Stone Soup Magazine for young readers, writers, and artists

A Village in Malawi, circa 1975 Wisland Phiri, age 12 Malawi A note from William Rubel Hello everyone School is out, so I know that you will all be spending a lot of time outside this summer doing things. When I look at this picture I like to think about the sounds that we don’t hear but that are implied by the scene—the sounds of chickens, roosters, dogs, and the leaves rustling in the trees. And, of course, even though we don’t see children, we can imagine them playing just outside the frame, perhaps around the back of the house. The woman making the basket is working alone, but it makes sense to imagine others doing similar things nearby. It is likely there is conversation in the air, as well. And birds. And insects. The air would be alive with sound. This picture has what is called “a sense of place.” I’d like you to make a picture this weekend of an outdoor scene that, like Wisland’s picture of this Malawian village, offers a full sense of what it looks and feels like to live where you live or to be visiting where you are visiting this summer. Make a picture that, though silent, is so rich with the sense of its place that viewers will be drawn into the scene even to the point of hearing the sounds that are part of it. I can’t wait to see (and hear) your drawings! Introducing Emma Wood, Stone Soup Editor Today, I’d like to more formally introduce you to our new editor, Emma Wood. Originally from New York City, Emma currently lives in the redwoods of Santa Cruz, CA, with her husband and their two dogs. She is a poet with a BA in Russian History & Literature from Harvard, and an MFA in poetry from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where she taught literature and poetry writing. Emma has previously served as an editor at The Morning News and currently edits interviews for the Rumpus. Her first book, a collaborative translation with the poet C Dylan Bassett, will be published in Winter 2018. The best way to introduce Emma, though, is to see and hear her talking about poetry and her own work in this video. I learned a lot about poetry from watching this, and I hope you find it inspiring, too. I also encourage you to visit Emma’s website, which includes a section with links to her writing. Welcome, Emma! Our new Stone Soup Editor, Emma Wood, talks about poetry.   This week’s story from the archives Like the drawing at the top of this letter, this week’s story has a strong sense of place. Perhaps you’d rather write a story than draw a picture this week, so perhaps you can read this one and think about creating a powerful sense of place with your own words. If you are looking for some great examples, other stories published in Stone Soup with a strong sense of place can be found here. Until next time William From Stone Soup January/February 2014 Where the Cotton Bolls Grow By Sharon Wang, age 13 Illustrator Vivienne Clark, age 11 My father was the first in his rural hometown to ever go to college. In China the colleges are scarce. College entrance exams were created to wipe out the majority of the people who wanted to advance from high school. In my father’s time, not all the high-school graduates took the exams, and out of those who did, only three percent made it to college. It was the accomplishment of this feat that led him to meet my mother and eventually move to the United States. Ten years later, our family took our first plane trip back to China. I was twelve the summer we rode on a silver bird over mountains and seas to fly to my father’s homeland. We transferred to a seven-hour bus which bobbed over miles and miles of blue and green expanse with fishermen laying sheets of plastic on the sides of the road to dry their newly harvested crayfish. Bus changed to pickup truck when an uncle that I had never seen enthusiastically picked us up in the only automobile in the village, a large clumsy machine with a roar that mixed with that of the wind until I could not tell which was which. Read more

Do you want to illustrate a Stone Soup cover? If you are age 13 and under, then please take part in our cover illustration contest.  A Note from William Rubel Hello everyoneI know that school is out for some of you, or it will be very soon. My daughter is enjoying her first day of summer vacation today, and just like her the last thing you might be thinking about is doing more work. Take the weekend off! But, if you are like my daughter, summer boredom also comes sooner than you’d think. So, we are planning to post a number of Stone Soup projects over the coming weeks to help fill some of those long, leisurely days. Together we can have some productive summer fun, while rising to the creative challenges of Stone Soup! Stone Soup Cover Contest As I’ve said in previous newsletters, from September we are increasing Stone Soup’s frequency from 6 to 11 issues per year. That means we’ll need 5 more covers than we did before. In the past, we chose cover images from the illustrations commissioned for stories inside the issue. Now, we want to open up the process and choose a cover from your submissions to our cover contest. How to enter our cover contest I have posted three passages from three different stories that have been accepted by Editor Emma Wood for a future Stone Soup issue (congratulations to authors Ella Glodeck, Stella Lin, and Kaya Simcoe!) 1. Please go to the website, read all three of the passages, and choose the one that you respond to the most. 2. Read the advice on the cover contest page. Think about all the visual elements in the passage, and how you might depict them for Stone Soup readers. 3. And you’re ready to go! Create your illustration, and when you’re done make it into a high res scan. 4. Send it to us via Submittable. Please include the words “Cover Contest June 2017” in the Cover Letter box on the second page of the submission form. 5. We will look at all your entries, and we’ll choose one to be the featured cover for the issue the story appears in. We are offering a $25 Amazon gift certificate to the winner. Good luck, and happy illustrating! Behind the Scenes… Every week I tell you that we are working hard behind the scenes to implement all the changes that are happening at Stone Soup. Well, you have probably noticed that there is still a lot to do, and we won’t be stopping for the summer! Print and Digital We’ve had lots of good feedback on our switch to digital publishing, and also lots of great suggestions from our readers, their parents and teachers. I want to let everyone know that there are two ways in which Stone Soup will continue to appear in its more traditional, printed magazine form, which we think will give our readers and contributors the best of both worlds. Online PDF The software we use to create online issues of Stone Soup can produce a pretty good-looking PDF version of the whole issue, that all subscribers can print for themselves at home. It’s not yet absolutely perfect, but we really liked the draft version we produced this week, and we are going to have an improved version ready at Stone Soup online in the next few weeks. I’ll let you know here as soon as we do. Stone Soup Annual We have decided to produce a Stone Soup Annual, in print! There will be a more flashy announcement when we have the details better worked out, but I can say now that those of you who subscribe to the online magazine will have the opportunity to purchase a book that includes everything we have published in the previous year. At this stage we are pretty sure that we can do this at around the same price as the old Stone Soup subscription rate – as you know, the digital-only price is substantially lower – and still publish more material. Watch this space for more news on that. Orders, Renewals, Website Some of you trying to renew your orders this past week may have spotted that our ordering system is not perfect: we’ve noticed that not everyone is receiving the welcome email they should get from us straight away, and we are working hard now to write individually to each one of our new and renewing subscribers. We’re sorry if you are still waiting to hear from us, and we promise we will be in touch as soon as we possibly can! Rest assured that your orders are with us, and you won’t miss a single issue of Stone Soup. Next, we are at last almost ready to get to work on the website. Working with our advisors, who have been patiently waiting for me to get in touch with them, we’ll get your input over the coming weeks to make our Stone Soup website a truly world class affair. Parental Control On a different subject, we’ve noticed we’re receiving quite a few automated responses to the Saturday newsletter from Kids Email. This is a business that offers parents control over their children’s email accounts, letting you vet incoming correspondence addressed to your child. For those patents not familiar with it this looks like a program that is really worth looking into. This Week’s Story from the Archive Every week I post a story from a past issue of Stone Soup. I have to say that I personally really enjoy the one that I’ve posted today. “Mung Bean Noodles and French Bread” reminds me of my own childhood. My mother loved to cook. My father traveled a lot for work. It feels familiar to me. I also really like the story for its evocative food-related language, which I hope you will notice as you read it. As someone who writes about food I know how hard it is to bring to life the real experience of cooking. I think that Madelyne Xiao has