“Perspective (Pencil) by Grace Williams, 12 (Katonah, NY), and published in the May 2021 Issue of Stone Soup A note from Sarah Feedback Survey Have you participated in a writing workshop? We’re asking former participants and those who may be interested in attending a workshop in the future to fill out a feedback form, available here, so we can see what has and hasn’t been working. We really appreciate you taking the time to let us know what you think. Weekend Project Did you know that Stone Soup has published a ton of food writing over the years? William and Jane are both experts on food writing, and Jane is even offering a summer camp later this year on the subject! Rubina Davila’s personal narrative from this month’s issue, “The Bakery,” (excerpted below) has elements of food writing woven in, with the descriptions of the pan dulce and soda she buys at an East LA bakery. I particularly like how Rubina includes so many sensory descriptions into her story. These details, like how “the pots and pans clanked loudly” and “the lights shone brightly on the sweet breads,” paint a picture for the reader that allows them to imagine that they too are inside this bakery with Rubina. But more than just describe a scene filled with delicious food, Rubina also ties it all back to her family. She wonders what it was like for her family members who lived in the same neighborhood decades before. So much can change in a neighborhood in a few generations, but how can food tie us all together? My challenge for you this weekend is to write a story about food and family. Rubina’s story “The Bakery” offers a great model to use as inspiration, but feel free to branch off and experiment. Maybe there’s a specific family recipe that you want to write about. Or maybe you want to take a more research-oriented approach, in the vein of Ezra Bernhardt’s blog posts from a year ago, when he dug into the history of foods like pasta and cured meats. There’s so many angles you could choose to approach food! Whichever way you choose to think about it, we encourage you to submit the work you produce to Stone Soup for consideration either in the magazine or on the blog. Until next week, Writing Classes and Book Club Are you looking for classes to inspire, improve, and practice your writing with great teachers and a group of like-minded young writers and readers? Join us! We do charge fees for our clubs and workshops, but we try to keep them as low as possible, and we offer discounts to subscribers and scholarships to students who need them. Contact us at education@stonesoup.com with any questions. Writing Workshop: we have two new writing groups for spring/summer, starting April 17, that will meet via Zoom every Saturday except for the last Saturday of the month. Come write with us and share your work with your peers. Find out more and register for a workshop at Eventbrite. To see some of the great work produced by current workshop members, read contributions published at Stonesoup.com, or join us at one of our free public readings! Book Club: a book club for writers that meets via Zoom on the last Saturday of every month, with a new season starting on April 24! Find out more and register for book club at Eventbrite. Check out which books we are reading on our website. Young Author’s Studio Summer Camps: we are offering a wide range of classes through the summer jointly with the Society of Young Inklings. Each camp runs for two hours per day, Monday through Thursday. All details and bookings via Society of Young Inklings. Book Contest 2021 For information on submitting to the Stone Soup Book Contest 2021, please click here. To submit your manuscript, please visit our submittable site. Highlights from the past week online Don’t miss the latest content from our Book Reviewers and Young Bloggers at Stonesoup.com! As part of AAPI Heritage month, Young Blogger Priscilla Chow wrote a personal narrative surrounding her creation of a Chinese lantern for the Chinese Lantern Festival. Young Blogger Daniel Chu wrote a compelling essay on the prejudices faced by women in science. Blogger Sita Welt took the initiative to interview author Kate Milford about her newest book, The Raconteur’s Commonplace Book. A transcript of their interview can be found here. From Stone Soup May 2021 The Bakery By Rubina Davila, 13 (Sierra Madre, CA) (Illustrated by Grace Williams, 12 (Katonah, NY)) When I walked into the bakery on Cesar Chavez Avenue in East Los Angeles, my lungs were instantly flooded with the sweet air of butter and sugar wafting from the kitchen while pots and pans clanked and banged loudly and voices called out in Spanish. My mouth watered as my eyes scanned the many kinds of pan dulce displayed in neat rows. The lights shone brightly on the sweet breads. I could feel the heat from the pot of homemade tamales, and I craved one of the Mexican sodas in the glass fridge. I clutched my $5 bill, knowing I could walk out with a large bag of pan dulce for my family and a soda for myself and still have change. I ordered three kinds of pan dulce: elote, concha, and a large cuerno, named for their corn, shell, and horn shapes. I reached into the white paper bag of treats, the bottom stained with warm grease. My papa always said, “If the bottom is greasy, you know it’s good.” I bit into the concha, and the familiar sweet smell and ridged texture flooded my senses. The top of the bread crumbled and filled my mouth with its sugary flavor. The center of the bread was especially warm and soft. The smell reminded me of my Aunt Lulu’s kitchen. I wondered what it was like for my father to walk to this bakery at four years old, clinging to the hand of my great-grandfather, Agustín, and to taste the delicious
