Lydia Taverne has always set her heart on being an artist.

Seeing her work published this month in a national magazine for kids has pumped super fuel into the high-flying dreams of this talented 13-year-old Auburn girl.

Taverne’s work, which illustrates the story “To Follow a Fox,” by the equally youthful Madeleine S. Gregory, appears in the November-December issue of “Stone Soup, The Magazine by Young Writers and Artists.”

“I had wanted to be in that magazine for years,” Taverne said. “I kept submitting my artwork to see if there was something for me to illustrate. So I was really excited when I found out that they actually had something for me. I was just really, really happy. I was overcome with joy.”

Once called “the New Yorker of the 8 to 13 set,” the Santa Cruz-based “Stone Soup” bills itself as the place where serious young writers and artists prefer to see their stuff in print. Hundreds of submissions pour in each week, but the hyper-picky magazine accepts less than 1 percent for publication.

Being in such rarified air is pretty heady stuff for the Kent Mountainview Academy ninth-grader, third in Mike and Raisa Taverne’s family hierarchy of seven boys and girls.

The magazine’s editors told Taverne what she was going to illustrate, and it turned out to be Gregory’s story about a girl whose chance encounter with a fox leads her into the woods and into unexpected adventures.

“They e-mailed me in July. Earlier they said, ‘You send us a story, and we might publish it.’ But at the same time, they asked, ‘Would you be interested in illustrating something for me?’ They gave me some freedom, but they just basically told me what they wanted,” Taverne said.

Each issue contains 10 to 15 written selections — stories, poems and book reviews — with a child artist illustrating each one. The color cover features international children’s arts. Photos of the authors and illustrators accompany their work.

In its 36 years of publication, the magazine has published more than 8,000 pages of writing by children from all 50 states and Canada, England, New Zealand, Australia, Africa and Indonesia, and art by children from more than 25 countries. It provides the only consistent place for English-speaking children to see other childrens’ writing and art. It is published in January, March, May, July, September and November. By publishing their finest work in a quality format, the magazine has inspired budding writers and artists like Taverne.

“We’re very happy for Lydia,” said her dad, Mike Taverne. “It was her dream to get published in Stone Soup. It’s a great magazine that encourages young people to be creative and share their talents with their peers.”