Winter Wonderland | iPhone 8 Elodie Weinzierl, 11 (Waban, MA), published in Stone Soup December 2021 A note from Caleb Fall 2021 Workshop Reading Don’t forget: Saturday December 11, at 10 am Pacific/1 pm Eastern, we will be hosting our end of term event in which our students read aloud some of the incredible work they’ve written this fall. Please come and support our students by signing up, here! Book Club Also on Saturday December 11, but at 9 am Pacific/12 pm Eastern (the event will end before we begin the workshop reading), Book Club will be hosting Lucy Worsley, author of The Austen Girls. Don’t miss out on a terrific opportunity to speak with a published author, and sign up, here! Happy December! Start the month off right by curling up with Anya Geist’s new book Born on the First of Two (you can read an excerpt here), now available for purchase in the Stone Soup store. I’m so excited to share with you the most recent development of another Stone Soup author, Abhi Sukhdial, whose timely novel Three Days Till EOC was the winner of our 2019 Book Contest. After Three Days Till EOC was honored by the Green Earth Book Awards, Abhi made a video in which he speaks passionately and candidly about the need for climate action, celebrates the impact of Stone Soup Magazine, encourages everyone to write from the heart, and promotes and reads from his novel Three Days Till EOC. As Abhi feels that finding Stone Soup was like finding “heaven,” we too could not feel more blessed to have worked with Abhi since he first began submitting to us as a fourth-grader, and we can’t wait to see what he accomplishes in the future. Congratulations, Abhi! Now, I’d like to draw your attention to a couple of outstanding works of art from the December issue: Elodie Weinzierl’s Winter Wonderland, the issue’s cover image, and Sean Tenzin O’Connor’s “A Beautiful Wood.” Winter Wonderland is the perfect photograph to represent the December issue, as it features a snowy tree arched over a white hammock, inviting Stone Soup’s readers to relax amidst the wintery landscape of the issue’s content. “A Beautiful Wood,” meanwhile, is an ingenious representation of the December issue’s wintery landscape. In “A Beautiful Wood,” Sean—just five years old—leads us on a journey that ends “at the bottom,” in a place that “may seem that it’s not cold,” where the poem’s central image is revealed: “A Chord of Pine Trees in the Night.” The poem reminds me of Wallace Stevens’s “The Snow Man,” mainly in that I believe one must have “a mind of winter” to follow the thread of the poem and truly see with their own eyes the “Chord of Pine Trees in the Night” rather than just imagine them. So, this weekend I’d like you to create an artwork that celebrates the themes of winter as you understand them. This may be more of a literal interpretation, as in Elodie’s photograph, or it may be more figurative, as in Sean’s poem. Regardless, the artwork should embody winter. Try reading “The Snow Man” for further inspiration. As always, if you’re happy with what you’ve written or created, we would love for you to share and submit it to us via Submittable! Till next time, Other News Book Club On Saturday December 11, at 9 am Pacific/12 pm Eastern, Book Club will be hosting Lucy Worsley, author of The Austen Girls. Don’t miss out on a terrific opportunity to speak with a published author and sign up, here! Fall 2021 Workshop Reading Also on Saturday December 11, at 10 am Pacific/1 pm Eastern, we will be hosting our end of term event in which our students read aloud some of the incredible work they’ve written this fall. Please come and support our students by signing up, here! Highlights from the past week online Eleanor Dagan, 13, wrote a powerful poem about how the COVID-19 pandemic has reshaped long-standing traditions. From Stone Soup December 2021 A Beautiful Wood By Sean Tenzin O’Connor, 5 (Bishop, CA) In the light of the lamp Many rocks Sitting aside Resting in place In the dark The shadows cast Lights and lamps Throughout the night Hanging down Towards the book The poems written With many hooks Continue reading “A Beautiful Wood” here… 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.
