the selfish peacock Written By: Elizabeth Manlick Designed By: Maureen Lutz
There once was a peacock named Ella. She had the most beautiful feathers. They were long, with different blues and greens, and a large black eye shape on each tip. She took such great pride in these feathers. Her bright blue body was always held up high with pride.
Every morning she would wake up from her perch and groom her beautiful feathers. After hours of grooming she would sit in a tree and sing with the most gorgeous voice. She would sing loudly and proudly for all to hear. All the animals loved to hear her sing.
One day a young tiger cub came into the jungle and heard the beautiful song. He went in search of it. He saw the beautiful bird perched in a tree and was about to go and talk to her. Suddenly a little chipmunk came up and screamed,
“What are you doing?” The cub said, “I was going to go talk to the bird in the tree.” “You cannot do that! Ella will yell at you! She hates being interrupted!”
The tiger cub decided to wait in the forest till Ella finished singing to talk to her. When the light started to darken, Ella finally stopped her songs. When she reached the ground the cub approached shyly. “Hello. I just wanted to tell you that I love your singing and admire your feathers.
I have never seen anything so pretty!” Ella looked at the cub with her black, beady eyes and said, “They are pretty aren’t they?” She then turned and began walking away.
“Wait!” the cub cried. “Could I have one of your beautiful feathers to take home to show my family?” Ella could not believe her ears. “You want to take one of my feathers? They are mine! Allof them!” she screamed.
The cub backed away as Ella continued her rant. “How dare you think you could have one!”
The young cub turned away with tears in his eyes and ran to find his family. Ella went back to her sleeping perch still very angry. “These feathers are mine. I deserve to keep them,� she thought to herself.
The anger did not fade till she finally fell asleep.
That morning Ella woke up and did her daily grooming. Once done, she went to her regular singing perch and got ready to sing. All of a sudden she belted out the first note but something was terribly wrong. She could not sing! The songs were terrible. Ella could not understand what happened! She went back home quickly before anyone could see her. She fell into a restless sleep that night.
While asleep she dreamed of the tiger cub. He was telling his parents about the mean and selfish peacock. “I thought she was so beautiful! When I finally got the nerve to talk to her, she was so mean.�
The parents looked at their cub and said, “We are sorry. Sometimes the outer beauty of a person hides the darkness in the inside.�
When Ella woke up she realized she lost her beautiful voice because she did not deserve it. She felt terrible and decided to go find the cub. After days of searching she found him.
He tried running away in fear but she called out, “Please stop! I want to say I am sorry!” She came up to him and plucked the biggest, prettiest feather she could find and gave it to him. “I am so sorry for being mean to you!” she said. “I understand now that my inner beauty is more important than what is on the outside. I have decided to be a better peacock to everyone.”
From then on she was kind to everyone around. Everyone thought of Ella as a dear friend and she was always willing to help others. She never ran out of feathers to give because they would grow back.
Her voice never came back but she was okay with that because she had something better, friendship.
This book was produced in the fall of 2015 at St. Norbert College in De Pere, Wiscoonsin. A collaboration between education and design students. This book is in typeset Skia and was printed through the college print center. This story was written by Elizabeth Manlick and illustrated by Maureen Lutz using cutouts, scanning, and digital editing.