Colored Pencils For Lori

Sometimes there's a setback. You regroup, recover, and things find their way back to normalcy. Nothing is ever normal after someone who has been the rock, the pillar of a family is suddenly out of the picture. For Lori Brown and her mother, things were in disarray from the moment they had to leave their cozy home on a nice piece of property her grandmother owned. One unfortunate event at school in 1968, just days before Christmas, had Lori in a tailspin. It was the day of the gift exchange, and she showed up to her fifth-grade class. . . without a gift! Lori found herself in the throes of what possibly could have been the worst day of all her years at the Eldridge Park Elementary School. The looks she might have received. The sneers she may have caught when she looked up from her Weekly Reader. Or worst yet, the confrontations she faced in having to explain her negligence. Lori's pick was Allison Stein, one of the richest kids at school. The fact that she picked Allison's name intensifies the drama to nearly explosive consequences. How did Lori cope with the embarrassment and shame? Throughout this long distressful day, Lori grappled with a rollercoaster of emotions as she navigated around this awkward situation. Within Lori's struggle, lied other secrets that were unearthed. Secrets that Lori would have rather kept concealed. She relied on the help of a friend, her teacher, a guidance counselor, and a very unlikely source who came to her rescue at the end of this awful day. Colored Pencils for Lori can be enjoyed and appreciated by middle school aged children and their parents. The book deals with loss of a family member, and how that loss can have a direct impact on the surviving members. The story is heart-warming. It takes an honest look at real struggles that spill outside of the home and affect children in their school environments. Colored Pencils for Lori is a work of fiction based on a real event that took place in the author's l