When Jenny of California was still a little girl, her parents let her pick out an American Girl doll. She picked one that had the same hair color and style as her.

“She looked like me and I felt there was a piece of me in her,” Jenny, 17, said. “You see yourself in a doll and it’s really special to have that connection.”

But what about children with rare medical conditions who don’t look like anyone else? One day in January this year, Jenny read a story about doll designer Amy Jandrisevits. Her “A Doll Like Me” project makes look-alike dolls for children with disabilities（残疾）. Pacheco wanted to make similar dolls.

Over the past several months, Jenny has designed and sewn（缝制）cloth dolls for four local   kids who have birthmarks, surgical scars（手术疤痕）, or other physical features（特征）. Jenny asked the kids about their favorite sports and hobbies. She also watched doll-making videos and attended sewing camp.

After she got her own sewing machine, she taught herself to sew blankets, skirts and clothes for the dolls. She designed her own patterns（图案）and figured out how to recreate the children’s appearances. It was important to her that the children recognize themselves in the dolls. However, their differences were not the most noticeable feature.

“I really value（重视）the beauty in little things,” Jenny said. “ Each of these kids is so special. I hope through these dolls they can see themselves in a new light and really enjoy their beauty. ‘Dolls’ can be different.”

One morning, a blind boy sat on the steps of a building with a hat by his feet. He held a sign said, “I am blind. Please help me.”

There were only a few coins in the hat. A man was walking by. He took out a few coins from his pocket and dropped them into the hat. He then took the sign, turned it around, and wrote some words on it. He put the sign back, so everyone who walked by could see the new words.

Soon the hat began to fill up. A lot more people were giving money to the blind boy. That afternoon, the man who changed the sign came to see how things were. The boy recognized his footsteps and asked, “Are you the one who changed my sign in the morning? What did you write?”

The man said, “I only wrote the truth. I said what you said, but in another way.”

What he wrote was, “Today is a beautiful day, but I cannot see it.”

Do you think the first sign and the second sign were saying the same thing?

Of course both signs told people the boy was blind. But the first sign simply told people to help by putting some money in the hat. The second sign told people that they were able to enjoy the beauty of the day, but the boy could not enjoy it because he was blind.

The first sign simply said the boy was blind, while the second sign told people they were so lucky that they were not blind.

We can learn a lot from this simple story.

The first is: Treasure what you have. Someone else has less. Try your best to help those who need your help.

The second is: Be creative, think differently. There is always a better way.

Ji Gong the “Strange” Monk

His clothes and hat were worn out. He often had a bottle of wine in one hand, and either a fan or his shoe in the other. Now, have you found out who he is?

For more than 800 years, Ji Gong, a household monk（僧侣）in China, has continued to be deeply loved by people.

Ji Gong was born with a name Li Xiuyuan in an official’s family. When he was 18 years old, his parents died. The man then went to a Buddhist temple in Hangzhou and became a monk.

Li soon became bored with life in the temple. Against the rules of Buddhism, he ate meat and drank wine. He was also often seen walking in the streets in dirty clothes. The other monks in the temple all laughed at him.

However, Li didn’t forget the teachings of the Buddha. Whenever he met poor or sick people in the streets. he tried to help them. For this reason, people started to call him “Ji Gong” (“Ji” means “to help” and “Gong” means “an important man”).

Ji Gong gained some special powers, one of which was the ability to see into the future. In one story, he foresaw that a landslide（山体滑坡）was about to hit a nearby village. He tried to warn the villagers, but nobody would believe the drunk monk. Just then. he saw a wedding（婚礼）. Ji Gong took away the bride and ran out of town. Every villager ran after him. Suddenly, rocks from the top of a nearby mountain rolled down. The village was destroyed in the blink of an eye. Thanks to Ji Gong, no one was killed in the landslide.

So we should not judge people just by their look. For Ji Gong and many other people, their goodness lies not on the outside but inside of their hearts.