Free Verse and Kids’ Poetry
Most of the poetry we publish in Stone Soup is free verse. Free verse is the most prose-like form of poetry. It is very popular amongst adult poets and it is also very common in...
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Most of the poetry we publish in Stone Soup is free verse. Free verse is the most prose-like form of poetry. It is very popular amongst adult poets and it is also very common in American schools. Free verse may by rhymed or unrhymed. What defines it is that it is unmetered.
Walt Whitman was the American poet who popularized the form. Here is an example by Whitman.
Contact William Rubel: william@stonesoup.com
Stone Soup was founded in 1973. Through our magazine, Stone Soup, and through anthologies of children's writing, we are the leading publishers of children's creative work for homes and schools. We are now tying to increase our social media presence in order to reach a broader audience for the children we publish.
Maybe you’ve noticed. Stone Soup publishes more writing by girls than by boys. This is not intentional. We would love to include an equal number of contributions by boys and girls in every issue. We can think of two reasons for the imbalance: 1) we receive more submissions from girls than from boys, and 2) many of the stories we receive by boys contain violence, which makes them inappropriate fo...
This poem, A Song Of Home, is a poem written by a child age 12. Originally published in 1913 in the children's magazine St. Nicholas it is a poem from another time. The poem starts, "Oh, pretty mate of the crimson breast,/Do you remember your little nest...." The poem goes on to speak of the robin living and loving in the cherry tree.
I found a project through Twitter for teaching students to think like a filmmaker. The project, for grades 6 to 8, is written by Judy Storm Fink and is published at the NCTE website, readwritethink.org. The project title is You Know the Movie is Coming—Now What?.
This is a complex project with lots of supplementary material.
In the Collected Maxims of the German writer, W. G. Sebald (1944 –2001), he is credited with offering this advice to writers:
‘Significant detail’ enlivens otherwise mundane situations. You need acute, merciless observation.
Observation provides a foundation on which writers can build.
The Kodak box camera, first produced in the 1880s, became the iconic camera for the amateur photographer. The camera was as easy to use as our phone camera's. Point and shoot. Even a child could do it. And even children did.
The best source of historic photographic images by children is in St. Nicholas Magazine (1871-1940).
Let’s say you have a strong opinion about something you see happening in the world. You know it is wrong, and you want to speak out. The most direct way to make your point would be through a nonfiction article or essay. But you could also convey your message, perhaps even more powerfully, through fiction.
In the May/June 2015 issue of Stone Soup, 12-year-old author Evelyn Chen did just that.
I recommend this blog post, What Kids Have Taught Me About Writing, by children's book author Kathleen McCleary. Those of us who read a lot of writing by children produced in schools -- and I certainly speak for the staff here at Stone Soup -- get tired of reading writing by children that is so obviously constrained by creative writing formulas. "Stop!
In honor of St. Patrick’s Day on March 17, we chose “Leprechaun Rain” as the featured story from our March/April 2015 issue. This is not a complex story. Emma lives with her parents and grandmother on a farm in Ireland. Some of the family’s sheep are missing in a storm, and Emma sets out to find them. When she does, everyone returns home safe and sound.