Are you looking for a book you can read for hours without noticing time passing? One that is funny and imaginative and has an adventurous heroine? Well, you can’t do much better than Aru Shah and the End of Time. This is a captivating story about Hindu mythology that is a must-read. In the story, the heroine is Aru Shah, a girl who lies very frequently to fit in with her friends. But soon, some classmates call her bluff and ask her to prove that a lamp in her mom’s museum is cursed. Aru lights the lamp, and accidentally unleashes a demon determined to wake Shiva, the God of Destruction, in nine days. And to make matters worse, he’s freezing everything in time wherever he goes. In order to stop him, Aru has to find the Three Keys and journey to the Kingdom of Death with her backpack-toting soul sister and a talking pigeon named Boo. But…how? The thing I liked most about the book was, besides the Rick Riordan-style humor, the way it wove Hindu mythology into the plot. This book taught me some really fascinating things about the Hindu myths, and made me want to read other mythology books. The central theme of the book is the meaning of family. For instance, Aru’s “soul sister” Mini isn’t directly related to Aru, but they are much closer than Aru and her father (you’ll find out who he is later…) ever could be. Mini and Aru quest together, save each other’s lives several times, and work together to solve problems. In this way, the author challenges the idea that family is just your blood relations. Family can also be chosen. I highly recommend this book to anyone, but especially for Percy Jackson and mythology fans. Aruh Shah and the End of Time by Roshani Chokshi. Rick Riordan Presents, 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
Holes, Reviewed by Abhi Sukhdial, 10
Have you thought that nothing could be worse than jail? Well you would be totally wrong because in the book Holes, the prison is about as bad as it can get — so bad that in this prison, you spend hours digging holes in the ground to find treasure for the warden. This prison is called Camp Green Lake. Stanley Yelnats is an ordinary kid going about his everyday normal life. Until one day, he is taken to court for stealing a pair of shoes (which he actually didn’t steal!). The court doesn’t believe him, and they take him to Camp Green Lake. In CGL (Camp Green Lake) Stanley meets a few friends named Zero, X-ray and more! CGL was once a nice lake in Texas EVERYONE came to, and then one day, all the water dried up. Now CGL is a dry, hot desert prison. Stanley stays at CGL for eighteen months until he finally leaves. The thing that makes Holes so interesting is how the plot develops over the course of the book. There are many scenes that are intense, leaving you in suspense and making you scared so badly. Like for example, when Stanley survives a bunch of poisonous lizards after he accidentally falls into a hole. Or when Zero (one of Stanley’s friends) hits one of the assistants working for the Warden with a shovel and runs away to a mountain called The Big Thumb. The scenes in the story are pretty violent, but are okay for kids 10 years old and up. The thing that I don’t like about the story is how sad the ending is. I don’t want to be a spoiler, but even after Stanley returns to his home, his life (although better than it was at CGL) is still not at all great. I empathized with Stanley because he was very brave and helpful to other prisoners in CGL despite it being a harsh place. I wish that when I sometimes face difficulties at school (like tough projects or homework), that I could stay more positive and not give up. Holes was published in 1998 and won the 1999 Newberry Medal. At first the book was very popular and became a classic, but as other young adult books like Harry Potter and Percy Jackson have gained appeal, less recognition has been given to Holes. Which I think is unfair. I highly recommend Holes for kids in 5th grade and up; 3rd and 4th graders might find the scenes of violence, guns and explosions too scary. If you are able to be patient and get through the first 50 pages, the story picks up its pace tremendously, especially when Stanley develops closer relationships with his prison mates. I am disappointed about three aspects of this book that wish could have been changed. One, I wish the story had less of a scary beginning. Two, I wish the ending was changed to include more action and suspense as Stanley finds Zero hiding in the mountain and brings him back to CGL. Finally, the story has a few flashbacks like telling us about how life was before CGL became a prison. However these chapters are full of violent bloody scenes of destruction and death and reading them made me feel very sad. Holes is a challenging and fun book to read. But once you complete it, you’ll be so happy and exhausted!! Holes by Louis Sachar. Yearling, 2000. Buy the book here and support Stone Soup in the process! Have you read this book? Or do you plan on reading it? If so, comment below!
