Stone Soup Magazine for young readers, writers, and artists

  Deadlines, recipes and a September poem… A note from William Rubel   “OK, Francie, finished changing my books! We can go play Laura now”. Illustrator Alycia Kiley, 13, for ‘Laura’ by Francie Neukom, 13. Published January/February, 2000. Call for Recipes for the December issue As a cookbook author myself I feel very strongly that a well written recipe is literature, and we want to read that genre of literature from our Stone Soup contributors. What we are looking for are Holiday recipes that mean something to you and your family. In addition to the ingredients and the instructions. we are asking for you to write what amounts to an extra short story — a “headnote” — to precede the formal recipe. This introduction to the recipe should be up to 250 words. As Stone Soup is a literary magazine, in selecting recipes we are are giving a lot of weight to that introduction. There is no rule about what that headnote should be like. At their best, headnotes bring the reader into the spirit of the recipe, make the reader understand why the recipe is important to you, its author, and make your reader want to cook it. You can sometimes be direct and say, “This is the best recipe, ever! I love it!” But more frequently, it is best to weave the dish you are writing about into a compelling narrative. The challenge in writing a headnote is that in addition to romancing the recipe — that is one way I think of it — the headnote is also the place where you mention tricky parts of the recipe, an ingredient that is especially important, or a technique that can be difficult. The headnote is a very odd kind of genre. It is where story and technical manual come together. The perfect headnote is like a jewel. As I am writing this asking you to work to a deadline, I am also working to a recipe deadline. I have an article due for a magazine I write for on Monday. The article is on holiday breads and includes three recipes. One of them is a Seed Cake. I start that headnote with a quote from The Hobbit. Bilbo Baggins loved Seed Cakes, a common cake in the 1700s. In other recipes, I have written about how the dish makes me think of my mother, who died when I was still in college. What I am trying to say to you is that the recipe headnote is a place for you to be creative — a place to use all of your literary talents to draw your readers into your world and your imaginative space. As holidays tend to be rich in stories, memories, and imagination, our editor, Emma Wood, and I are looking forward to reading what your create for us — and to eating the foods you love. There are detailed instructions on the submissions page. In addition to the headnote the technical part of the recipe must be complete for us to consider the recipe — the list of ingredients and the instructions have to be there. If you list an ingredient, then be sure it is in the instructions. Please test your recipe more than once. My advice is that after you have written it, but before you submit it, that you make it one last time following your recipe exactly as you have written it. While I do want you to write the headnote alone, the way you write stories, it is appropriate to bring in friends or family members to test the recipe and get advice on how to write the instructions so they are clear. We will test recipes ourselves before publishing them. We are really looking forward to tasting your words! Until next week, William P.S. While this is a call for recipes directed at our readers under the age of fourteen, this also makes a good family project in which each family member writes one or more recipes as part of a family cookbook. Deadlines! Stone Soup is now monthly through the school year. The September Poetry issue will be published next Friday. The closing date for the November issue just passed. The next closing date is October 20, for the December Holiday issue. Business News The Poetry issue will be published online next Friday, along with a PDF that subscribers can download that has the same formatting as the print magazine had. This PDF will be one of the year’s issues included in the print Annual that we will be publishing in November. The letters of distress have tapered off considerably, but we are still getting emails expressing dismay that Stone Soup is now publishing digitally. I have replied to many of you — and said here in the Newsletter — that the world has changed. The Village Voice, the archetypal New York weekly, just ceased print publication after 62 years. We have an extra reason for our fellow feeling: in 2005 The Village Voice wrote movingly about a novella we published in 1978, Lee Tandy Schwartzman’s Crippled Detectives, or The War of the Red Romer. I will write about that story, and its author, in a separate Newsletter. We are still getting ourselves stabilized. When the ordering system functions more smoothly,  the new website is up, and we start seeing a growth in orders to schools, then we will begin to focus on new options for print publishing. We will never go back to being a print magazine, but we would like to become a prolific publisher of writing by young authors — hence my recent request for young novelists to contact me. We can also see ourselves publishing poetry broadsides, anthologies, and much more; but just at the moment, that is all too much. I’d like to thank you all for sticking with us through this transition period, and for your help in directing us towards a future that squares the circle between digital and print. Until next week, William From Stone Soup March/April 2007 The Coal Towpath Near Sand Island on a September Afternoon  By Roy Lipis, 9 A solitary autumn leaf rustles on a tree. Slowly, gracefully it floats down, twirling, silently meeting the dense dappled shimmer of still water. Overhead, distant vees of

