National Learning Institute

Stone Soup: The secret recipe for making something from nothing

Bill Lliao

Reviewed by bselden Mon 19 Jul 10

Bob's Rating:

The fable of Ruby and her stone soup runs throughout the book and is used by the author to show how things like belief in oneself and the cooperation of others, can overcome almost anything.

As Ruby moves through life experiencing its ups and downs, each of her episodes is summarised by Llao in terms of the key messages. These are built up from chapter to chapter to form the basis for the recipe for stone soup. It's a nice way of using a captivating story to get one's message across. I enjoyed the story, as it is a real "page turner".

The book is well written, although I did find the paragraphs a little long. This was OK during the riveting Ruby tale, but became a little tiresome when the author was summarising the message from a particular part of the story. There did appear to be some repetition. As a result, it may be tempting to jump to the next part of Ruby's story and miss an important point.

Stone Soup is intended as a book for budding entrepreneurs, but really there is a message for everyone in this book - that with commitment, conviction and a positive mind-set, anything is possible. A good read, with good messages.