Some fifteen years ago, I gave a presentation on this book. It appeared that no one in my group which consisted of at least thirtyfive individuals of the class of 1992, the City of Hampton Neighborhood College, had ever heard of this story. It was a story that was read to me in elementary school, P.S. 89 in Harlem NY, I wonder how the story stayed in my mind for so many years. It may have been the struggles we had as a family that embedded it in my subconscious mind for so many years. My sister read my essay on this topic, so she was well versed on its contents.
Me, my sister and my wife went to church that following next two Sundays as some of the parishioners were from my Neighborhood College Class, but what amazed me was that the pastor's sermon was exactly the same as my essay that I had wrote some weeks ago, my sister looked at me and my wife and we all laughed. So if you want to write a presentation that you want to illustrate the unity of a community this would be a great topic Stone Soup. This children's book is based on an old French folk tale, it is about three soldiers who try to convince a small village to provide them with some food. The villagers say they are too poor and can't share any of the food they have. So the soldiers suggest that they make stone soup out of stones and water and are able to trick the villagers into having a village-wide feast. So the trickery of the soldiers convinced the town's people to gather up what they had in the pantry and by accumulating various odds and ends of various vegetables, pieces of meat, spices etc, without realizing they had given what they say they didn't have and the entire community was nourished. Oh yes! The book was written in 1947, when I was five years old. There is a subliminal atmosphere about this story, so this maybe why I made a choice to acquire it as my particular essay topic, it is too bad we can get folks to be more helpful towards each other especially as a bipartisanship and eliminate negativity. Barry S Allen Sr September 5, 2011