Every year in April we celebrate Earth Day. It’s a day to take a minute and consider what we can do to benefit our environment. It can be an overwhelming task. Save the Earth? Ummm, okay? But where do we start? Well, one simple and practical place you could start is with a compost. Rotting dirt? Yes! Why? According to the Environmental Protection Agency, “About 94 percent of the food we throw away ends up in landfills or combustion facilities. In 2017, we disposed 38.1 million tons of food waste.” All of those orange peels, coffee grounds, and egg shells that you throw away every day, just go to the landfill to pile up. Instead of tossing them in the trash you could take them out to a section of your backyard. Why should I take a corner of my yard and make it into a mini landfill? Because it will reduce the amount of garbage you throw away that goes to the landfill and eventually produces Methane gas. What’s Methane gas? Methane is a toxic gas made from decomposing fruits and vegetables in the landfill. It’s toxic to us, animals, and the environment around us. What do I get for this? I mean if I’m going to put work into this, and sacrifice pristine land space, than I want to get something out of it. When my family started to compost, we noticed that we weren’t using so many garbage bags. And you pay money for garbage bags, and if you use less garbage bags, than you use less money. You also take the garbage out less. Instead of your compostable remains turning into garbage it actually turns into valuable soil. Food scraps decompose to improve soil health by adding vital nutrients and minerals into the dirt as they break down. Rather than buying packaged bags of compost dirt, you can make your own while reducing landfill waste. My family has a planter box up in the top of our yard, so we began to routinely threw all of our fruit and vegetable scraps up there. And after a while, we began notice we had plants growing from the compost. In fact, the previous Halloween, we found a few pumpkins that had grown from the compost. The best part is that it wasn’t hard at all, but we were still helping our planet. Remember, even if it’s just a little baby step, it’s still a step to saving our Earth. Resources: https://www.epa.gov/recycle/composting-home#benefits
nature
Trumpet of the Swan, Reviewed by Keshav Ravi, 8
“Birds are a special problem, birds are hard to deal with.” This is what many people seem to think, and understandably, when a bird has just robbed their shop. However, Louis, in E.B.White’s The Trumpet of the Swan, proves exactly the opposite. Louis is a swan who was born with no ability to make sound or communicate with his family. His father breaks into a store in Montana to find Louis a trumpet so that he can make swan sounds like everyone else and persuade Serena, the swan he loves, to be his mate. With the help of Sam Beaver, an animal-loving boy, he goes to school and learns to communicate with humans by writing on a slate. He also works to earn money to pay for the stolen trumpet by playing songs which Sam helps him learn. The Trumpet of the Swan is special because of the strong relationship that forms between Sam and Louis, right from when Louis first meets Sam in the woods of Canada, and how they work together to solve Louis’s problems. Their friendship is the heart of the story and is what makes it a forever favorite for me. Something that surprised me was finding humor in an otherwise moving story. One instance among several that comes to mind is when Louis is swimming in front of the swan boat in Boston playing “Row, Row, Row Your Boat” when a boy shouts, “This swan is as good as Louis Armstrong, I’m going to call him Louis.” Then Louis writes on his slate, “That’s actually my name.” This really made me laugh. White’s poetic description of nature is another feature I enjoyed. For example, the coming of spring is described as a time when “Warm air, soft and kind, blew through the trees.” With elements of humor, suspense, and realistic imagery, The Trumpet of the Swan is a classic that many people will easily relate to and that you just can’t read too many times. Trumpet of the Swan by E.B. White. HarperCollins, 1970. Buy the book here and support Stone Soup in the process! Have you read this book? Or do you plan on reading it? Let us know in the comments below!
Animation: The Little Whale
I’m Myzah De Guzman and I’m 7 years old. This is my story, “The Little Whale.” I did the character illustration while my brother Mazen did the illustration background and animation. https://stonesoup.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/The_Little_Whale.mp4 Myzah De Guzman, age 7, United Arab Emirates
