Lost in the excitement

Marisa O’Neil

A few dozen eggs came in au naturel to Megan Lord’s first-grade class

at Pomona Elementary School and left well-dressed and ready for

Easter.

Two days before Spring Break began, Lord added some color to her

students’ reading lesson with some Easter egg dying. While one group

of students read with Lord, a second group bellied up to a bar of

mason jars filled with brightly colored dyes.

Joseline Arreaga, 7, went straight for the red. Mario Salas, 6,

grabbed blue and Dulce Barragan, 6, selected a bright pink.

Volunteer Connie Cherry picked up a wire dipper and demonstrated

the proper egg-dying technique to the students. Mario dunked his

first egg in the blue dye and concentrated carefully as he lifted it

back out.

“Like this?” Dulce asked as she started to lift her egg, colored

with a faint wash of pink, out of the dye.

“Leave it in a little longer and go pick another color,” Cherry

suggested.

Dulce took the jar of green dye and lowered another egg into it.

She looked up to see what the other children were using.

“I want that one,” she said, pointing at Mario’s blue.

“I want that one,” Joseline said, pointing at Dulce’s pink, which

matched Joseline’s sweater almost perfectly.

Meanwhile, Mario’s was ready. He took out his egg, colored a

perfect robin’s-egg blue.

The girls gasped at its beauty.

“Look at that, I want that!” Dulce exclaimed.

“Me too!” Joseline added.

At Lord’s table, students took turns reading from “Lost!” a story

about a boy and a bear who get lost in Manhattan. In the story, the

boy takes the bear to the park, for hot dogs and on an elevator --

shocking fellow riders.

Why, Lord asked, would that be such a surprise?

“A bear would eat you,” said 7-year-old Ricardo Gutierrez, whose

language skills belied having been in the country from Mexico since

only October.

Then it was 7-year-old Ron Urquiza’s turn to read. Jennifer Rios,

6, sat across from him with her book open, but her mind was clearly

elsewhere.

Jennifer leaned back in her seat, watching the other children dye

their eggs, and waited for her group to head over for some decorating

of their own.