You
Are Special
By
Max Lucado
Illustrated by Sergio Martinez
Review by: Angela
Vargas
This is a beautiful story, illustrating
God's unconditional love for each of us. It also teaches that only
what you and God think, matters; not what everyone else thinks.
The story begins with a woodcarver named, Eli. He has carved an
entire village of wooden people called Wemmicks. They are, of
course, human-like, in that they each look and behave differently.
There are tall ones and short ones, big noses and small noses, shiny
paint and peeling paint. Each and every day, the Wemmicks spend
their time on one task: distributing stickers amongst themselves.
There are two kinds. There are stars for the pretty and talented
ones. There are gray dots for the not so pretty and talented ones.
A young fellow by the name of Punchinello has somehow managed to collect
a mass number of gray dots, and sadly, no stars. Other Wemmicks
continually bombarded Punchinello with comments about how he obviously
wasn't a good Wemmick. He soon came to believe them.
One day he met a beautiful young Wemmick that surprisingly had not only
no dots, but no stars either! He could not figure this out.
Her name was Lucia. Wemmicks had tried to give her stickers, but
they would only fall off. Punchinello decided that was how he
wanted to be; "I don't want anyone else's marks." He
asked Lucia how she did it. She told him to go see Eli. Now,
Punchinello had no idea who Eli was and that he had created him.
He was nervous and afraid when he entered Eli's house, but Eli soon
bestilled his fears. Eli explained that he loved Punchinello
because he had made him and that only what he thought mattered.
The Wemmicks are just like you he said, and have no right to judge you.
I think you are pretty special, Eli told him. No one had ever
treated Punchinello this way and he was not quite sure how to react.
Eli continued on to explain that the stickers only stick if you let
them. As Punchinello left, he thought about all that Eli had told
him, and one, solitary sticker floated to the ground.
I
highly recommend this book for ages 4-7.
Buy
Now
