending time with her grandma; she eagerly helped with the gardening and cooking; it generated a swelling pride within Sherry. “Lai, bang wo jiu yi xia zhe ge cao,”1 her grandma spoke again, her Chinese punctured with a few heavy pants. Sherry pulled out the weed and then paused for more instruction. Sherry watched as

I screamed and bit frantically, but I couldn’t escape Illustrator Max Strebel, 10 for Catalina, My Friend by Francisca Thomas, 13 Published January/February 2001. Notes from Jane Levi and Emma Wood This week’s artwork (and the story it illustrates) expresses some of what we at Stone Soup have been feeling in recent weeks as we read and watched the news about infants and children being separated from their families at America’s borders. Our archives contain many works by young refugees and immigrants who have seen and experienced war, flight from home, and other trials, and have been able to tell their stories in the pages of Stone Soup. This week’s story from the archives, Catalina, My Friend, touches on these topics in an unexpected way: the story is told entirely from the perspective of a bird, the scarlet macaw powerfully depicted above. The bird cannot speak for itself (just as a very small child is unable to talk), but this young writer was able to enter the imaginative space of—and give a voice to—another being, able to experience fear, sorrow, pain and love, even if they can’t articulate those feelings in language. The young artist who made the image also speaks to the fear and horror experienced by those being caged, manhandled, and torn away from the safety of what they know and love. The wooden box in the foreground, the bars of the cage behind, the uniform-colored clothes and the hairy arms of the gloved man grasping the macaw provide a stark contrast with its scarlet beauty. The perspective emphasizes the small size and fragility of the bird, and its helplessness against this faceless adult cruelty. The Children’s Art Foundation, the trust that publishes Stone Soup, believes passionately in creativity as a means of expression. We know that art is a communication tool that can help to build real understanding and compassion between people. We urge all of you trying to make sense of current events to use the search window always at the top right of the website to find stories and art we have published by children over the last four-and-a-half decades that speak to these themes. This week, we have supported the Publishers Weekly Kid Lit campaign, Kid Lit Says No Kids in Cages. Any funds donated to their campaign will be shared with a number of organisations supporting immigrant and refugee children, women and families, and we are sharing the link to their donation page so that any of our readers who wish to can show their support. We also renew the call that our founder, William Rubel, made some months ago for anyone who would like to work with us to bring creative support to children in these situations to get in touch by replying to this newsletter. Some exciting attention for our young bloggers We were more than thrilled this week when none other than Rick Riordan retweeted a link to a book review by one of our Stone Soup book reviewers! Yes, the actual Rick Riordan, @camphalfblood, is reading our reviews and recommending that other people read them too (as well as the books, of course)! Congratulations to Nina Vigil, the 11-year-old writer and reader whose review of Aru Shah and the End of Time by Roshani Chokshi was picked up by one of our favourite authors. We hope it encourages the rest of you to keep on writing and reviewing. You never know who’s reading! Until next time A Call for Science Writing and a Peek into the Stone Soup Archives When I was growing up, I was fascinated by Pompeii, the ancient Roman City that was preserved under layers of volcanic ash when Mount Vesuvius erupted. More recently, when I moved to California, I became fascinated with the history of the local landscape and with the new weather patterns. What in the natural world fascinates you? We are still soliciting nonfiction science writing for our September issue and would love to read about your fascinations. Take this as a challenge to learn more about something on your own and write about it in a brief essay. The deadline is July 1. In other news, we have scanned the entire back catalog of Stone Soup magazine, and have just made available archival sets of the very earliest issues of Stone Soup. PDF versions of the magazine from our first decade—1973 to 1984—are for sale now in two sets of 25-28 issues each. We are working on making our entire archive available, in sets of PDFs as well as in individual PDFs (and other digital formats), in the coming months. Until next week Read the latest updates on our blog Don’t miss the latest content from our Book Reviewers and Young Bloggers at stonesoup.com! Get creative with clay: A Summer Guide to Polymer Clay Fun! by Nushu Shri Read the latest book review (and catch up on your reading over the summer): J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone reviewed by Abhi Sukhdial I suppose for a human she was a little girl, but to me she was gigantic From Stone Soup January/February 2001 Catalina, My Friend By Francisca Thomas, 13 Illustrated by Max Strebel, 10   My earliest memory is of being trapped in a box. It was a large cardboard shoebox with a few holes punched into the side for air. Light glowed through the holes, but I couldn’t see through them; I could only feel myself sliding from side to side as the box was tossed around. I didn’t understand what was going on, and I was terrified. Then, I remember, the movement suddenly stopped. The lid of the box was lifted and I was bathed in blinding light. I blinked. I fluttered my almost featherless little wings. I squeaked pitifully. Then I saw her. I suppose for a human she was a little girl, but to me she was gigantic. Still, I wasn’t afraid. She looked so gentle. I stared into her deep brown eyes and squeaked again. Her face, a dark tan color, broke into a delighted smile. “A bird?” she said. “For me?” “Happy seventh birthday, Catalina,” said one of the huge people surrounding me. “This loro, this parrot, marks the one