Autobiography (iPhone 6s) By Amity Doyle, 11 (Katonah, NY) & published in the September 2021 Issue of Stone Soup A note from Caleb Classes We were so excited to see all of your faces last weekend—new and returning—for our first round of fall session classes! If you haven’t yet signed up and fear you’ve missed your chance, don’t be discouraged; we are still taking new students in all four of our classes (writing workshop with William, writing workshop with Conner, filmmaking with Isidore, and Book Club with Laura), though Isidore’s class will close after the fifth session. And if you’re worried about catching up for missed time, this won’t be a problem as each class in the session is a standalone lesson—plus, you’ll receive a video of each class you missed at a reduced price! Also, beginning today, and retroactively through the spring/summer session 2021, we will be releasing full videos of the readings from both William and Conner’s writing workshops, in which you can see yourselves reading your delightful writing aloud, and relive William and Conner’s exultant feedback. These videos will be available on our weekly Writing Workshop write-ups published on the blog as well as our YouTube channel. Tristan Hui’s The Other Realm As Emma did last week, I’d encourage you all to watch William’s lovely video celebrating the September 1 publication of Tristan’s novel The Other Realm. In other exciting news, we’ve launched a brand new book page featuring precocious Stone Soup contributor Lena Aloise’s interview of Tristan, which you can watch above. Keep visiting the page for other news—reviews, awards, events—regarding Tristan and The Other Realm. If after watching Tristan’s interview you find yourself hungry for more, there is a longer, more exclusive look inside Tristan’s experience writing The Other Realm on our author interview section on the blog. While you’re there, you might rediscover some of our other fantastic interviews with authors such as Abhi Sukhdial, Ariana Kralicek, and Lena Aloise. Write and Publish a Multimedia E-book! Dr. Jiang Pu, a member of the Stone Soup family, is offering a series of ten classes on publishing a multimedia e-book on Asian/Pacific Islander American heroes in conjunction with published authors Oliver Chin and David Siller! Students will have their multimedia e-books published in the world’s first student-made AAPI online library and present at SCCL Young Author Talk Forum and lunar new year event! This is a class for highly motivated young writers who want to practice research skills, media literacy and critical thinking, multimedia creative design, and more. As we all have different learning capabilities as well as varying schedules, Dr. Pu has split the class into three different start times: every Wednesday at 4 pm PDT starting September 29 for children grades 4–7, every Friday at 4 pm PDT starting October 1 for children grades 4–7, and every Monday at 4:15 pm PDT starting October 4 for children grades 8–11. Stone Soup subscribers get $100 off with coupon “Soup100″! Refugee Project Fundraiser Thank you to all who have contributed thus far! The fundraiser will continue to run until September 30th. Tell your friends! Weekend Project When I was first perusing the September issue of Stone Soup, I was immediately drawn to the title “Autobiography” located inside the art section. Why was a word like that—a word typically reserved for the written arts—describing a piece of visual art? And then I clicked on it. Now my question, though still fundamentally the same, had switched from “Why use this word to describe a work of art?” to “Why use this word to describe this work of art?” I could say that the photograph creates a juxtaposition between what is real and what is reflection, the subject’s “real” foot being more three-dimensional and distinguished than its counterpart. I could say that the dynamic curvature suggestive of dance that exists in the “real” foot is lost in its reflection, a blurrier, straighter image filtered through the barrier of the floor, which in this case takes on the appearance of water, perhaps a symbol for the subconscious. And I could try and cobble these observations together into a cohesive thesis, stating that this photograph questions the nature of the form of autobiography—what is gained, what