The first time I read Fahrenheit 451, I was struck by Ray Bradbury’s remarkable writing. The second time, the breathtaking plot. The third time, the horrific, but modern ideas. I just finished my third time reading Fahrenheit 451, and the full force of the significant meaning hit me. There are so many big ideas in Fahrenheit 451 about children, love, books, and technology. The screen issue popped out to me as soon as I read the book as a real issue that we are still dealing with today. Even though this book was published in 1951, a time when the main electronics were televisions, rotary phones, film projectors, and radios, the idea that electronic devices have a great impact on our lives is still very present, way more present even than it was in the 1950s. Everyday, when I walk into school, each and every child has her nose buried in an iPhone or computer. If I take a step outside, almost everyone is either talking on the phone, texting, or has their phone tight in their hand. Today, look outside. How many people do you see with an electronic device? What are they doing with it? Is it getting in the way of socializing with someone nearby? What else could they be doing? In Fahrenheit 451, the community’s electronic obsession goes so far as to take over their normal lives, leading them to ban books. There are “firemen” who– instead of putting out fires– burn books, and the houses that house them. Unlike other dystopian novels, where the government imposed an oppressive rule, in Fahrenheit 451, the public came to believe that books were junk. “‘Remember, the firemen are rarely necessary. The public itself stopped reading of its own accord,’ said Faber, a rebel who has been sneaking books and reading them, ‘Can you dance faster the White Clown, shout louder than ‘Mr. Gimmick’ and the parlor ‘families’? If you can, you’ll win your way, Montag. In any event you are a fool. People are having fun.’” Guy Montag, the main character, starts out the book as a fireman himself, burning books day and night. He fools himself into believing he is happy, with his wife, who loves her parlor ‘family’– a room where all of the walls are covered with TVs, and the characters talk directly to her– more than him, his job, and his life. Then, he meets Clarisse. She sits at home and talks to her real family instead of participating in the violence that other kids create.. She thinks about things and observes the world instead of watching TV. She is a voice of reason for Montag, and within a couple weeks of knowing him she changes his thoughts forever. I am not one to say that electronic devices do not have their advantages. I am working on a google doc right now, with spell check, saving, and deleting. Stone Soup just switched to an online website, probably because it is cheaper, faster, and flexible. In many ways, electronics save lives, open up opportunities, and make things more efficient. There are many times when electronics are used well. There is a difference between writing on a google doc or reading on the Stone Soup website, and, let’s say, playing a video game or looking up random pictures. The question is, should we let electronic devices replace things we love? Should we let electronic devices replace books? Imagine that you are a scale, you have a device in one hand, and a book in the other. Which one do you choose? Which one weighs more in your life?
Stone Soup Magazine for young readers, writers, and artists
Sewing: Book Cover Tutorial
My name is Jess and I’ve been sewing since I was about 6 years old. I started with hand sewing but now I love to combine this with work on my vintage hand turned machine and new electric model. My sewing projects include gifts for family and friends, free motion stitched artwork, clothes, soft toys, dolls and cushions. Some months my blog will include step by step projects suitable for beginners upwards, sometimes I will share a project I am working on at home or focus on fabrics and techniques. In this first blog entry, I’m going to share with you a simple project that can easily be personalized. I’m going to show you how to make a book cover than can be used on a notepad or storybook. I will be using felt for this project as it is easy to sew and doesn’t fray at the edges. Book Cover Materials: Felt (2 sheets large enough to cover your book. They can be different colors if you wish.) Hand sewing needles and thread, or a threaded sewing machine. Scissors Pins Fabric chalk or pencil (optional) Materials to decorate (optional) Instructions: Place the book you wish to cover onto the felt with the cover facing down. Cut the felt around the book cover leaving a ¼ inch extra around each side. Cut another piece of felt (It can be a different colour if you wish) the same size as your first. Fold one of the pieces of felt in half to find the centre, and cut down the middle. Do this again with the resulting felt pieces so you have four strips. Discard one strip ( or save it for decorating your finished cover.) Lie your first piece of felt down flat and place two of your strips onto it, one on each end. Stitch the strips in place along three sides as shown. You can do this by hand or on a machine. Slip the cover of your book back into the pockets you have just made. Close the book. Take the third strip of felt and place it on the felt where you want the spine to be. Pin in place or mark with chalk. Open your cover again and remove your book. Stitch the spine in place using hand or machine stitches. Remove pins if you used them. Decorate your book cover as much or as little as you like. You could use spare felt, cross stitches or scraps of cool fabrics. (Alternatively, you may find it easier to decorate the cover before stage 4 if you wish to do a complicated or machine stitched design.) Place on your book and enjoy. I hope you enjoy having a go at making this book cover. I’d love to see your finished pieces and to hear what you’d enjoy reading about in my sewing blog.