Saturday Newsletter: May 26, 2018
Slowly, the Faeries appeared and sat on the daisies in the circle like chairs Illustrator Susannah Benjamin, 13 for The Faerie Circle by Alana Yang, 12 Published March/April 2007 A note from William Rubel The first Stone Soup Science Issue is in the works. The deadline for submissions for this issue, which will include fiction, art and nonfiction writing, is July 1, so this a good beginning-of-Summer project. The nonfiction element is a more unusual one for Stone Soup, and Editor Emma has asked me to explain in this Newsletter what the two kinds of science nonfiction writing we are looking for are, so you can start to think about your submissions. A few weeks ago, I was given a tour of a United States Department of Agriculture laboratory by a scientist who worked there. He was so excited about his work! He was so excited about what he was studying! He was so engaged in his stories about the science he was doing, and his work was so creative, that I became jealous! I thought, wow!, what a great thing it is to be a scientist! We are looking for writing from young scientists that communicates that kind of enthusiasm to us, your readers. One kind of science writing we are looking for is writing that describes science projects or experiments. A science project might include an insect or rock collection, or the careful observation of the behaviors of a pair of pet parakeets. A science experiment is something you have done as a working experimental scientist in which you test a hypothesis through experimentation. For those of you who have participated in a school science fair you may already have science projects that you could write up for Stone Soup. Whether you are an observational scientist or an experimental scientist, in the end you have to tell people what you’ve done. What have you observed? What do the observations mean? Or, what was your experiment? And what did it explain? All science ends in story. What Stone Soup is looking for are stories written when you are working with your “science” hat on, that will engage other Stone Soup readers. The second kind of nonfiction science writing we are looking for is writing on scientific issues, like global warming, or plate tectonics, or snow leopards. Can you write about these subjects in a way that makes the subject accessible and interesting and engaging for non-scientists? There are lots of examples of writers who can. Reporters for the science sections of newspapers, like the New York Times, are science writers who can engage non-experts. A marine biologist and conservationist called Rachel Carson wrote a book called Silent Spring in 1962 that had a lasting impact on the environmental movement all over the world. She told her science story in a way that captured imaginations. That is what we are looking for for Stone Soup. The Stone Soup Science Issue also includes fiction, poetry, photography, and art inspired by science. You might research an animal and become very knowledgeable about how that animal lives, about its behaviors, and about the way it moves. And with that knowledge you might make a model or a painting, or write a story with that animal as a character. You might write a piece of prose or a poem that is inspired by close observation of nature. This could include a natural place that you love. One of the most extraordinary works of art I have ever seen, a painting I think about a lot, is a small watercolor by Albrecht Dürer called The Great Piece of Turf, of a patch of grass with wild flowers. It is painted with the eye of a scientist, and with the feelings and heart of an artist. We are looking forward to seeing what happens when you try to combine those things, too! Getting ready for our June issue Don’t do it! Do not read your Stone Soup issues on your tablet in the bath! This is asking for trouble. My excuse is that I had started the bath water running just as I started reading the printer’s proof of the June 2018 issue, and I just didn’t want to stop reading. I’d like to remind all of you who want to read offline, wherever you like, that the PDFs of each month’s issue are available to subscribers for download on the first of the month. A few of you have asked about the Kindle format. We are working on it, and ought to be able to offer Kindle editions soon. We are also back in print. All of the 2018 issues up to May are in our online store now for sale as single issues; the June issue has been printed, is on its way to our mailing house as I write, and will be ready to be sent out on June 1st. And finally, for our adult readers: please take a look at the section below on our privacy policy, which we have updated to ensure we are in compliance with new European legislation, and a reminder of your control over what email we send you.Enjoy the rest of May, and don’t forget to make the most of the fabulous May issue on our homepage now, while you wait for June to come at the end of next week. Until then, Emails, Privacy and GDPR As you may know, on May 25th 2018 the new European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) privacy laws came into effect.< You currently receive this email newsletter, which contains the latest news about Stone Soup online, our print offerings including books, and offers, reminders about submissions and contests. You also receive emails notifying you when the new monthly issue of the magazine is published online. If you wish to opt-out and stop receiving our emails, you may do so at any time by unsubscribing from this list. The link allowing you to do so is at the bottom of every email from us, including this one. As a non-profit devoted to children’s creativity our work focuses on championing a broad range of creative outlets for our young readers, contributors and artists through our publishing programme, events, newsletters and publications. Our ability to ensure a vibrant future depends on us being
