The Stone Soup Annual 2017 cover artist, Kathleen Werth, with her copy of the Annual (with thanks to her mom for the photo) A note from William Rubel The 2017 Stone Soup Annual has arrived at many of your homes. You see here in the photograph Kathleen Werth, the young artist who painted our beautiful cover, reading her copy. Note the bookmarks at all of the stories she wants to get back to! At 370 pages the Annual provides hours of reading. If you don’t have your copy yet we will be able to ship it to you after Christmas. And, the 2018 Annual can be pre-ordered now as a stand-alone volume or as part of a digital print bundle. For those of you who prefer reading the issues as issues we have just put up a page under the main menu bar containing all the issue PDFs for 2017. This page is only available to subscribers. Subscribers can go to the page and download the same PDFs used to print Stone Soup issues and which make up the print Annual. I think the best way to read PDFs is on your iPad or other tablet. So, if you have a tablet, look at this page from your tablet. I have an iPad. I read my Stone Soup issues in iBooks. Tastes of Christmas If you haven’t already read and cooked your way through the December Food Issue, why not spend some time eating with Stone Soup over the holidays? There is a whole range of fantastic recipes for you to try, including some specifically for Christmas. From our December issue you can try Catherine Gruen’s spicy and soothing Ponche Navideño (Christmas Punch) and Ella Martinez Nocito’s crumbling Christmas Cookies, while the latest post from our young blogger Sarah Cymrot conjures up the warmth of Christmas baking and family traditions in Traditions and Monkey Bread. What are your favorite foods from this time of year? Post a comment on our website to let us know about the tastes and smells that evoke the holidays for you – and if you try out any of the Stone Soup recipes, post a picture and tell us how it turned out! Creativity in the Holidays Stone Soup is about creativity. You kids are used to being “asked” in school to write a story, write an essay, write a poem, draw a picture, etc. And, of course your parents, grandparents, and other adults you encounter in your life, including your teachers, when they were kids they were creative, too. They had to be because their grades, like yours, depended upon it. Stone Soup is about moving the motivation to use the arts outside of the school room to record, interpret, and deepen your real-life experiences. While we hope that you kids who read Stone Soup will be inspired to be creative yourselves — “hey, I can write as well as that” or “hey, I’m a better writer than that” — we also hope to inspire the adults in your lives to be brave and sit down and write or draw or use their phone to take a photograph that is thoughtful — an image intended as creative expression, not just a snap, just like you do. So. The December issue was our first food issue. Everyone gets four free articles a month at stonesoup.com, so I hope that all of you have at least looked at your four free articles, and homed in on the food. Nearly 600 of you have received copies of the Stone Soup 2017 Annual. Look at the food issue in December. Now, as food food food is the theme of this school holiday, what I’d like to be able to write about next week is the great work that you kids AND your parents, aunts, uncles, close family friends and grandparents have done to make this 2017 Christmas week a creative one. I’d like you to send me photographs, drawings, paintings, and recipes that are about the holiday. As food is central to most of our holiday and Christmas celebrations I’d expect a lot of the work you do to be centered around food. I think that recipes are a good kind of a project for joint family efforts. Adults and kids can work on recipes that include a headnote — the story that precedes the recipe — illustrations for the recipe in the form of photographs, drawings, or paintings, and the recipe itself. When you send me recipes please be sure to note if it is a family project. If you are on a family vacation, then share with us something about that. Again, I’d like you kids to try to get parents and grandparents involved, too. In this case, remember that what is easy for you might be hard for them. As an incentive to the adults in your life — I would like to be able to feature at least one family- or friendship group-produced creative project in next week’s newsletter. OK. The “where to send” details. If you