Newsletter
Saturday Newsletter: May 1, 2021
“Hat Girl” (Acrylic) by Keira Callahan, 12 (San Francisco, CA) and published in the May 2021 Issue of Stone Soup A note from Sarah Have you had time to read the May issue of Stone Soup? I want to draw your attention to a story that caught my eye: “Awaiting a Letter” by Lila C. Kassouf, excerpted at the end of the newsletter. Though Lila doesn’t identify the time period in which “Awaiting a Letter” is set, there is something about the word choices and style that makes it seem like it may be a historical fiction story. Perhaps it is the beginning of the story, where the main character, Celeste, reads the newspaper at breakfast, or the fact that the story revolves around the anticipation of a letter in the mail. For this weekend’s activity, I want to challenge you to write a historical fiction story. You can make it clear in your narration or through the story’s events that the time period is not the present day, or you can make it more subtle, like Lila does, and never explicitly address it. What clues can you leave the reader to point at when the story is taking place? You may want to think about technology, like letter writing, or language, like speech styles and slang. There have been so many great Stone Soup historical fiction stories published over the years that you can use as inspiration. In addition to “Awaiting a Letter,” you can also check out the “Historical” category on the website, or get a copy of our anthology The Stone Soup Book of Historical Fiction, available in print or as an e-book. If you give the historical fiction genre a try, please submit what you’ve come up with! Can’t wait to see what you create. Until next week, Writing Classes and Book Club Are you looking for classes to inspire, improve, and practice your writing with great teachers and a group of like-minded young writers and readers? Join us! We do charge fees for our clubs and workshops, but we try to keep them as low as possible, and we offer discounts to subscribers and scholarships to students who need them. Contact us at education@stonesoup.com with any questions. Writing Workshop: we have two new writing groups for spring/summer, starting April 17, that will meet via Zoom every Saturday except for the last Saturday of the month. Come write with us and share your work with your peers. Find out more and register for a workshop at Eventbrite. To see some of the great work produced by current workshop members, read contributions published at Stonesoup.com, or join us at one of our free public readings! Book Club: a book club for writers that meets via Zoom on the last Saturday of every month, with a new season starting on April 24! Find out more and register for book club at Eventbrite. Check out which books we are reading on our website. Young Author’s Studio Summer Camps: we are offering a wide range of classes through the summer jointly with the Society of Young Inklings. Each camp runs for two hours per day, Monday through Thursday. All details and bookings via Society of Young Inklings. Book Contest 2021 For information on submitting to the Stone Soup Book Contest 2021, please click here. To submit your manuscript, please visit our submittable site. Highlights from the past week online Don’t miss the latest content from our Book Reviewers and Young Bloggers at Stonesoup.com! Young Blogger Allison Sargent wrote an impassioned poem, “If I Could Write a Letter to the World.” Pragnya, 12, wrote a review of historical fiction novel Echo by Pam Muñoz Ryan. From Stone Soup May 2021 Awaiting a Letter By Lila C. Kassouf, 12 (Towson, MD) Illustrated by Keira Callahan, 12 (San Francisco, CA) Eighteen-thousand dollars were stolen from the Bridgeham Regional Bank on Nov. 2. Eyewitnesses say the robber was a man wearing all black, carrying a gun. “He had a slight figure and he ran very quickly,” said one woman who had witnessed the event. This is the third armed robbery this week. Witness reports from each of the robberies confirm it was the same person. —Page 1 of The Bridgeham Times “Maman,” I said, looking up from the newspaper. “Did you hear about the robbery?” “What is it, the third one you’ve told me about this week?” my mother asked, washing dishes at the sink. . . . /MORE Stone Soup is published by Children’s Art Foundation-Stone Soup Inc., a 501(c)(3) educational nonprofit organization registered in the United States of America, EIN: 23-7317498. Stone Soup’s Advisors: Abby Austin, Mike Axelrod, Annabelle Baird, Jem Burch, Evelyn Chen, Juliet Fraser, Zoe Hall, Montanna Harling, Alicia & Joe Havilland, Lara Katz, Rebecca Kilroy, Christine Leishman, Julie Minnis, Jessica Opolko, Tara Prakash, Denise Prata, Logan Roberts, Emily Tarco, Rebecca Ramos Velasquez, Susan Wilky.