Saturday Newsletter: October 14, 2017
“Just then the Rose appeared with her rosellas” Illustrator Cameron Osteen, 13, for Fort Cuniculus by Ralph Kabo, 11. Published September/October 2005. A note from William Rubel Well, this week has been a strange week. I was supposed to go to Napa to give a talk on the history of bread. The conference was to begin on Tuesday and I was to speak on Wednesday. On Monday, only vaguely aware there was a fire near Napa, I was surprised by a call from the conference organizers saying the conference was cancelled. The speakers were then asked to go to San Francisco to meet for a couple of hours to at least talk. The city was covered by a haze. The smoke was dense enough to make one’s eyes sting. One of the speakers had been staying with friends and on Sunday night, a couple of hours after the fires started, was awakened by his friends who told him he needed to pack up and leave. By the time he got to the bottom of the country road he was driving through fire on both sides of the road. Yes. Scary. Today, Friday, there is a haze and distinct smell of smoke where I live, in Santa Cruz, 130 miles from the fire. Strange and even frightening times. If any of our readers were evacuated, lost houses, or live in the San Francisco Bay Area and know the area well we’d like to read your writing about the fire, whether non-fiction or fiction, or see your art. Writing about conflict My colleague, Jane Levi, sent me a link to an article about Bana al-Abed, an eight-year-old Syrian girl who tweeted about her life in Aleppo. Now as a refugee in Turkey, she continues to tweet about the war in Syria. I recommend this article from the New York Times that introduces her to the many of us who have not been following her twitter feed. Her book,Dear World: A Syrian Girl’s Story of War and Plea for Peace was just published and is available in bookshops and at Amazon.com. If you read the book, then please submit your review to Stone Soup. We would like to read and publish art and writing by children who are caught up the many conflicts around the world. If you might be interested in helping us to give a voice to children who are living through difficult events in the Middle East, Afghanistan, Sudan, or elsewhere, please reply to this newsletter. This goes for Stone Soup-aged readers or adults. I am flying to London on Monday to work on my book for three weeks (I plan on writing most days) so I will not promise a prompt response, but please write, anyway, and I promise I will get back to you. Several of you answered our call for young bloggers. Thank you. We should have several new blogs up and running to announce next week. I also received a letter this week from Ruth Nakazibwe, who lives in Uganda. She who wrote a wonderful story, ‘The Magician and the Birds, that we published in 1997. It is always a pleasure to hear from Stone Soup authors. Do keep writing to us! So, until next week, William Using objects in place of dialogue La fille mal gardée – Pas de ruban from Act I (The Royal Ballet) 188,665 views La Fille mal Garde is a wonderful comic ballet. It was first performed in the 1780s which makes it one of the oldest ballets that is still performed. The scene I include here is a duet between Lise and Colas, the man she loves. They dance with a ribbon. They wind and unwind the ribbon tying and untying each other. The scene takes place very early in the ballet—very early in the story as their relationship begins to take a more serious turn. As a ballet is a story told without words, this ribbon can be thought of as taking the place of dialogue. I want you to imagine what they would be saying to each other if this were a story told with words rather than a story told through movement. I feel pretty certain that they’d be having a fast moving, flirtatious conversation. You can tell the same story in many different ways—for example, through images, words, music, dance, and video. I am including this here today to get you thinking about how you might tell the same story differently as you shift from one story-telling format to another. From Stone Soup March/April 2000 A Puzzling Story By Erin Brock, 13 Illustrated by Nikkie Zanevsky, 13 Rachel loved puzzles. Jigsaw puzzles. Thousand-piece clear-blue-sky and flowery-meadow puzzles. Cute little puppy-dog-face puzzles. Any kind of puzzle suited her fancy. She loved the challenge of putting one together, piece by piece. Discovering the piece that fit was always thrilling and a small victory over the manufacturer who had labeled the puzzle “difficult.” For her thirteenth birthday, Rachel received a package in the mail from her Aunt Lola, who shared her passion for puzzles. When she ripped open the box, she found a one-thousand- five-hundred-piece puzzle with a painting of a colonial farm and the surrounding forest on it. It was very detailed, with a mother working in the garden while two girls hung up the wash and a boy led the cows out to pasture. A farmer worked in the fields and a large wooden barn stood off to the left. At the edge of the field was a forest and a gravel road running through it. The farmhouse and various animals were also included in the busy scene. Rachel sat working on her puzzle: “Colonial Farm: A Painting by George Smits.” She put together most of the puzzle pieces and was working on the forest. Being the imaginative type, Rachel thought the girls didn’t look like they were having much fun. She wondered if those colonial girls could ever have fun like she had, perhaps in the forest. She thought, That
