Stone Soup

I have always loved soup--opening a can of Campbell's was one of my first independent acts of feeding myself as a child. I am often tempted to just order two or three soups off a menu and have them as a meal instead of an entree when eating out. I eat soups year round, but as the weather turns colder, I crave soups even more if that is possible.

Then days like today when we are quite snowed in make me think of soup making, too.

So I was amused to find this recent article with a recipe for stone soup and a short description of the tale: Green Eyes On: Stone Soup - Making Something Out of Nothing by Sara Snow.

Stone Soup is one of my all time favorite folktales. I have used it regularly for storytelling with a few different methods for making it interactive depending on the size of my audience (a set of 50+ cards with pictured vegetables vs. a set of plastic vegetables for smaller groups). I always remind kids at the end that Stone Soup is really vegetable soup, stones optional. I know several enterprising parents who have made stone soup with their children. They rarely forget the experience. So many have rushed to tell me later that they made stone soup after participating in one of my storytimes. It's really a wonderful tale...

I actually have an entire soup themed story time and have posted it in the SurLaLune Storytime section of the website. One of my favorite picture books is Mean Soup which was always a hit with kids and parents, but is out of print but hopefully still at your local library or you can find it used. It's worth hunting down. A few kids have told me they've made mean soup, too...


That said, inspired by the article and the weather, I thought I would share Stone Soup picture books today. There are many wonderful versions and I believe any library should have a few versions of it on hand, be it public or your own private one. I'm going to cheat and just add an Amazon widget of book covers (links included) since I don't have the images readily available.

I created a list on Amazon of several Stone Soup variations, too: Stone Soup. Some are represented below but there are more on the list, so click through to explore Button Soup and Nail Soup and others.