How do you use Stone Soup?
We started publishing Stone Soup in 1973. We were college students. The magazine grew rapidly for the first few years and then it leveled off. We’d like to see it grow again and are thinking that it might help us tell the Stone Soup story if we could hear from you how you use Stone Soup in your classroom or how your child responds to Stone Soup when it arrives in your home. We’d like to hear from you in writing — and if you might feel inspired ot make a video that you wouldn’t mind us positing on our web site — then we’d like to hear from you in video, too.
Thank you,
William
People of the Crow, a tale of the fantastic
Angela’s story takes place in a very specific place: Cranford, New Jersey. And yet, it not exactly Cranford. Things happen in this story that don’t take place in Cranford – or any place on earth. Things happen in this story that only happen in imagination.
Two Stories about Friends
Two stories. Short. Simple. Each story about two friends. In one, two boys walk along the beach and look at a starfish. In the other, two boys shoot off fireworks on a vacant lot. Each of these very short stories is, in its own way, complex. Not only do the stories provide a vivid picture of where they take place, but they also each reveal a great deal about the characters, their relationship to each other, and their relationship to the world.
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
Journal Times Article about Stone Soup Teen Author
The Racine, Wisconsin, Journal Times ran an article about Dylan Saunder’s story in the January/February issue of Stone Soup. Stone Soup is one of the few outlets for young teens to be published. The entire story from the Journal Times is reproduced, below:
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.
Stone Soup Archive
The Stone Soup archive has hundreds of stories, poems, and book reviews. The purpose of the online archive is to offer free resources for students, parents, and teachers who are interested in writing by kids. One feature that I would like to call your attention to is that the 322 stories published on the site can be sorted by subject. By selecting the subject you can create your own anthology so you can read stories that are on subjects that interest you.
The subject selection is also useful for teachers of creative writing. Creative writing assignments are often thematic. For every theme you will find that Stone Soup writers have taken very different approaches. This can help you develop projects for your own classroom. More simply, you can send your students to our web site for inspiration.
Help us get our forums going!
We have just put up three forums for teachers and parents. Getting forums started is the hard part. You can help us by visiting the forums and making those all important first posts. Thank you.
Stone Soup illustrator in the news
Getting published in Stone Soup can be a terrific motivational tool. Because of its reputation for quality, publication in Stone Soup is often newsworthy. Here is a recent article published in the Greater Media Newspapersof Middlesex, Mounmouth and Ocean Counties, New Jersey about the publication of Athena Gerasoulis’s artwork in the November/December 2009 issue of Stone Soup.