“Letting out a sigh of relief he began to fill his basket” Anna Welch, 13 Published In Stone Soup March/April 2008. A note from William Rubel My daughter starts middle school next week. I am sure that parents and grandparents reading this newsletter can relate to my, Wow! When my daughter was very young I recall being told all the time, “It goes quickly.” And so, indeed, it does. Of course, she is excited about starting middle school. And I know that this Newsletter’s school-age readers are excited about starting a new school year, as well. Deadlines approaching! I can’t say it too often. Stone Soup is now monthly! The September Poetry Issue is in production. The October issue deadline is already approaching. You have one week left to send in stories, poems and artworks that will be considered for October (which means 5 weeks for November’s deadline, and so on). Remember, we are expanding out from art that illustrates stories, and we are increasingly receiving great photography as well as standalone drawings and paintings. Bringing fairies (and other stories) to life Anna Welch–who made the remarkable illustration heading this week’s Newsletter–illustrated several stories for Stone Soup. Her work has enriched the magazine. Look at this drawing of a fairy. The feather and the ear, the folds in the shirt, the white contrasted with the darker forest are really incredible. Technically, this is an extraordinary work. It is obviously not Anna’s first drawing! But what I’d like you to focus on is the strength of her imaginative vision. The fairy has presence within an environment that also itself has presence. The drawing seems real. It has what we call a “sense of place.” When you are working on art or stories for Stone Soup or for school–or just for yourself–and whether you are writing fiction or nonfiction, the goal is always to fully imagine the world you are writing about so you can make it come alive in your creative work. I know a woman who writes picture books; books for very young children. Before she writes her books she writes a 30,000- to 50,000-word story about her characters! In this way, she developes a rich world in her mind so that when she finally sits down to write the incredibly short book that is a picture book, her story and characters truly come alive. Of course, this takes a great deal of discipline. And I am not saying I have it myself!  But, I am mentioning this idea in case one of you can use it. Novels Six Newsletter readers wrote to me last week to say that they have completed or are working on a novel–thank you to them! As I know that each of you may not read this Newsletter every week I will repeat my call for Stone Soup authors, illustrators, honor roll recipients, and, in fact, anyone reading the newsletter not yet in college who has written or is writing a novel to please get in touch with me by replying to this Newsletter. For writers under the age of 14, we are looking for longer works we can potentially serialize in Stone Soup. No promises yet, but we are looking to expand our publishing program! Until next week, William News for Adult Newsletter Readers I think I will start separating out what I want to say to Newsletter readers who are still students, and the many adults who also read the newsletter. We sent out letters to all of you whose print subscriptions needed renewing and converting to digital, but many did not open the letter, or haven’t responded yet. We haven’t repeated that letter because (as some of you know from experience) the subscription system we are currently using has been creaking a little bit under the strain. To get back to a smoother process, we have happily just re-hired the company that used to manage our Stone Soupprint subscriptions, and they will be handling our online sales. It will take about three weeks from now to be set up with them. Once we are, we will get back to the conversion process and proper levels of efficiency! They have a “pick and pack’ business. That means that we will also be able to sell digital subscriptions that include our new, print edition Stone Soup Annual (as well as standalone copies of that book). It also means that we will be able to get our store–with our various anthologies, blank books, and sketch books–operating again. As you’ve heard me say before, we were forced to stop printing throughout the year because we had effectively become bankrupt, and we wanted to keep this important project alive through the digital options and the Annual. We are going to be asking you to subscribe or re-subscribe for the kids in your life, subscribe for schools, buy our publications, and make donations. But! Not until we have our back-end processing in better order. All my best, William  Sign up to our mailing list to receive the Saturday Newsletter straight to your mailbox!   From Stone Soup July/August 2008 The New Soccer Season By Andrew Lee, 13 Illustrated by Dennis Guo, 12 Noel seemed to hang in the air for a second before crashing into the ground. The grass rushed up to meet him as his lungs were crushed by the impact. Dazed, Noel looked around. The soccer ball was snatched away quickly as the opposition took control. The stifled laughs that followed made Noel wish he were dead. Slowly, like so many times before, he stood and walked away No one intervened. History seems to like repeating itself, thought Noel bitterly. The same thing had happened yesterday And the day before that. Just as Noel was finding his stride in the soccer game, one of the kids would do something to humiliate him. Noel never said a word. He just picked himself up and walked away. They aren’t mean, thought Noel dejectedly I’m just not one of them. But