think you have something you’d like to see in an issue at stonesoup.com and then in the 2018 Print Annual, you should submit it to Stone Soup the standard way. I will look at the submissions this week, too. But if you made something that you simply want me to consider as a one-off to share with the Newsletter audience, then send it to me at newsletter@stonesoup.com. Until next week, William From Stone Soup November/December 2007 A Calf for Christmas By William Gwaltney, 12 Illustrated by the author It was Christmas Eve, and everything was ready. Presents had been purchased with great care months before. Yesterday they had been wrapped in dozens of pretty papers and decorated with beautiful bows. Now they sat like sparkling jewels in a pirate’s treasure chest, under the fragrant boughs of a giant spruce. The farmhouse was filled with tinsel and holly and light. The dining room table was covered with a white tablecloth, and red and green candles stood in
Stone Soup Magazine for young readers, writers, and artists
Traditions and Monkey Bread
As the day fades into the night on Christmas Eve, flour and laughter fills the kitchen. Hands reach over hands, kneading the soft dough, then rolling, rolling, rolling into balls for the next day. Raisins and sugar come next, and we nestle the balls, covered in the sugar, to rise for the night. The next morning we pop the bread into the oven and munch on it as we open presents, laughter filling the room yet again, this time accompanied by the warm smell of bread and the crinkle of wrapping paper. In this time of year, family traditions start to appear. Whether someone bakes a family recipe, goes on a certain trip, or just spends time with family, traditions show up left and right in the holiday season. Traditions are comforting. It is a consistent event that happens every year—something that will never change. For our family, making Monkey Bread has always been our Christmas tradition. My grandpa first started it when my mom was only old enough to toss flour around the kitchen. The tradition continued down through our family, all the way until I was helping my grandpa, and finally until my sister joined us. Of course our grandpa was watching over the whole production, running it all. The making of Monkey Bread has always been one of the highlights of the holidays for my family—something that makes us think in the middle of the summer, only five more months until we make Monkey Bread again! My grandpa has always been one of the main reasons I love the holiday season. His presence with us, hilariousness, and general love made the holiday season the best time of the year. Even after he died a couple of years ago, the holiday season has little slivers of him weaved into it. Tradition brings him back. When I cook Monkey Bread it feels like he is standing next to me, correcting my mistakes, gently teasing me, loving me through and through. My grandpa died only a couple of weeks before Christmas, and even though we were still going through the shock of his death, we hunkered down on Christmas Eve and made Monkey Bread. That day, it eased the pain that we had been going through. It showed us that it was okay, that life could go on, that his ideas and memories were still alive in us. Next time you experience a tradition, think back to what or who started it. Was it your great-great-great-great ancestors, your religion or culture, your close family, or you? What does this tradition mean to you? Why do you do it? Do you have a tradition that means something to you? If so, please leave a note about it in the comments. I would love to hear about your traditions. For me, tradition is sweet. It is a window back into good memories and into the lives of people I love. I can’t wait until it is time to make Monkey Bread again. Note from the editors: Here is a link to a Monkey Bread recipe from King Arthur Flour. This is a very good flour company and their recipes are trustworthy. However, you do not have to buy their flour to make this recipe. Any unbleached white flour will work as well. This bread is leavened with yeast. Instant yeast that is called for in the King Arthur recipe is kind of dried yeast that can be added directly to the flour. It doesn’t have to be mixed with water first. To be honest, most dried yeast these days will work if you just add it to the dough. However, if you buy a yeast that suggests first mixing it with water, then do that. Compensate for the water you add for the yeast by adding less liquid from the recipe.