is lost through its filter? And while I could not give a concrete answer, I could suggest that the relationship between autobiography and the subconscious is that when we sit down to write about ourselves, we can never be objective. Lines are blurred, curves are straightened by our own biased perception. But since I am not the brilliant artist behind this photograph, none of this I can say for sure. However, what I can say for certain is that the title of this photograph elevates it from a beautiful picture to a masterpiece. While Sim Ling Thee’s poem “Words of Snow” doesn’t offer the same insight on titles and the nature of autobiography, I found myself drawn to it the same way I was to Amity’s photograph. What I love most about this poem is its rendering of white space, the delightful suggestiveness of the colon. Is the poem the poem, or is it the space left after the colon, the time spent lingering in the mind of the reader as they can’t help but fill the space with their own imagination? This is a concept frequently explored within the realm of visual art, perhaps most notably in the works of Kazimir Malevich and, later, Mark Rothko. But Sim Ling, in just seven lines, takes something more typically reserved for the visual arts and applies it, effortlessly, to the written word. So, with their respective pieces both Amity and Sim Ling have borrowed from art forms outside of their own in order to elevate their art. Therefore, this weekend I’d like you to either borrow elements of visual art within any of its forms (dance, theater, painting, etc.), or elements of writing within any of its forms (autobiography, fiction, screenwriting, etc.), and meld them into one cohesive form as Amity and Sim Ling did. Then, once you’ve completed this project, I want you to think of a title that does more than describe your art. The title should enhance the experience of your art and complicate its meaning. As always, if you are happy with
book club
Book Club Report: The Jumbies, Tracey Baptiste
An update from our twenty-eighth Book Club meeting! On June 26, the Stone Soup Book Club met for its last meeting in this session. We discussed The Jumbies, by Tracey Baptiste, a book about Caribbean folklore and a girl named Corinne who must save her home from the evil jumbies. After our usual ARTT rooms, where our participants were given the prompt of talking about what books they planned to read over the summer, we had a whole group discussion about The Jumbies. Our conversation ranged from our favorite characters, to the complexities and nuances of the book’s villain, Severine, to the setting described by the author, and to themes within the story: such as family and bravery. Next, we brainstormed to think about what other fairy tales we know—and what cultures they are from. We compared various myths/stories, including those from Europe and China, and analyzed their similarities, differences, and how they connected to The Jumbies. Overall, we decided that most fairy tales have some sort of lesson—about wit, bravery, moderation, or family, for example— and many of them include supernatural or nonhuman elements; but they also vary in some ways. Some stories are about princesses and princes, while others are just about regular people. In some stories, the main character needs saving, and in others, it is the protagonist who is doing the saving. With all of this in mind, we set out to write our own fairy tales—about ourselves. Our participants were given the prompt of writing about something that happens to them in the summer, but with a fairytale twist of their choice. We shared out our stories and ideas in breakout rooms; they ranged from ones about mysterious forests, to characters who read a fairy tale—and then get sucked into it. It was really fun to hear what everyone thought of! Our final activity was more relaxed. Everyone went into breakout rooms for a few minutes just to talk about what books they liked, and then we switched the rooms around a few times. By the end, most people were able to find someone who liked the same book as them! Because Book Club will not be running over the summer, we did not choose a new book; a new book will be decided on in the fall. Stay tuned for information about our fall classes of Workshops and Book Club over the summer!
