#15- Stone Soup

Stone Soup

Written and Illustrated by Jon J. Muth

Scholastic Inc. 2004

29 Pages

Traditional Literature

    This is the European traditional story of Stone Soup but it takes place in China. In this story three monks, Hok, Lok, and Siew are traveling through the mountains of China. They are talking about generosity when they come to a town which has forgotten what it is to be generous. The villagers have had a rough time in the last few years so they have all decided to just take care of themselves. When the monks arrive all the villagers shut themselves up in their houses. The monks decide to make stone soup and get a young girl to help them. As they begin to make the soup more and more of the villagers come out to help. The villagers begin to add more and more ingredients until they have created a very tasty soup that all the villagers can enjoy.

     Muth used watercolor to create the beautiful illustrations for this book. He uses a lot of neutral colors. The village is very plain looking. The color choice makes the village look very depressing, which is exactly what the village has become because everyone is selfish and only cares for themselves. Muth uses a few colors to help brighten up the story. The little girl is wearing a yellow shirt and this helps begin the change in the village's appearance. As the story progresses more and more color is added. Each person has a different color shirt and so as more people add to the pot of soup there is more color. By the end of the book, when the monks are saying farewell to the village, the village looks more like a nice, pleasant place and is very inviting because there is more color shown. Muth does a great job using the colors to help set the mood of the story.

     This book could be used for a character education lesson about generosity. The teacher could talk about why it is important to be generous to others. Students could also make their own recipe for Stone Soup after reading this story. This would also be a good book to use about the Chinese culture. There are some notes at the end of the book regarding some things about the origins of the Stone Soup story and about Chinese culture that is represented in the book which could help the teacher explain the chinese culture more. 

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