Benny the Penny and the Big Secret

By Margarette McDonald and Philip Edles

Benny the Penny and the Big Secret is a story within a story.
It was Lillies birthday, but instead of being happy,she was miserable.
Her uncle Chris knew it, and he knew what to do. Christopher took
Lillie to his coin room and showed her his most prized possession: a
tarnished old penny he named Benny. Then Lillies uncle showed her
the story he wrote about Benny and what it means to be special
The Big Secret. Lillie read it, and it was exactly what she needed.
You can read Uncle Chriss story too. Its right here in this book.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Trafford Publishing
• Release date: Dec 11, 2012
• ISBN: 9781466971745

Margarette McDonald

The author is a sixteen-year professional caregiver, published writer/researcher, and clinical supervisor with a master’s degree in psychological counseling from Columbia University. He has held positions at Johns Hopkins Hospital, YAI Institute in New York City, and the Shepherd Catastrophic Care Center in Atlanta. As a professional caregiver and clinical supervisor, I have seen it too often: people struggling with difficult and potentially destructive ideals. Being valuable or special (or not) are among these ideals. I was struggling with the notion of value and how it applied to people one day while walking through Central Park in NYC. I sat down to rest a minute and eyed a shiny penny lying in the middle of a pedestrian walkway. I watched for an hour as people walked right by it, and over it, and around it, like it was a leaf or a twig. I won’t say trash because I bet if it were trash, some litter-conscious person would have picked it up. But nobody picked that little penny up. So I asked myself one of those dangerous questions that lead to more and more questions: is a penny worth anything anymore? That led to, what makes any kind of money valuable? For that matter, what makes anything, including people, valuable or not, or special? What, exactly, do we mean when we say a person is special? Is it something we are born with, or can we become special? Does it matter what we look like, where we live, or how much money we have? And if we were special once, do we remain special forever, or can we lose our specialness? All these questions struck me, and I vowed I would find the true meaning of being valuable and special. That is why I wrote Benny the Penny and the Big Secret: to share what I found in a way even children can understand. Pick up a copy. You’ll see what I mean.

Book preview

© Copyright 2005, 2012 Philip Edles.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the written prior permission of the author.

isbn: 978-1-4669-7173-8 (sc)

isbn: 978-1-4669-7175-2 (hc)

isbn: 978-1-4669-7174-5 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2012922896

Trafford rev. 12/05/2012

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Contents

CHAPTER 1   Lillie Turns 10

CHAPTER 2   Benny Revealed

CHAPTER 3   Pass It On

The author dedicates this book to his mom and pop, brother and sister, and his girls.

The illustrator dedicates the book to her four brothers, each amazing in his own way.

Ist Benny pic.jpg

CHAPTER 1

Lillie Turns 10

Lillie came down for breakfast with the same sad look she had all summer.

Good morning, princess, said Lillie’s Uncle. Ten years old today, and I’ve never seen you happier.

Lillie stuck her tongue out as if to say, Very funny, Uncle Chris, but you can’t make me smile, not even on my birthday.

We’ll see about that, thought Uncle Chris. And he stuck his tongue out right back.

Lillie smiled.

That was just like her uncle—a kid in an