The Pencil That Drew Real Things

Every Wednesday, Amara has art class, and every Wednesday she uses the same old pencil. She found it at the back of a drawer in the art room. It's short and black, and very old. Today the teacher says, "Draw something you love."

Amara loves cats, but her mom is allergic, so she can't have one. She draws a cat. She finishes the tail, and the cat jumps off the paper! It's real. It's soft and warm, and it says "meow." But it's gray: gray eyes, gray nose, gray fur.

Amara looks around. Nobody is watching, so she tries again. She draws an apple. The apple rolls onto her desk, but it isn't red. It's gray, and it tastes like paper. She draws a sunflower. It grows out of the page, but its big petals are gray too.

The cat sits on the windowsill and looks out at the rain. It doesn't play, and it doesn't purr. A gray cat in a gray room on a gray day isn't very happy. So she draws something for the cat: a rainbow, a big one, across the whole page.

The rainbow comes out of the paper and goes up, over the desks, from one wall to the other. It's big and beautiful, but it's gray, and the cat doesn't even turn its head.

Amara has an idea. She takes out her old box of crayons, and she climbs onto her chair. Red, orange, yellow, green, blue and purple: she colors the rainbow stripe by stripe, and the colors stay. There's a little orange left at the end, so she colors one of the cat's ears.

When the bell rings, the rain has stopped, and a bright rainbow is shining over the art room. Under it, a gray cat with one orange ear is sleeping on the windowsill in the sun.