The Magic Beads

the long version

It's seven-year-old Lillian's first day at a new school, and she's got butterflies in her tummy, but those butterflies turn into grasshoppers when she learns she has to bring something for Show and Tell at the end of the week! Lillian and her mother have just moved away from Lillian's abusive father and into a family shelter, leaving behind all of their possessions. Every day that Lillian anxiously watches her classmates bring toys with which she has nothing to compare, the creatures in her stomach change and grow, until finally, she realizes that imagination can make anything magical, even an ordinary string of beads.