The Kodak box camera, first produced in the 1880s, became the iconic camera for the amateur photographer. The camera was as easy to use as our phone camera’s. Point and shoot. Even a child could do it. And even children did. Photograph by Anne Burrow, age 13, 1914 The best source of historic photographic images by children is in St. Nicholas Magazine (1871-1940). The first editor was Mary Mapes Dodge, author Hans Brinker and the Golden Skates, until her death in 1905. In the early 20th-century St. Nicholas Magazine innovated the publishing of writing and art by children. They were unquestionably the first major publication to take the creative work of children seriously. The title of this image, “A Lucky Snap-Shot” does not really live up to the image. Now that the issue of photography as art is long settled we can appreciate the image for the work of art that it is. For me, what is most striking is the intensity of the horses’ gaze. Ears and eyes on us. They look at us as sentient beings. The framing is remarkable. If you draw an X from corner to corner you will that the horses mouths just about exactly reset on that line. A very simple set of photographic experiments can be derived from this image. Print out the photo. Draw and X corner-to-corner. Have your child or students take photographs thinking about where the central image — the face — the dog — the flour — the building– is situated in relation to the actual center of the image. As with digital photography you can take as many images as you like without incurring cost you and your students can experiment with how the feel of the image changes with framing.
Stone Soup Magazine for young readers, writers, and artists
Taking a Stand Through Fiction
Let’s say you have a strong opinion about something you see happening in the world. You know it is wrong, and you want to speak out. The most direct way to make your point would be through a nonfiction article or essay. But you could also convey your message, perhaps even more powerfully, through fiction. In the May/June 2015 issue of Stone Soup, 12-year-old author Evelyn Chen did just that. Her story, The Voice of the Seal, deals with a serious worldwide problem. Every year hundreds of thousands of ocean animals get tangled up in abandoned fishing nets. Many of them suffer and die. In Evelyn’s story, two cousins, Cordelia and Georgia, are staying at the family beach house when they both have the same nightmare. They are in the ocean, trapped in a net, struggling for air, drowning. The girls wake up in the middle of the night. They hear a voice coming from the beach, calling their names. They don’t know what is happening, but they decide to follow the voice. What they find breaks their hearts. In the blackness of night, they make out a dark shape, thrashing in the water. They splash through the waves and discover . . . a seal, caught in a fishing net, desperately trying to get free. The girls look at each other. The seal looks at the girls. They know what they have to do. For several hours they steadily work at the net, pulling it apart little by little. They are cold and wet, but they don’t care. They don’t stop until the seal is free. The girls head home, exhausted but happy. Were you drawn into this story like I was? Cordelia and Georgia are described so well that we feel like we know them. We can picture the cozy bedroom in the beach house. Artist Teah Laupapa’s illustrations help bring the girls and their summer home to life. When they hear the voice, we hear it too. When they see the dark form struggling in the water, we see it too. We feel the injustice of the innocent seal’s battle with the abandoned net. Why did this terrible thing happen? How can we help? I found myself Googling “fishing nets kill seals” after I read the story. I wanted to know more. Try it! You’ll see that many organizations are working on this problem. Maybe your family would like to donate to one of them. Evelyn’s story is not a true story, but it is a powerful story, based on the truth. Through fiction, she shines a light on a worldwide problem. By focusing in on three characters, Cordelia, Georgia, and the seal, she personalizes the problem and helps us understand it. This is what great writing can do.
Creative Writing Formulas for Teachers
I recommend this blog post, What Kids Have Taught Me About Writing, by children’s book author Kathleen McCleary. Those of us who read a lot of writing by children produced in schools — and I certainly speak for the staff here at Stone Soup — get tired of reading writing by children that is so obviously constrained by creative writing formulas. “Stop!” I sometimes want to shout, “can’t you ask children to write something that means something to them?” At Stone Soup we are very focused on personal experiences — writing from the heart. Not being teachers ourselves I think we probably make the mistake of discounting the value of creative writing formulas. What Kathleen McCleary talks about in her blog post is the constructive use of writing games. She mentions the “ahah moment” creative writing game by way of one example. As the “ahah moment” fits in with my own bias towards writing based on experience I actually find her description of a fill-in-the-blank project the most challenging to my own thinking. And, the most inspiring. On the face of it, what could be more dull? “Once upon a time _______. And every day ________ ……” but then, the example Kathllen offers is a story that does, indeed, take one’s breath away. A writing class taught by a novelist is probably not quite the same as one taught by you or me. It is impossible to know what inspiration Kathleen herself brings to her students in the way she framed the assignments. But what I take from her post is that if you can free up children’s creativity, if you can tap into their deep imaginative layers, then the game becomes a challenge, like the strict sonnet form in poetry. When one masters the formula (rather than be mastered by it) brilliant literature is the outcome. What Kathleen McCleary sees as the wonder of it is what all of us who are closely involved with children’s creativity see, whether it is in the realm of writing or art or music, when the stars align for children they seem to effortlessly create material that most adults would have to struggle for. This, then, from Kathleen McCleary’s blog, Writer Unboxed. Simple can be powerful. One of the exercises I do with kids is 7-sentence story, in which I ask them to write a story by filling in these blanks: “Once upon a time____. And every day____. Until one day____. And because of that____. And because of that____. Until finally____. And ever since____.” Last summer, a quiet, 14-year-old boy wrote this story, in less than 10 minutes: “Once upon a time, the sun fell in love with the moon. And every day she chased him across the sky but he always slipped just out of sight and set as she rose. Until one day she caught up to him in what the humans called an ‘eclipse’ but she called a ‘miracle.’ And because of that, she discovered that she and the moon could not ever stay in the sky at the same time, except for eclipses. And because of that, every day she felt lonely and sad as the moon set and she rose. Until finally an eclipse came again and she and the moon met once more. And ever since she has been hoping and waiting for another so they may be together again.” It gives me goose bumps every time I read it. It makes me want to be a better writer. It makes me grateful I get to work with young people.
