Turkish Aircraft Bombing Cyprus by Frosoula Papeptrou, age 6. This image was made shortly after the Turkish invasion of Cyprus in 1974. There are millions of children who have escaped from war zones and are now living in refugee camps, or as refugees in countries far from their homes. We, at Stone Soup, would like to begin offering space on our website, and in Stone Soup, our magazine, for writing, art, and photography by refugee children. Our goal is to build a powerful collection of creative work by kids ages 13 and under to speak on behalf of the millions of children whose lives have been upended by uncontrollable violence. We are looking for people who want to help us make this project a reality: people who have time to spend contacting organizations; people who are already working in an NGO that works with refugee children; and people who might be willing to offer some financial support for the project. If you would like to help us with this initiative, then please get in touch with Sarah Ainsworth by email. You can write to her at sarah@stonesoup.com. Thank you. William Rubel for Children’s Art Foundation & Stone Soup Magazine
Stone Soup Magazine for young readers, writers, and artists
5 Reasons to Birdwatch
Birdwatching is pretty popular. You might see lots of people walking around with binoculars or cameras, looking at birds. Some put up feeders in their backyards. People can even become professional bird scientists! Have you ever wondered why people watch birds? Here are 5 reasons to birdwatch: 1. Birds are beautiful. With their smooth and colorful feathers, birds stand out from the rest of nature. Some are graceful, some look funny. Birds are so varied. If you think all birds are brown or gray, think again! Birds are all the colors of the rainbow, from a brown sparrow to a rainbow-colored painted bunting. And you can see them almost any time you want! Look out your window the next time you are bored, and see if you can spot a bright red cardinal or a blue jay. 2. Birds have interesting behavior. Have you ever seen a chicken pecking at the dirt, or a sparrow taking a dust bath? What about a vulture ripping up a carcass? All birds do something, or nobody would care about them. If you look, you can see birds being weird or funny, graceful or creepy. It just takes a step out of the house to catch a glimpse of them. A flock of birds having a pool party in your backyard birdbath could make your day. 3. Birdwatching is a fun challenge. Did you know you can make a list of all the birds you have seen? It’s called a life list. You can also try to see all the types of birds that live in your state! It’s a fun challenge. Or just keep a notebook of the birds you see and draw or write about them. 4. You can study them closely. If you like learning new things, you can learn a ton of stuff about birds by observing them and learning more about them online and in books. You could write down the tiniest details about birds in your backyard, or find out fun facts on a website. You could even become a ornithologist, or bird scientist, when you grow up. It’s up to you! 5. It’s something to do besides play video games all day. Does your mom tell you to stop watching TV and do something else? Well, why not birdwatch? It just takes a look out the window. If you want to pick it up a level, make a bird feeder or start a birdwatching notebook. As you can see, there are some great reasons to birdwatch. If you start birdwatching, you can discover more reasons! In my next post I will tell you how to get started watching birds.
Saturday Newsletter: February 10, 2018
I ran out on stage. All I could think about was dancing Illustrator Rachel Hellwig, 13, for her story Nutcracker Dreams. Published November/December 2002. A note from William Rubel Last Sunday I went to see the ballet The Sleeping Beauty with my daughter, Stella. I had never watched many ballets until Stella was eighteen months old. One morning, in a café, I thought, well, I have a daughter, what about looking up “ballet prince” in YouTube? What I found was the Prince Variation in the wedding scene in Sleeping Beauty’s last act. The Prince is dancing (showing off) for his now-betrothed, Princess Aurora. In this variation, the Prince dances in a circle with lots of leaps and twirls. It is an athletic tour-de-force and seemed to keep my then very young daughter reasonably engaged. So, I bought the DVD of The Sleeping Beauty and that was a real success—at least the scene in which the evil witch gives Sleep Beauty the spindle that will send her into her long sleep. Stella watched that scene over and over and over and over again. And then, she watched it again. I vividly recall her saying “again” and my re-playing the DVD. Over the years we have watched different version of The Sleeping Beauty which means in ballet terms that we have watched the same story with the same music interpreted with dance moves that are slightly different from each other. Seeing the San Francisco Ballet performance with yet another choreography brought to mind the many different ways that choreographers have handled the spindle scene my daughter loved so much as a young child. To remind you what happens in the story. At the very beginning, the King and Queen’s secretary makes a mistake and fails to invite the fairy Carabosse to their infant daughter’s christening. The secretary invites all of the other important fairies, but not Carabosse. When Carabosse shows up anyway, uninvited, she is in a foul mood. She arrives, dressed in black, with demon assistants. She is angry. Very. In ballet sign language she tells the King and Queen that she has come to give their daughter a present. The present is that on her 16th birthday she will prick herself with a spindle, and die. She will die! What a present to bring to a christening! In the ballet story there were twelve fairies invited to the party, and all but one of them had already given her gift before Carabosse gave hers. The one who hadn’t was the very powerful Lilac fairy. So, the Lilac fairy comes forward and tells the King and Queen that while she cannot completely undo the evil witch’s gift of death, she could change death to sleeping until a prince finds her and kisses her, at which point Aurora will wake up. Nolween Daniel as Carabosse with the Paris Opera Ballet. Jacques Demarthon/AFP/Getty Image. Well, you know what happens. However hard her parents tried to shield her from spindles, on her 16th birthday, at a grand dance, the evil witch appears, hands Aurora a spindle, she pricks herself, and collapses. She manages to rise again, but she is in a bad way. She continues dancing, but this time, her dance steps are erratic. In one of the most beautiful and moving scenes in all the ballet repertoire Aurora dances backwards with great speed, but as the poison spreads her backward movement becomes uneven, jerky, and then she collapses unconscious.The way most choreographers handle this scene is to have Aurora dancing erratically and the rest of the court looking on as passive observers. But there is one version in particular, the Sleeping Beauty that is danced by the Paris Opera Ballet, that is different. In their version, when Aurora is dancing strangely, all the people who are watching the dance sway back and forth in sympathy with her staggering back and forth. It is as if the whole world feels for her. I would urge you to watch this video of that particular dance. This weekend’s writing project Reflecting on Princess Aurora, here is this Saturday’s project. I want you to tell a story in which something bad happens to a main character. The character can be a person, a fairy, a sportsperson, a member of royalty, a farmer, a pet, even an object that you might care about—like a stuffed animal. I want you to decide whether the world at large feels your character’s pain, or not. Some years ago I had a friend, who died. He was a kind, brilliant, creative man: a musician, an artist, a poet, and a mathematician. His name was Gene Lewis. The night he died there was a terrific storm. On that night, I was driving back to Santa Cruz from San Francisco. The last twenty miles of that drive is over a winding mountain road. When I got to the base of the mountain, the storm was so bad that rather than drive over the mountains in the storm, I stayed at a motel waiting for the morning. It was during the height of this storm, when the earth went wild, that my friend died. If this were a story about a fictional character who was brilliant and beloved by all his or her friends, then writing the death scene with the world itself howling in protest—the world flailing its arms in the form of thrashing tree branches, and crying in the form of a deluge, you would be reinforcing the emotional sense of your character’s death. On the other hand, the turbulence might all be internal. You could describe a calm world: the cars still driving on the freeways, the night calm, apparently no different from so many other nights. Your character dies. The world doesn’t seem to blink. As always, if you really like what you’ve done, then please send it Emma via the Stone Soup Submissions page. Until Next WeekWilliam Thank you! I just want, briefly, to thank the 215 of you who subscribed to Stone Soup in January. Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! I like to keep
