About the Author
Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen are the co-creators of the bestselling Chicken Soup for the Soul series.
Mark Victor Hansen and Jack Canfield are the co-creators of the bestselling Chicken Soup for the Soul series.
Patty Hansen (Newport Beach, CA) is the coauthor of Chicken Soup for the Kid's Soul and Chicken Soup for the Preteen Soul and is the founder of www.preteenplanet, a site for today's tweens.
Irene Dunlap (Costa Mesa, CA) coauthored Chicken Soup for Chicken Soup for the Kid's Soul, Chicken Soup for the Preteen Soul, and Chicken Soup for the Soul Christmas Treasury for Kids.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
The Twenty-Dollar Bill
When my mom and dad said that we could adopt a couple of kittens, I jumped at the chance to have some soft, cuddly animals around the house. So off we went to the Humane Society where there were a lot of animals up for adoption.
The first thing I noticed was that there was not a lot of room for the animals and not a lot of supplies to care for them. Even though they didn't have much, the people who worked there cared about the animals more than anything, and they did their best for them. Still, it seemed they had just barely enough food and medicine to keep the animals healthy.
When we started looking around, I saw a lot of animals and fell in love with each of them. But my family and I finally settled on adopting two kittens we named Sox and Sierra. We went up to the front desk to sign the papers for them, and that's when I noticed a box on the counter. The Humane Society ws hoping to get enough donations to buy more supplies for the animals and also build a new building to help even more abandoned animals.
We finished up and took our new kittens home, where they were sure to get a lot of love. Later that day my mom and I went shopping, and as we were walking through the parking lot at the store, I noticed a green piece of paper three spaces away from our car. It was kind of wet, but it looked like it could be a dollar bill, so I walked over and picked it up. It wasn't a dollar bill--it was a twenty-dollar bill!
When I got home, I dried it off and thought about what to do with it. I considered spending it on a toy and a lot of other things. Right then, Sox climbed up into my lap, and I knew what I was going to do with the money.
I asked my mom to take me back to the Humane Society so that I could put the money in the donation box. The lady at the counter smiled and thanked me, and I felt really good about what I did.
If the Humane Society does raise enough money to build a new building, I will know that I helped many more animals that will come to live there one day--hopefully, only until someone comes along and lovingly adopts them like we did with Sox and Sierra.
--Mallory McGinty, 10
©2007. Mallory McGinty. All rights reserved. Reprinted from Chicken Soup for the
Child's Soul by Jack Canfield, Mark Victor Hansen, Patty Hansen, and Irene Dunlap. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the written permission of the publisher. Publisher: Health Communications, Inc., 3201 SW 15th Street, Deerfield Beach, FL 33442.
