Coat of Many Colors

Coat of Many Colors by Dolly Parton, 1969, 1994, 2016. It’s fall, and a little girl needs a new coat. Her family doesn’t have much money, but someone gives her mother a box of rags, which her mother sews into a patchwork coat for the girl. As she sews, the mother tells the girl the Bible story of Joseph and the Coat of Many Colors. The little girl loves her new coat, associating it with the Bible story and her mother’s love for her. When the girl goes to school in her new coat, other kids tease her because having an improvised coat made from other people’s rags is a sign of poverty. The other kids know that her mother made her that coat because she couldn’t afford to buy one. However, the girl looks at the situation differently. Rather than focus on what her family couldn’t buy, she loves what they gave her. The coat is a sign of her mother’s love and sewing skill. Whether a person is rich or poor depends not just on what they have but on their feelings about what they have. When a…