Saturday Newsletter, December 16, 2017
The meteorite kept hurtling towards Earth, and Cam watched as her vision darkened Illustrator Charlotte Myers Martin, 13, for Falling into Earth by Ethan Levin, 13. Published November/December 2011. A note from William Rubel A little business for our adult readers and then into the meat of today’s newsletter. Kids, skip these business paragraphs if you like. First, logging in. To be honest, we have had to commission an all new system for managing online access to Stonesoup.com. Our fulfillment house, ICN, has done a terrific job — but there are still a few rough edges. Our apologies. We have just posted login instructions. Basically, click on the login button in the menu bar and, if you can’t remember or make a mistake with your details choose “password reset” when the login screen appears. The rest is just a matter of following instructions. If you need help, call ICN: their phone number is on the login page. Their office hours are 7:30 am to 10:00 pm Monday – Friday Eastern Time (USA). Christmas orders. The last day to guarantee receipt of the 2017 Annual by Christmas (in the United States) is Tuesday, the 19th. We are shipping all orders priority mail. Orders have been going out every day since the beginning of the week. There are 105 books left. More are on order. I underestimated demand for our Stone Soup story book anthologies. We have sold out of all titles. If you ordered a title that is sold out you will be given one or more substitute titles that will arrive for Christmas. The back-ordered tittles will be shipped later this month when we get them from the printer. My apologies. Again. Everything is being shipped priority mail, and all packages will arrive by Christmas. Now, to the Saturday Newsletter! My daughter, as most of you know, is in sixth grade. This week, in her English class they are studying the “Immortal Jellyfish.” This is a tiny jellyfish that has the amazing ability to respond to stress by getting younger! In fact, it can go from adulthood back to being a baby. Many scientists are interested in this jellyfish because it seems to promise the possibility of immortality. Unless, of course (if one is a jellyfish), one gets eaten first! Stella’s teacher is asking his students to think about whether they think immortality would be a good thing for us humans. He is asking his students to make a list of pros and cons: would making humans immortal be a good or a bad idea?One obvious problem with immortality is that if nobody dies then we would definitely run out of food, clean water, and the resources we need to live. In fact, if humans never died and babies keep getting born and, in fact, if the immortal humans kept having children it’s pretty clear that we’d have a planet-wide disaster on our hands. Death is required for life. Science fiction writers are the people who start with the inspiration of something amazing like the immortal jellyfish and then try to imagine various “what-might-happens”. One solution to the problem of immortality would be for millions of immortals to rocket away from earth to explore the solar system and the galaxies. Another way would be for the immortals to kill one non-immortal every time an immortal was created. Horrible, Awful. Terrible! But it would work to keep the population of immortal humans from destroying the world. Science fiction is a fiction of possibilities and ideas. In the best science fiction, the author takes an idea from science, and then thinks, “well, if such and such came true, then what?” The consequences of the “what-ifs” are often what science fiction books are about. Up to this point, Stone Soup has not published a lot of science fiction. We’d like that to change. I would like you all to start thinking about big issues and asking big questions and then make the shift to writing inquisitive fiction, which is what science fiction is. Over the holidays, choose a scientific ideas that interests you and play around with what-if scenarios. If you end up with a story you think Emma would be interested in for Stone Soup, then please submit it to the magazine. Until next week, William From Stone Soup September/October 2002 Characteristic Property By Rachel Marris Reeves, 12 Illustrated by Martin Taylor, 12 The space pods zoomed above Cassiopeia Jaiden Starwing as she stood on the moving sidewalk on her way home from Academy. Cassie ignored the zooming noise as everyone else did, but her mind did not focus on the obvious. Cassie always acted mellow—she was the youngest of seven children, and the only girl, and she was used to lying low while her brothers got into trouble. But today Cassie was bubbling inside. Tomorrow was her thirteenth birthday, but, like everyone on the planet Earth, she celebrated a day before with her family members. Today was her special day—her day to shine. Cassie grinned as the sidewalk approached her home. It was common knowledge throughout the galaxy that the people on Earth had some of the richest homes anywhere—Earth was a base station to the other planets and jobs there were well paying and important. Cassie’s home was no exception—it was a huge house, with floor upon floor of circular living space. Cassie’s father owned the fastest growing rocket ship company in the galaxy, and was always busy. Cassie’s mother used to work for the Intergalactal Peace Council and retired soon after her second son, Forrest, was born. Now Oriana Starwing was one of the most admired economics teachers on Earth, and was known as far away as Neptune. Cassie entered her home, expecting to be greeted by her family at the door, the way her brothers’ celebrations began, but things were not as she suspected. In fact, they were the opposite…/more