Saturday Newsletter: April 24, 2021
Dream Bedroom (colored pencil) by Rohan Jayakrishnan, 12 (Downingtown, PA) and published in the April 2021 Issue of Stone Soup A note from Jane We are absolutely thrilled to announce that the winner of our 2019 Book Contest, Three Days till EOC: a Novella by Abhimanyu Sukhdial, has been named the sole Honor Award Winner for the 2021 Green Earth Book Award in the Young Adult Fiction category! Congratulations, Abhi. We are so, so proud of you. It’s an exceptional achievement for any author to win an award for their book—even more so when it is your first one! But Abhi’s achievement is greater still. There were 74 books in the competition, and 73 of them were written by adults. This absolutely sums up what Stone Soup is all about. We know that young people’s creative abilities are extraordinary and often far exceed those of adults. We see this every week in our writing workshops, in the comments and discussions that take place in our book club, and as we read the submissions to the Stone Soup magazine and blog. All our Stone Soup authors can celebrate and take encouragement from the silver glow of this badge of honor, awarded by an independent panel of distinguished judges who were expecting to read works only by adult authors. Well done, Abhi, and thank you for trusting us with your work. It goes without saying that if you haven’t read Abhi’s book yet—you should! You can buy it in hardcover and ebook versions in the Stone Soup online bookstore, and all booksellers. This week’s featured story is a classic redemption tale. Tom Green, a horrible, spoiled, lazy young man loses all his money and privilege, and through a series of misfortunes and hard work over several years becomes a better person. In the end, he finds happiness not in the material things that were all he cared about in the beginning but in a simpler, more compassionate life spent helping others. What makes this story extra special is the writer’s style: Zahra Batteh tells the story of Tom in a natural, almost conversational voice, but without wasting a word. Every short sentence moves the action forward and paints a picture of Tom’s life and character. In just four pages, Zahra manages to make the reader feel as though they know everything about Tom and how he has spent four whole years of his life. I think she achieves this feat partly though the spareness of her language. She doesn’t hint, or judge, or indulge in long, flowery descriptions; she lays out the facts plainly and simply, showing us who Tom was and who he becomes without ever telling us what she thinks he is like. It’s a great example of the power of “show, don’t tell.” This weekend, read the tale of “Tom Green.” Invent your own flawed character and think about what might lead them to redemption. Then, try to write their story as simply as you can. Show us, don’t tell us, who your main character is. As always, if you love what you’ve written, share it with us. And, before I go, it has to be said just one more time: yea Abhi!! Until next week, Writing Classes and Book Club Are you looking for classes to inspire, improve, and practice your writing with great teachers and a group of like-minded young writers and readers? Join us! We do charge fees for our clubs and workshops, but we try to keep them as low as possible, and we offer discounts to subscribers and scholarships to students who need them. Contact us at education@stonesoup.com with any questions. Writing Workshop: we have two new writing groups for spring/summer, starting April 17, that will meet via Zoom every Saturday except for the last Saturday of the month. Come write with us and share your work with your peers. Find out more and register for a workshop at Eventbrite. To see some of the great work produced by current workshop members, read contributions published at Stonesoup.com, or join us at one of our free public readings! Book Club: a book club for writers that meets via Zoom on the last Saturday of every month, with a new season starting on April 24! Find out more and register for book club at Eventbrite. Check out which books we are reading on our website. Young Author’s Studio Summer Camps: we are offering a wide range of classes through the summer jointly with the Society of Young Inklings. Each camp runs for two hours per day, Monday through Thursday. All details and bookings via Society of Young Inklings. Book Contest 2021 For information on submitting to the Stone Soup Book Contest 2021, please click here. To submit your manuscript, please visit our submittable site. Highlights from the past week online Don’t miss the latest content from our Book Reviewers and Young Bloggers at Stonesoup.com! Young Blogger Gia Porwal published a riveting travelogue of her family trip through Saudi Arabia! Lila, 11, wrote an observational poem, “Spring in Central Park,” as part of our April Flash Contest. Arjun, 9, wrote a poem, “Life Inside a Staircase,” as part of our March Flash Contest. A writeup of the Winter/Spring Writing Workshop Showcase is on the website. Check it out for information on who read and links to their terrific work. From Stone Soup April 2021 Tom Green By Zahra Batteh, 10 (Washington, DC) Illustrated with Dream Bedroom by Rohan Jayakrishnan, 12 (Downingtown, PA) Tom Green was very proud to say that he had the best life any human could wish for. He would wake up in his cushiony white bed and then head down his marble staircase, where a delicious breakfast was waiting for him, prepared earlier that morning by his personal chef. If he were to have something involving chocolate, the chocolate would be from Switzerland, where, he believed, the best chocolate came from. If he were to eat something involving berries, the berries would have been freshly picked that morning. Everything had to taste amazing in Tom’s house. If there was ever something that didn’t meet his taste buds’ expectations,
