REGINA'S BIG MISTAKE

When Mrs. Li asks everyone to draw a rain forest, Regina is paralyzed by caution, coupled with an inability to reproduce the beautiful scene in her mind's eye; worse, Mrs. Li chides her for crumpling her paper after Regina makes a ""mistake""--an imperfect flower. Another try brings another error, this one managed more creatively by following Mrs. Li's advice to ""draw around it"": the lopsided sun becomes a moon in a night scene, a picture the whole class admires. This sensitive portrayal of a quiet, careful child managing to cope with normal classroom teasing and with a teacher whose no-nonsense attitude might have stifled creativity is illustrated with cheerful realism.