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writing

History Comes Alive

Many Stone Soup readers tell us that historical fiction is their favorite genre. We think we know why. Realistic characters, whose feelings and concerns are similar to our own, can bring the events of history to life better than a dry textbook. A perfect example of historical fiction is “Curtis Freedom,” the featured story from our September/October 2013 issue. The setting is a cotton plantation in the South. The time is the mid-1800s. Curtis is a fictional slave boy who lives during this real time in American history. In the story, Curtis meets the famous abolitionist, Harriet Tubman, a real person. Like many real slaves of the time, Curtis escapes from the plantation with the help of Harriet Tubman and her Underground Railroad. He stays in safe houses along the way and eventually makes his way to Canada and freedom, just like many real slaves did at the time. Thirteen-year-old author Anna Haverly shows us this time in history through Curtis’s eyes, and we experience it with him. It’s unbearable to work in the hot sun and be yelled at by a master who calls you “boy” because he doesn’t even care to learn your name. It’s tragic to be separated from your parents when you’re sold into slavery. It’s terrifying to run away from a cruel master and fear being caught and sent back. And finally, what joy to find your father again in a new land! Did we just learn a lot about history? What a great way to learn, through a relatable character and a story that sweeps us away to another time and place.

Using Stone Soup to encourage students to produce inventive, creative writing

Creative writing, as a term, was invented in the 19th century to express the idea that there was writing, and then there was creative writing. With use, the expression has lost meaning and now creative writing is synonymous with writing fiction or poetry, as opposed to writing nonfiction. But at Stone Soup we think that it is is important to stick with first principles. Since our founding in 1973, our goal has always been to publish writing by children that is creative in the primary sense of the word: writing that is inventive. A clear problem that we find reading through the stories and poems that are sent to us for consideration by children, their parents, grandparents, and teachers is that so much of the work sent is inspired by reading that it is itself not creative. The source of inspiration for writing that is genuinely creative is life itself. You will find that the stories in Stone Soup tend to be about life – and that is the reason. Ralph Waldo Emerson, one of America’s first great writers, was also one of the first to use the term “creative writing,” and to discuss it relative to reading. In his Phi Beta Kappa Oration of 1838 he said that “There is then creative reading, as well as creative writing.” Creative reading implies a dynamic act, it implies a reader who brings his or her own life to he reading – full engagement. It is the natural way with children to fall into books. Amongst children it is common for the child who loves to read to also be the child who loves to write. It is often true that great writers are also great readers, but it is almost invariably true with children that reading and writing go together. Of course, it is from reading, largely, that children learn to write. The greatest problem we find in reading through manuscripts sent by children (and their parents, grandparents, and teachers) in the hopes that we will publish them, is that so many of the child writers are so clearly readers of writing that is itself not creative. To create is to invent. It it is to bring something fundamentally new into the world, to say something that hasn’t been said, ideally in a way that it hasn’t been said before. Because we are each different, if we each write from the center of our own differentness, then it is not such a tall order to write creatively. The problem comes when we don’t write from the center of our being. One of the biggest impediments to creative writing is the fact that stories and poems are themselves inventions of culture. There are many literary traditions – not all of which are informed by the goal of being fundamentally creative. Clearly, works that are produced for the mass market are, by definition, works in which the goal of accessibility to the largest possible audience takes precedence over the goal of the author speaking from his or her soul. Unfortunately, there is a smaller literature written for children that speaks from the author’s souls than there is for adult writers. And children, I think, are less in control of what they take in than are adults. We adults negotiate the thicket of unlimited options to choose what we want, but we have more agency than children. But what children have is a remarkable closeness to unbridled curiosity, and a drive to learn. That drive to learn is part of the drive to grow up. If you find that your child, or your students, are stuck in writing that is not particularly creative, that their stories and poems rely on formula and cliche or ordinary ways of talking about the world, then you will need to give them a little push. You will find at the Stone Soup website hundreds of stories and poems that we have selected, for decades, out of literally tens of thousands of submissions. The best of what you will find here are transcendentally best, works that reward reading and re-reading. But even at our most ordinary, I think you will find in Stone Soup’s stories creative writing that engages creative readers, and that will inspire your child or your students to reach into themselves to find the words and the way of weaving those words together that genuinely reflects the unique way in which they experience the world.

My Country and the Way to America

I live in Vietnam. I go to school in Vietnam. I have three pigs and one dog, but the dog is dead. My mother she was sad. My mother my father my sister is go to work. Me and my younger sister we stay home. Everybody is go to work. We has a restaurant in Vietnam. So my family they work there. In Vietnam is very awful so we leave. One night my sister she take my younger sister and I go in to the boat. But we ask her where do we going, and she said she take us to the zoo. And we very happy because we don’t know what the zoo mean. She tell us the zoo is for the animals use to live. So we go to see we saw the lion and the tiger and the elephant and the monkey and the wolf and snake and the bear and the very old cat. The old cat is very big but if we touch that cat he bite you and you have to go to the hospital. That cat so grumpy. After we went to the zoo and we go to buy a lot of food. My younger sister she ask what for? My oldest sister said we going to have a party. And she take us to get on the boat. And I see too much people. When we start to go I am too small and I am so stupid. Because they want everybody to put the children to go sleep because they start to go but I don’t want to go to sleep but I want to play with the water. I put my feet under the water. The people in the boat they gave me a medicine but I don’t know what is that. Then I drink the medicine. After I drink I was sleeping. When I wake up I saw the ocean. And I put my feet under the water again. After three days or four days out the ocean, the boat have a hole and the water coming. Everybody was cry and scary. The boat was rocking and raining. The people they felling down the ocean. The captain in the boat. He jump down the ocean and he help everybody to get on the boat. Then he was tired and he can’t swim no more. He dead under ocean. His wife was sad and lonely. Everybody they are wet. Me and my younger sister we are under boat. And we didn’t get drop down the ocean. My sister she said we are lucky. The people they take care of the lady because that lady she is very lonely and sad. We stay in the ocean for a month and two days. The last day we saw a people dead on the water. We saw money and the wood, the shoe, the paper, the clothes, the pants. And everybody was scary. Another day we saw a big ships. We are happy they let we get on the ship. We saw a lot of toys. We play on the ship for one day. And they get my boat to Malaysia. We lived there two month. And they take we go to Indonesia. We lived there one years. We live in Indonesia. We have no food no water to drink no soap and shampoo for hair in Indonesia is very dirty and messy. They has a lot of the bad fly. If the bad fly sting we get sick. And no medicine. The people they dead every day. I sick one time but not much because I drink the bad water it make me sick. My sister she think I might dead so she feel sad. And worry about my mother and my father and my sister in Vietnam. Next morning the America people they call my family name to get on the ship. They take us go to the big mountain. A lot some people. And we are talking to the Vietnamese people. We came to a big mountain they have everything. They have water and food, and no fly nothing. We lived there we don’t have to cook. They cook for us to eat every day. We can eat anything if we want to. Because we got to come to America some day. So we very happy. The mountain is very beautiful. It look very big then in Vietnam. The mountain look like a city. I like America we like to live there. We live there they give us candy every day. We live there one week. Then we get on the airplane to came to Hong Kong. And we came to America. Then we live in the hotel two days in Los Angeles. Reprinted in Stone Soup Magazine, May/June 1985, with permission from Light of the Island, © 1982