One day, Jenny is taking her first art class at school. She is very excited.
The art teacher Mrs Minton, tells the children to draw the flowers at the front of the class.
"Don't worry if your picture doesn't look exactly(精确地) like the picture by the person next to you," she says. "The important thing is to draw what you see."
Jenny works very hard. She spends so long drawing that her hand begins to hurt from holding the brush. She puts the brush down for a moment to rest and looks at the picture next to hers.
"That's really good", she says to Carrie. Carrie's picture is small and nice. Every flower is just like the real flowers at the front of the class.
"Thanks," says Carrie. She looks over at Jenny's picture. "Oh! What happens to yours?"
"What do you mean?" asks Jenny. She looks at her own picture. It is very different from Carrie's. It covers the whole page and the colors are brighter than the real flowers.
"What a picture!" says Carrie. "Do you pour(倾倒) the paint(颜料)?"
"No," says Jenny in a low voice. "I draw what I see, just like Mrs Minton says."
"It's OK, you know," says Carrie. "Not everyone is good at art."
Mrs Minton hears what Carrie says, and she comes over to look at Jenny's work.
"Oh, my god !" says Mrs Minton. "I think it's wonderful, Jenny. It's so full of color, it shows a feeling of happiness."
Jenny is very surprised. "But Mrs Minton, it doesn't look anything like the flowers you tell us to draw." Carrie says.
"Maybe not to you, Carrie. Everyone sees different things when they look at the world." She shows them a picture in a book. "This is a picture an artist drew of his own face. This is how he saw himself".
"But. . . but. . . it's just a few lines," said Carrie. "It doesn't look anything like a real person."
Mrs Minton turns to Jenny. "You should read this book. Jenny. There are a lot of different kinds of pictures from famous artists. Some of the pictures are very strange(奇怪的), but they show the way the artists look at the world"
That evening, Jenny says to her mother, "I'm going to be an artist when I grow up."