Horse in Dreamland (oil pastel) by Tutu Lin, 13; published as the cover for Stone Soup November 2022 A note from Caleb Greetings! This week I have the pleasure of announcing our December 10 reading for Writing Workshop students: Blame the Squirrels, and Other Stories. The event is our first formal reading for Writing Workshop students in over a year. As a proctor for Conner’s workshop, I can’t wait to listen to the students I’ve gotten to know this session read their work, as well as have an opportunity to listen to the magnificent work of the students in William’s workshop. As writers, reading our work aloud is the culmination of hours and hours of effort, and there is no greater feeling than facilitating the measured silence of an audience and receiving raucous applause. So please, mark your calendars for 10 – 11:30 AM PST on December 10, and come out in support of our terrific writers—your presence goes a long way. The event is free to attend. I also wanted to talk briefly about the blog, namely in order to highlight the recent undertaking of one of our most prolific contributors, Emma Catherine Hoff. On top of having published multiple poems in Stone Soup magazine and numerous reviews and opinion pieces on the blog; on top of being one of our longest standing Writing Workshop students; and, on top of just being announced as a winner of our most recent Book Contest for her book of poems An Archeology of the Future (please scroll to see our winner in fiction, as well as the other finalists), Emma, 10, has created a podcast called Poetry Soup, in order to “share [her] love of poetry, and inspire others to read more of it.” She has already released two fantastic episodes, the first about John Ashbery’s sestina “The Painter”, and the second about the poem “The Keeper of the Sheep” by Fernando Pessoa, written under the heteronym Alberto Caeiro. Her third episode will go live either next week or the following, so make sure you take a visit to the Stone Soup blog, where these episodes exclusively air. Until next time, Announcing the 2022 Annual Book Contest Winners! We’re thrilled to announce the results of this year’s Stone Soup Annual Book Contest. It was a pleasure and an honor to read and consider all the manuscripts as well as incredibly difficult to select our two winners. We are excited to share more about the authors and their books in the coming months—stay tuned! ♦ Winners ♦ Poetry An Archeology of the Future, Emma Catherine Hoff, 10 Fiction The Handkerchief Woman, Lily Jessen, 14 ♦ Finalists ♦ Poetry REALITY IS HERE FOR YOU, Analise Braddock, 11 Imagination, Bethel Daniel, 12 Sunny Fitting Sangeeta, Raeha Khazanchi, 13 Simply Complicated, Madeline Male, 14 Scenes From Before, Pauline McAndrew, 14 Fiction Cousins, Emily Chang, 14 Let Me Go, Ariadne Civin, 13 Shattered Moon, Ivy Cordle, 13 Autumn Floods and Winter Fires, Nami Gajcowski, 12 In the Secret Cedar Woods, Elena Gil, 13 The Roaming Realm, Madeline Longoria, 14 Norcelia, Sabrina Lu, 14 These Words That I’ve Written, Jenna Reenders, 14 Maple of the Moss Folk, Kana Shackelford, 13 Overthrowing Antecessum, Isabella Washer, 13 Sparks, Eleanor Wernly, 11 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.
weekly
Weekly Creativity #227: Write a Scary Story/Poem
Write a scary story/poem.
Writing Workshop #72: Pseudowords (Revisited)
An update from our seventy-second Writing Workshop A summary of the workshop held on Saturday, October 22, plus some of the output published below In this workshop, the participants learned to say the unsayable by using pseudowords: made-up words that aren’t part of any real language. William discussed how the sound of these words should have the power to express the piece’s meaning and feeling as well as the personality of the character. Examples such as “Jabberwocky” by Lewis Carrol, the avant-garde poem “Seepferdchen und Flugfische” (“Seahorses and Flying Fish”) by Hugo Ball, and scat singing by Ella Fitzgerald and Mel Torme were used to demonstrate. As a mini-writing challenge, the participants wrote pieces entirely with pseudowords, focusing on sounds that would match their characters’ personalities. The Challenge: Use pseudowords in a story or poem. Use them as suits your vision. This can be one word, a few words, a dream sequence, or a language. The Participants: Anya, Ava, Celia, Crystal, Katelyn, Kristen, Liam, Pearl, Rachael, Reethi, Yueling, Zar Strawberries and Ghosts Pearl Coogan, 10 The breeze swished in Amy’s hair as she skipped cheerfully along the forest path. “Limbeb, limbeb,” she sang, skipping rocks into the small creek. Amy’s best friend, Kat, who always dressed in black and was extremely gloomy, appeared from behind a tree. “Kilzek. Kox,” she spat. The two were in the forest looking for ghosts as always. Amy thought that they would find a friendly baby or puppy ghost and Kat thought that they would find an evil, scary, ghost. “Lo, borium!” Amy bent down and picked a strawberry from a bush, “Ram lom borium!” The fifth-grader hugged the berry to her chest, like it would save her life. Amy and Kat had been looking for ghosts every day for months but hadn’t found any. “Ram lom borium!? Kix rik!” Kat said, with a dramatic flick of her long black hair. Suddenly a strong wind howled through the trees, sending Amy flying onto the ground and Kat grabbing onto a tree branch. “Ium… ium…” Amy whimpered, but her whimper quickly turned into a screech as her strawberry flew away from her “BORIUM! BORIUM! HIKZ!” “Borium xiz! MIVC!” Kat shouted, the branch she was on swinging wildly, “RAM!” Red eyes peered at the pair, somehow suspended in midair and still against the wind. Slowly a body formed around the eyes, a milky white body with long, grasping arms and lanky legs. The ghost slowly moved forward, snarling and reaching out towards Amy. “IUUUUUUUUMMMMM!!!!!!” Amy screamed as she tried to scramble to her feet, only to be pushed down by the wind. The ghost reached out with greedy eyes. “YIKUZ!” Kat tried to run towards the ghost, but instead moved right through him. The ghost let out some sort of evil cackle, arms reaching up into the air, ready to slam down on Amy. “JIZX!” Kat jumped in front of Amy, pushing her best friend out of the way. And the ghost grabbed Kat instead. “KOOOOOOOOOOOOOV!” Amy shouted, the wind tangling her pristine blond hair. She was waving her arms at Kat as if that would somehow magically make her come down from the ghost. “LOPC!” Kat said, trying to wiggle out of the ghost’s grasp. But the ghost poked and prodded her, his long claws ready to tear off her legs. Amy was frantic, pacing in circles as leaves slammed against her smooth face. But then her face lit up, her eyes bright and her face blushing like how it always did when she had an idea. “Borium!” She smiled, fighting against the wind to get to a strawberry bush that was halfway out of the ground. “HIJ HIK!?” Kat peered down at Amy, the greedy ghost lifting Kat towards his mouth. “Seeeeeeelllll oolllllllllllllllpppppp,” the ghost spoke for the first time, his voice sounding like a zombie that found a buff, delicious, person that was perfect for eating and about to die. Amy picked up a couple strawberries. “Ram lom borium!” She smiled, throwing the strawberries into the forest. Kat furiously shook her head. The strawberries would only make this worse. They would agitate the ghost! And, just like Kat predicted, the ghost opened his mouth wide, teeth pristine and sharp, ready to eat her. The the ghost didn’t. Instead he dropped Kat onto the ground and ran after the strawberries, taking the wind along with him. “Kuu—uu—cc…” Kat stammered, lost for words. The ghost had just dropped her. And was now cheerfully munching on strawberries. Amy smiled, skipping towards her best friends. “Ram lom borium!”