Book Club Activity: Making Our Own Anthology
At our most recent Book Club meeting on May 29, the Stone Soup Book Club read Look Both Ways: A Tale Told in Ten Blocks, by Jason Reynolds (you can read about the meeting here). As a writing activity, we decided it would be fun to make our own Look Both Ways, an anthology by our participants about what happens to people on their walk home from school. Each of our participants wrote their own stories, and then several of them submitted their writing to be published in an “anthology” format, right here. Below you can read some of the writing from this Book Club. Some of the stories are based on real life, and others are fictional. Enjoy! Jared Ashman, 14San Diego, CA 1. Untitled – Jordan and Jared Ashman, 14 Jordan was your average 12 year old kid. He walked home from school alone each day, and got home to play video games and eat candy. One day, after a particularly tiring day at school, he decided he wanted to take a shortcut home from school. Before, his mother had warned him about taking this shortcut, for she said it could be dangerous. However, Jordan was particularly tired today, and ignored his mother’s warning. He started walking into the forest, and after only a few steps, he found himself lost in the forest. Was he supposed to turn left, or right? There was barely even any light here. After almost an hour, he discovered a thin path of pebbles that he decided to follow. At the very end of the path, he discovered a temple! After pausing for a moment to take it all in, he walked inside. When Jordan walked inside, he found a deep tunnel going down to what he could only imagine was a secret layer. Walking down, he heard weird sounds inside. Coming to the bottom of the tunnel, he paused to stare in awe at the massive gate that hadn’t been there before. Walking in, he saw a massive monitor with arrows pointing all over… was that the world? He barely had a chance to register what he saw, before he was hit on the head by something from behind. He woke up in his bed, and realised it must have all been a dream. Or so he thought… Anya Geist, 14Worcester, MA 2. Apricot Street – Anya Geist, 14 I walk quickly down Main Street, joining the crowd of kids rushing toward the buses. Main Street’s not an actual street; it’s a hallway in my school (and it smells like a subway station), but because it’s a pretty big hallway, everyone calls it Main Street. Outside, the roar of the buses, all lined up in a row, threatens to drown out the joyful laughter and yells of high schoolers out of school for the day. I find my way over to my friend Lily, standing with a boy on our bus, Owen. “Is the bus here yet?” Lily shakes her head. “Nope. I walked all up and down the line with Sara.” “Again? Really?” Lately bus 51 has been coming later and later. I think our driver is kind of senile. “At least we didn’t miss it,” Owen says, half-jokingly; a few weeks ago the bus left me and him at school and the assistant principal had to give us a ride home. “That’s true,” I laugh, “but still.” Eventually the bus does arrive, though, and we load onto it. There’s not a ton of kids, because of COVID, so it’s pretty quiet as it barrels down Apricot Street, where our school is located. In middle school my bus took a different route, one that went up Goddard Memorial and Airport Hill, then through the traffic jam that is Tatnuck Square. I liked that route. I liked when the bus drove past the airport; on clear days, you could see Boston from up there (or at least that’s what Liam Forester said; I never saw it myself). But now we go down Main Street (a real street this time), alongside the rest of the buses from school, until they each break off to drive their respective routes. I think it’s pretty funny how all of the buses drive together at first; it’s like a big, yellow army, slowly separating to carry out different missions. My bus’s mission has only a few stops. Owen’s is the first. “I wonder what happened with your neighbor,” I ask him when the bus is pretty close to his corner. This morning he came to school saying the police were looking for his neighbor; it was all he could talk about in first period. “Yeah . . .” he says, “I wonder if all the cop cars are still there. No kidding, it was scary when they showed up this morning, just knocking on the door, asking if we’d the guy a few doors down. I bet he did something pretty bad, though. It wouldn’t surprise me.” “Well,” I tell him, as the bus pulls to a stop, “let me know what happens.” “Yeah, I will. Bye!” The bus shakes as he and a few others get off. Coes Pond flies by as the bus navigates the city, and the rows of grey seats slowly empty, till it’s just me and Lily, talking about our classes. “Where’s your class in Romeo and Juliet?” I ask. Our English teacher is making us read it. “Act 3, I think.” “Okay. Okay. George and Jonathan” (they’re two best friends in my class) “read the balcony scene the other day—they insisted on it.” I’m laughing now. “But Jonathan couldn’t stop cracking up, so he totally ruined it. He also pronounced Capulet wrong, it was hilarious—everyone in our class was trying so hard not to laugh.” “No, really?” “Yeah, he said, like, Capultet, or something. It was so funny.” “That’s great.” Now the bus is wheeling through Newton Square, down Pleasant Street, where Berry Fusion is located—a frozen yogurt place all the kids in
