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Lory Dory
Illustrated by Sonia Dearling
Written by Brendon O’Neill
Designed by Arthur Attwell
with the help of the Book Dash participants in Johannesburg on 27 June 2015.
ISBN: 978-1-928318-23-1
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One night Grandpa was tucking me in.
His hands were soft and his hair was thin.

‘I’m going to tell you a special story,
about a girl named Lory Dory.’

You couldn’t see Lory Dory at all
because she was born invisible.

You’d only see Lory when rain hit her head,

or when she was curled under blankets in bed.

Lory was left out of all the kids’ games.
They teased her and they called her names.

‘Look, it’s Lory. The Imaginary Friend!
She’s not like us, she’s just pretend!’

One day at school, a boy wanted to know:
‘How do you look? I only see you in snow.’

‘Can you paint yourself?’
Lory knew that she could.

But not in the same way
the boy thought she would.

Lory painted her body
with all that she loved
from the world all around
and the sky up above.

She painted herself every day with such pride,
to bring out the person who she was inside.

‘I know I’m invisible
and hard to see.
So I painted these pictures
to show the real me.’

‘Are you making this up, Gramps? Is this story true?’
‘Lory is real – real as me, real as you.’

When Grandpa had left me, I can’t quite be sure,
but I think I saw Lory just outside my door.