Three Days Till EOC
Saturday Newsletter: October 16, 2021
“A Tangled World” By Elodie Weinzierl, 11 (Waban, MA), published in Stone Soup October 2021 A note from William I hope all is well with our extended Stone Soup family. I took my first post-COVID vacation last week. I drove up from Santa Cruz, California to the Mendocino coast, north of San Francisco, to visit a friend I had not seen since October 2019 when we had traveled in Japan together researching the culinary use of that fabulously colorful mushroom, Amanita muscaria. That is the mushroom many of you will know from the mushroom emoji 🍄. I cooked meals on the fireplace, found about thirty pounds of the porcini mushroom in one fabulously lucky hunt, and came home refreshed! It is my great pleasure today to announce that Stone Soup is collaborating with our summer school partner, Naomi Kinsman, and her staff at Society of Young Inklings to test the waters for selling Stone Soup site licenses to schools. I have not talked much about Stone Soup sales here in the newsletter, but for the last several years they have been dismal. Times changed, and print subscriptions to private homes have largely gone out of fashion. So, with the help of Naomi and her Young Inklings colleagues, we are doing a proper market study of how the online Stone Soup magazine, blog posts, workshop texts, and creativity prompts can be used to teach creative writing in schools. Thank you, Naomi, for your help with this. There is other good news since I last wrote the newsletter. We have received a sizable COVID-19 relief grant from the state of California—$15,000!—and a truly substantive pledge towards our upcoming Annual Drive by one of our Stone Soup donors, a true angel (though more on that when we launch our 2021 Annual Drive). Taken together, we are now in the best financial position we have been in years, which is fabulous because it means we can start growing Stone Soup again. Several of us on the Stone Soup staff joined in the virtual awards ceremony at the Green Earth Book Award (GEBA) ceremony on Thursday, October 7, for Abhi Sukhdial’s Three Days till EOC, the novel that won our Long Form fiction contest in 2019. The awards ceremony was the kickoff to a three-day-long EnviroKids Literacy Festival. Our Stone Soup store is down this week as we are reorganizing it, so for now please order Three Days till EOC at Amazon. Abhi’s book was the only winning title by a child. Elodie Weinzier shows us “A Tangled World” in the complex patterns formed by twisted and arching branches. I really like her photograph. It is actually a kind of photograph that I have taken many times myself as I have personal interest in plants and the shapes they make. Like Elodie, I often see stories in plant shapes. To me, her photograph speaks of energy, of time, of an unfolding life, one that shifts in response to events becoming more interesting, varied, and complex over time. For today’s project, I’d like you to use your phone’s camera to find a pattern in nature that speaks to you. Once you find the pattern that interests you, begin experimenting with framing that image with your camera by moving it around and changing distance and angles as necessary to capture your vision. Take at least ten photographs of each pattern that interests you, and then choose which image of each pattern you like best. Complete the task by deleting the rest. This last step can be difficult, but in the end, as the artist, you need to choose the photograph that most speaks to you. Until next week, Congratulations to our most recent Flash Contest winners! Our October Flash Contest was based on Creativity Prompt #172 (provided by Molly Torinus, Stone Soup contributor), which asked participants to perform the meta task of writing about somebody writing a story. The result was a wave of submissions unlike we have ever seen, making the selection process this month even more difficult. We read stories that anthropomorphized bananas, that projected protagonists’ lives far into the future, that literally wrote out entire stories within stories, and much, much more. In the end, we wound up with five winners and five honorable mentions whose fantastic and distinct work gives shape to a bright and promising future! As always, thank you to all who submitted, and please submit again next month! Congratulations to our Winners and Honorable Mentions, listed below. You can read the winning entries for this contest (and previous ones) at the Stone Soup website. Winners “With Great Power…” by Jack Liu, 13 (Livingston, NJ) “Words” by Lui Lung, 12 (Danville, CA) “Myrtle and Sage” by Pranjoli Sadhukha, 11 (Newark, OH) “Rejection Miracle” by Alexandra Steyn, 12 (Greenwich, CT) “Coffee Mates” by Emily Tang, 12 (Winterville, NC) Honorable Mentions “Crumpled Papers” by Anushka Dhar, 12 (Hillsborough, NJ) “Charlotte’s Unusual Story” by Hannah Francis, 11 (Stanford, CA) “Writer’s Block” by Nova Macknik-Conde, 10 (Brooklyn, NY) “It Should Bother You” by Violet Solana Perez, 13 (Scarsborough, ON, Canada) “Behind the Counter” by Eliya Wee, 11 (Menlo Park, CA) Highlights from the past week online Don’t miss the latest content from our Book Reviewers and Young Bloggers on our blog! Vivaan, 12, wrote a riveting review of Lois Lowry’s classic, Newbery Award-winning novel The Giver. Sita, 12, wrote a comprehensive review of the renowned TV series Community, which ran from 2009 to 2015. Ismini, 12, reviewed Ginger Johnson’s brand new novel The Other Side of Luck. From Stone Soup October 2021 Oak By Graham Terbeek, 10 (Towson, MD) My name is Oak. And if you didn’t already guess, I am a tree. I’ve heard rumors of trees that grow delicious fruit, Of trees that bloom exotic flowers, Or even trees that are so tall that it seems they can see the whole world. It must be nice having a purpose. I don’t have anything special about me. Just your typical, everyday tree. I live in the backyard of a small house. People rarely go in and out. I keep to myself. I don’t mind, really. I’m used to being alone. Years ago, I wasn’t
