Author, character "coming of age"
Author Donan Berg in "Lucia's Fantasy World" creates a story that follows a young girl, Lucia, as she learns of her full potential while experiencing coming-of-age moments while trying to rescue a sick friend facing death. (Literary Titan, Five Stars)
When asked for his inspiration, Author Donan Berg expanded upon his own childhood. He said a phrase and the experience of having no crayons when starting first grade stood out.
The phrase, he attributed to the Orient, was: "Fall down seven times, stand up eight."
His first-grade experience required a little background.
He recounted that he'd spent six months with his mother and brother in Ireland, the country of his birth, before he and his mother had, years before, joined her husband and his father in the United States heartland. As a rambunctious five-year-old in Ireland, he'd played with cousins and explored the creek that flowed through the garden behind his grandmother's candy store. In doing so, he'd missed kindergarten in the United States.
On returning to his hometown to begin first grade, he learned that his classmates had in kindergarten received a new box of sixteen crayons to be carried over for use in first grade. Thus, in his having missed kindergarten, he had no box of crayons. To compensate, his first-grade teacher removed a crayon discard box from a windowsill and gave it to him for his exclusive personal use.
To this day, he can still recall his fellow students teasing him for having to use stubby crayons without sharpened points.
However, he was happy. He took pleasure in the positive.
While his classmates had only one crayon of each color, he laid out and counted six reds, eight greens, et cetera, many more crayons than the sixteen his classmates were limited to.
Years later, he adopted his youthful experience in Lucia's Fantasy World. Lucia, although her parents are split, has basic needs fulfilled. She has shelter in an apartment, food enough not to starve, and enough clothing to keep her warm. Although she might not be a school "glamor" girl, she has fun snow sledding with Johnny. He shares his sled and doesn't complain his one leg is in a metal brace.
Yet, in her own mind, Lucia longs for material things her mother can't afford, especially a Christmas tree. Friend Omar has access to multiple Christmas trees as a Boy Scout working at a site that sells trees to support his troop, however, he can't just give her a tree.
Lucia is forced to rely on her own determination, to build a trust in her own ability, and to learn the value of human relationships. In her journey, the fantasy world she encounters and conquers teaches her lessons of survival and exposes her to values applicable to her physical world. The experience also brings forth her hidden talent.
Was she wrong to long for material things like a Christmas tree? No. Lucia's desires are, by themselves, neither right nor wrong. It's the pathway to understanding one's morality and the relationship to others that's important.
As Author Donan Berg would explain, material items like crayons have no intrinsic value beyond coloring, yet sometimes they do. The item gives the youth who is given it but one perspective on their place in society and the world at large. Society promotes a standard. You're given a box of crayons. You're to be limited to this box.
But are you?
What if you can achieve the same or greater artistry with discards?
What if anything does the discard tell us? What role does human determination play? Shouldn't it require us to do better than good?
Check out history. Well along in the advance of civilization, man communicated by chiseling images on rock. How troubled would we all be if one minor error in what we sought to express required us to begin again with a new rock, a new boulder?
Then again, how often are we advised to wipe the slate clean?
A conundrum? Yes. Is there one in Lucia's Fantasy World? (www.authorsden.com/visit/viewwork.asp?id=79192 or an e-book at www.smashwords.com/books/view/1142569)
Yes. Yet, to read Lucia's Fantasy World may personally help.
