A Big Year for Lily by Mary Ann Kinsinger & Suzanne Woods Fisher

Author:Mary Ann Kinsinger & Suzanne Woods Fisher
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: JUV033010, FIC053000, Amish—Juvenile fiction, 1. Amish—Fiction, Family life—Pennsylvania—Fiction, Schools—Fiction, Friendship—Fiction, Pennsylvania—Fiction
ISBN: 9781441242518
Publisher: Baker Publishing Group
Published: 2013-05-16T04:00:00+00:00

Lily threw the buggy robe off her lap and stood to look out the storm front. Dannie was right! The schoolhouse was burning. Flames licked at the roof around the chimney. More fire trucks than she had ever seen were parked in the school yard and beside the road. Red lights flashed everywhere. A few firefighters held a big hose and sprayed water on the fire. Lily couldn’t look at it any longer and squeezed her eyes shut. Oh, how terrible! The schoolhouse was burning. They couldn’t have school without a schoolhouse.

Then came a horrible, terrible realization. Her box of beautiful crayons was in that schoolhouse! They would be destroyed. Melted into wax.

Lily would never forget the day when Mama gave the crayons to her. She had just come back from town after buying Lily and Joseph’s school supplies. Mama reached into her shopping bag and gave Joseph a brand-new pack of twenty-four crayons. Lily loved new crayons. She waited for Mama to give her a new pack, just like Joseph’s. Instead, Mama pulled out a pack of sixty-four crayons and handed them to Lily. Sixty-four! She was stunned, speechless. Too happy for words.

Lily spent hours looking through her box of brand-new crayons, memorizing each name: aquamarine, topaz, sunset orange. Even the names were beautiful.

“You’re growing up, Lily,” Mama said. “You’re old enough to have a box of sixty-four crayons. Since fourth graders don’t color very often, I expect you to keep these crayons nice. They should last for the rest of your school years.”

Lily had tried to keep these sixty-four crayons from breaking or smudging against each other. She kept the points nice and sharp. She would miss getting a brand-new box of crayons every year but having one box of sixty-four was better than a new box of twenty-four.

Joseph and Dannie looked at Lily’s box of crayons with longing in their eyes. And they didn’t even like to color! For the first time in Lily’s life, she had something she was not expected to share. When Joseph and Dannie reached fourth grade, Mama said they would get their very own box of sixty-four crayons as well.

Lily had felt important on the first Friday afternoon art period when she took her box of beautiful crayons out of her desk and used them. None of her friends had a big box of crayons. Beth, Malinda, and Hannah admired them, and Effie said that they were too worldly, but Lily was sure that Effie wished she had such a box of crayons.

It always took Lily a long time to color pictures. There were so many different colors to choose from and she wanted to take better care of these crayons than she ever had with her other crayons. They needed to last five years, until she would be finished with school and all grown-up.

But now, as she thought about her beautiful crayons melting in the schoolhouse fire, she wished she had colored with them every day.

Papa pulled Jim to the side of the road.

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