Looking for Drama Instructors to Work with Children to Record Children’s Stories
When a new issue of Stone Soup is published, editor Gerry Mandel selects a story to feature on our website and asks the author to record a reading of the story. Over the years, we have built up a large archive of stories read by Stone Soup authors.
We are now thinking we would like to record stories we haven’t previously recorded. We are looking for drama teachers, or anyone with recording experience who works with children, to work with us to record children reading Stone Soup stories for posting on this website and on iTunes. We may even produce a CD. We have been publishing Stone Soup for thirty-seven years and have a wealth of material by children up to age thirteen to work with.
If you might be interested in this project, please write to me, william@williamrubel.com. I am thinking that making recordings of children might entail a collaboration between a classroom teacher, a drama teacher, and a radio presenter at a community college or university radio station who could do the actual recording, and possibly the editing as well.
I look forward to hearing from you.
William Rubel
Co-Editor of Stone Soup
Working with Dialogue
The most remarkable part of Lena’s story is the last quarter where four characters respond to a traumatic event. This section, beginning with the “No!” spoken by the narrator and continuing to the end, depends heavily on dialogue. It could almost be a play. Notice that, although the lines spoken by Sandy, Carrie, Mom, the narrator, and Mrs. Hall are often very short, we get a clear sense of how each character differs from the others and how they relate to each other as family, friends, and neighbors. This is accomplished through the narrative that accompanies the dialogue.
First forum post
We have our first forum post. It is by a parent writing about her Tween daughter’s difficulty finishing stories. It is posted in the forum for questions to the Stone Soup editors. The forums still need help getting started. If you are a parent, teacher, or a kid and you have a question for us, please go to the forum and ask it. There are also forums for teachers and parents to share ideas about teaching creative writing — or to ask each other questions. We definitely need brave souls to start posting in these forums to get them off the ground. Thank you.
The Perfect Gift for a Creative Child
I have come late to being a parent. The idea for Stone Soup came to me in 1972 when I was a college student teaching writing and art to community children in a University sponsored Saturday morning art program. My colleague, Gerry Mandel, and I have been working on
Stone Soup and 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.
The temptation to lie
These two stories deal with the same problem: the temptation to lie to hide a mistake. The temptation to lie to cover up a mistake is a common one, and most people, at some point in their lives, give in to the temptation to pretend they haven’t done something that, in fact, they have.
First Person Narrative
This story, told from the point of view of the first person, is short but wound tight, like a spring. The story flows from beginning to end, concluding in a climax, Piper has succeeded in doing something that is very difficult – getting the reader of a short story to so identify with the character that we, too, feel the relief of the ending, we, too, feel overwhelmed by what is happening and a sense of exhilaration as we read the last words!
Write about an obsession
Lots of girls dream of horses. And there are lots of stories about horse-loving girls. What makes this story special, The Horse’s Reins, by Nicholas La Cortiglia, is how Nicholas, through attention to detail, makes Julie into a full-as-life character, a girl with an obsession, but a girl who is also a normal child within a family.
