Stone Soup - Adaptations

Adaptations

• The story was the basis of a 1947 children's book, Stone Soup (ISBN 9780689878367), by Marcia Brown, which featured soldiers tricking miserly villages into cooking them a feast. The book won a Caldecott Medal in 1947.
• This book was read aloud by the Captain (played by Bob Keeshan) on an early episode of Captain Kangaroo in the 1950s, as well as at least once in the 1960s or early 1970s.
• Another children's book based on the story, also called Stone Soup, written by Jon J. Muth and set in China, was published in 2003.
• Jim Henson's Storyteller series contains one tale called 'A Story Short' in which the Storyteller himself (played by John Hurt) is the main character. In the beginning, he arrives at a castle where a man is thrown out for begging for food. He proceeds to trick the King's cook into making 'Stone Soup'. After they are happily fed, the cook realizes what has happened and pleads with the King to let him boil the Storyteller in oil; but the King instead offers a way out – to tell him a story every day for a year instead.
• The movie Fandango contains a wedding sequence towards the end which builds on the Stone Soup theme. The heroes of the movie need to hold a wedding ceremony, but they lack any funds to do so. They set up a folding card table by the main street of a sleepy Texas town, dust it off, and invite passersby to come to the wedding. As they concoct stories of delinquent caterers and crashed champagne trucks, the friendly towns people contribute their time and resources, the result being a magical wedding ceremony.
• Shel Silverstein's song, "The Wonderful Soup Stone" tells a version of this story. Bobby Bare recorded the song on his 1973 Lullabys, Legends and Lies album.
• Canadian children's writer Aubrey Davis adapted the story to a Jewish context as Bone Button Borscht. According to Davis, he wrote the story when he was unable to find a story that he liked for a Hanukkah reading. A narration of Bone Button Borscht by Barbara Budd traditionally airs across Canada on CBC Radio One's As It Happens on the first day of Hanukkah.