Saturday Newsletter: March 6, 2021
“Sunny Beach” (Procreate) by Emi Le, 13 (Millbrae, CA) and published in the March 2021 Issue of Stone Soup A note from William Today, from me, mostly news—which is appropriate for a newsletter. Exciting news! Our very own Abhi Sukhdial’s novella, Three Days Till EOC, the winner of our 2019 Book Contest, has been long-listed for the Green Earth Book Award under Young Adult Fiction! So, congratulations are in order to Abhi and his family. This news comes just one week after Three Days Till EOC was given a glowing review by author Adam Rex, which you can check out here. Dan Bloom, one of the founders of the cli-fi (climate science fiction) genre and editor of The Cli-Fi Report, wrote in his review of Three Days Till EOC that he, “at the age of 71-going-on-72 enjoyed every page” and proclaimed Abhi “a young writer to watch!” Summer classes: The schedule for summer classes will be sent out toward the end of the week. Like last year, we are teaming up with Naomi Kinsman’s wonderful Society of Young Inklings. I am also very very very excited to be able to tell you that our brilliant editor, Emma Wood, will be teaching a writing class, as will her husband, Conner Bassett, also a published writer and a creative writing instructor at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Two other Stone Soup staff are also offering classes: Laura Moran, from the book group, is offering a class that takes an anthropologist’s approach to personal narrative, and Jane Levi is offering a class in food writing. Saturday writing classes will continue during the summer. What if the classes fill? All classes will have a waitlist. Naomi has a number of teachers already on her staff, so we anticipate being able to meet increased demand. Next-session Saturday Writing Classes: Registration is going to open soon for the next session of Saturday Writing Classes. This will take us from April to the summer. The fabulous news is that we are expanding the program! Conner Bassett, who I mentioned above, is going to begin teaching on Saturdays. Conner has a reputation as a brilliant and inspiring teacher. I am so excited that he is joining our team. Registration will open soon for existing students; after existing students are taken care of, we will open registration to everyone else. We are now committed to expanding the program to meet demand. The limit to our expansion, obviously, is the need to retain the same level of quality. Weekend Project: The main problem for me about this newsletter is that, by custom, newsletters are supposed to short and I find short hard to do! The evocative digital painting Sunny Beach by Emi Le is the perfect illustration for Raya Ilieva’s “Sand and Sea.” I really like the ambiguity in Emi’s painting. I live near the Pacific Ocean. She captures the feel of the foam advancing (or retreating) from the sand. Please please please read Raya’s “Sand and Sea.” Yes, I cried at the end. But I want you to read the story for the clarity of Raya’s descriptive language. The first paragraph one can say is pure “sense of place.” Note the use of language that creates pictures in our heads—smooth waves, foamy blue sea, empty beach, gritty crystals, etc. Note, too, the description of sand on Kate’s feet. Those of you who have been to the beach will recognize what she says about this. In the next paragraph Kate, the main character, is given a physical description—of her eyes. Brilliantly, Raya ties in her description of Kate’s eyes both with her emotional state—a hint to us of things to come—and where she is. Raya continues with a clear descriptive vision from the beginning of her story to the end. I want you study how Raya brings alive her character and her world. “Sand and Sea” is also a classic in the sense that the problem that Kate is dealing with is one of these life problems that many of us have experienced. So, I’d like you to write a story that begins with a paragraph that sets up the scene where the story is opening; then, in the second paragraph, share with us at least one key aspect of how the character looks, and then let the story flow, trying throughout to be precise with your descriptions. As always, if you feel your work turned out strong, then please go to Stonesoup.com and submit the work so that Emma can consider it for Stone Soup. Until next time, Highlights from the past week online Don’t miss the latest content from our Book Reviewers and Young Bloggers at Stonesoup.com! Georgia, 11, wrote a lovely “Ode to Books.” Do you feel the same way that Georgia does about books? If you were a fruit, what kind would you be? Trevor, one of our bloggers, explains why he thinks his mom would be a Dragonfruit. Check out his post on the blog. Contest, partnership & project news There’s still time to submit to the Monthly Flash Contest. Here’s the prompt for this month, by Contributor Molly Torinus: Write a story set somewhere you’ve never been. It could be set in outer space, Antarctica, or even an alternate reality! And here’s where you can submit your entry. From Stone Soup March 2021 Sand and Sea By Raya Ilieva, 10 (Belmont, CA) Illustration by Emi Le, 13 (Millbrae, CA) Smooth waves of water crested up out of the foamy blue sea and crashed down on the empty beach, rushing out along a darkened strip of sand, and then were sucked back into the depths of the blue ocean. Kate paced the rough sand, gritty crystals coating her bare feet and tickling her ankles. A heavy fog hung over the beach, covering the sky and the air in a thick gray mass that did nothing to help lighten Kate’s mood. Her usually warm light-gray eyes were stormy, dark, and wild and focused on the never-ending expanse of sand and water
