One of the simplest, yet most touching, entries that we received was from Lorelei Shannon, a rising junior at Spring Woods High School. Lorelei’s book, titled “Fine Foreign Friend” tells of a Jewish exchange student (from Israel) who comes to the United States for the first time. In a touching tale, he befriends an American student and they discuss the importance of religious tolerance.
We presented Lorelei with an iPad at her school’s award ceremony a few weeks ago, where she received a standing ovation from several hundred students and parents. Congratulations to Lorelei!
The complete book can be found here. (It’s definitely worth a quick 5-minute read)
And a blog post by Lorelei, discussing her experience, can be found here:
I really enjoyed creating my comic book knowing that it would be enjoyed by many others. When coming up with the story, I had to think it over carefully because I wanted a story that was both funny and meaningful. I decided to make the story about tolerance of Judaism because of how the world did not tolerate it in the past and some still don’t today. Although his name isn’t mentioned in the story, the main character, Punk ( I know it’s an odd name, but I came up with the character when I was 12, and the name stuck), is a character from my comic that I’ve been working on for 4 years. I write and draw the comic for my school newspaper.Being a Christian, I’ve always made it my priority to keep my comics clean and funny so anyone can enjoy them. I enjoyed participating in the EZ comics comic book competition because it was a chance to get my comic out there for people to see and to share the importance or religious tolerance.