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Rating: 
Summary: A wonderful feminist strip!
Review: Finally, a truly feminist comic strip about non-traditional families! I've been waiting for Stone Soup for years, but I didn't realize it until the Boston Globe started running it about a year ago. I had to read it from the beginning, so I ordered this book and read it cover to cover in one evening, then read it cover to cover again the next day.And if you love Stone Soup as much as I do, do yourself a favor and look up Jan Eliot's earlier work in the Women's Glib projects. You can see the seeds of Stone Soup forming, as well as other completely unrelated work of hers with an equally feminist slant.
Rating:
Summary: A wonderful feminist strip!
Review: Finally, a truly feminist comic strip about non-traditional families! I've been waiting for Stone Soup for years, but I didn't realize it until the Boston Globe started running it about a year ago. I had to read it from the beginning, so I ordered this book and read it cover to cover in one evening, then read it cover to cover again the next day. And if you love Stone Soup as much as I do, do yourself a favor and look up Jan Eliot's earlier work in the Women's Glib projects. You can see the seeds of Stone Soup forming, as well as other completely unrelated work of hers with an equally feminist slant.
Rating:
Summary: An Antidote to "Cathy"
Review: How completely, utterly *refreshing* to read a comic strip where the female characters don't value themselves based on their waist measurements, their spendthrift shopping habits, or by how men see them. How wonderful and hilarious to see a comic-strip Mom who's got better things to do than become the family doormat -- Val's no-nonsense dealings with the kids is a refreshing change from the usual Mommy-clean-my-mess (from husband as well as kids) in most family comic strips. Of course STONE SOUP is feminist (Oh! I just said the "f" word!) -- it dares to presume that female characters can carry a comic strip all by themselves, and be funny and interesting in and of themselves, and that families come in all shapes and sizes. Naturally it's taken years for Eliot to come out with a *second* collection of these wonderful strips while the bulimia manual CATHY and the formulaic mommy-doormat FOXTROT are on their umpteenth releases -- some people are just so *threatened* by real women, aren't they?
Rating:
Summary: Buy a copy for everyone you know!
Review: I read a lot of comic strips and most make me smile, some invoke a chuckle. Stone Soup is the only one that makes me laugh out loud over and over. My refrigerator is covered in Stone Soup and so is the wall of my cubicle at work. BUY THIS BOOK AND THE SECOND COLLECTION, YOU WON'T REGRET IT!
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Summary: LAUGH OUT LOUD FUNNY!
Review: I read a lot of comic strips and most make me smile, some invoke a chuckle. Stone Soup is the only one that makes me laugh out loud over and over. My refrigerator is covered in Stone Soup and so is the wall of my cubicle at work. BUY THIS BOOK AND THE SECOND COLLECTION, YOU WON'T REGRET IT!
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Summary: A funny, true-to-life story of a non-traditional family
Review: If your family isn't the typical 2.5-kids-and-a-dog family, you might prefer "Stone Soup", the first collection of a new comic from Jan Eliot. "Stone Soup" is the ongoing story of a single-parent family. Joan is mom to toddler Max, and to economize she lives with her sister Val, mother of daughters Alix and Holly, and Grandma. Although this family differs from the Foxtrots, readers will be able to relate to the typical problems the "Stone Soup" cast encounters. Joan starts a dating quest, only to find herself talking to Wally the single man living next door. She also struggles with child-rearing issues with Max, wanting to give him all the options and choices (when she leaves the room, Val just tells him "NO!"). Grandma, in the middle of one of the children's three-way tantrums, tells Val and Joan, "Cherish these times. They grow up so fast." The entire family fights over the small bathroom. Joan struggles to start a home business. Meanwhile, an unwell Val exclaims,"I'm having trouble with my vision. I just can't see myself going to work." There are few men in "Stone Soup": Max and Wally are about it. This is definitely the woman's perspective on life. However, that does not mean the humor is inaccessible to men. Unlike "Bloom County" by Berkeley Breathed, which had a decidely male point of view, the issues in "Stone Soup" are not exclusively female. "Stone Soup" is not a militant, women's lib strip; it's a new, mainstream national voice that happens to be female. Get in on the ground floor. Wounldn't it have been fun to have followed "Doonesbury" from its very first publication? "Stone Soup" isn't necessarily "Doonesbury," but it is good. Jan Eliot's "Stone Soup" will probably be around for a while. ---Mark Levine, reviewer for the Ventura County Star
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Summary: Wonderful!!!
Review: Loved this book!!! I'm a big collector of comic strip books....Can not wait until the next one comes to the stores! I enjoy family type comics and its nice to see a different type (but common?!) one portrayed. I've shown this to my friends and they have all seen themselves in one or more of the characters, So Kudos to Jan Eliot for the book!! Let's hope to see the next one soon.
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Summary: Buy a copy for everyone you know!
Review: Someone below called this a feminist comic strip but I think that's misleading, especially given the current difficulties in just defining that word. Yes, it happens to have several female characters, and yes it's not a stereotypical mom-dad-dog-2.4-kids-wagon-picket-fence family, BUT: This strip is about all of us, everyone of every sex and age and family style, and it's enjoyable to (and enjoyed by) a wide range of people -- even ordinary traditional people and even (gasp) men! My husband loves it, my 60-something dad loves it, and so on. I think the publisher's blurb on the back of the second Stone Soup collection ("You Can't Say Boobs On Sunday") got it right: "Anyone who's ever had a family, been in a family, or known a family seems to love Stone Soup. ... Readers see themselves and their families in Stone Soup, and they love it." That goes for people who don't consider themselves family-oriented, and for people who do. Everyone I've known who's read any Stone Soup has enjoyed it and wound up quoting or passing around some of the strips. Recommended reading for everyone except total grumps, I say.
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Summary: Who says feminism can't be funny?
Review: There seems to be a lot of debate going on in the previous reviews over whether or not Stone Soup is feminist. My opinion: of course it is! And it's quite refreshing to see a comic strip that isn't afraid to be. Better yet, the strip is never preachy and, unlike Foxtrot (to which it gets compared frequently), it's almost always funny. I've also seen a lot of comparisons to For Better or for Worse (helped along perhaps by the fact that Lynn Johnston wrote the introduction to this collection) which I find closer to the truth. The big difference there is that unlike FBoFW, Stone Soup is almost never sentimental. Eliot always finds a way to squeeze a laugh out of good times and bad, without dwelling on her storylines or overdeveloping them. While her focus may be on single mothers, her humor is accessible to one and all. And of course, it helps that Val and the gang always manage to keep their sanity intact at the end of each story!
Rating:
Summary: Who says feminism can't be funny?
Review: There seems to be a lot of debate going on in the previous reviews over whether or not Stone Soup is feminist. My opinion: of course it is! And it's quite refreshing to see a comic strip that isn't afraid to be. Better yet, the strip is never preachy and, unlike Foxtrot (to which it gets compared frequently), it's almost always funny. I've also seen a lot of comparisons to For Better or for Worse (helped along perhaps by the fact that Lynn Johnston wrote the introduction to this collection) which I find closer to the truth. The big difference there is that unlike FBoFW, Stone Soup is almost never sentimental. Eliot always finds a way to squeeze a laugh out of good times and bad, without dwelling on her storylines or overdeveloping them. While her focus may be on single mothers, her humor is accessible to one and all. And of course, it helps that Val and the gang always manage to keep their sanity intact at the end of each story!
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