With one simple donation, Gary Fox Jr. is teaching an invaluable lesson to the students at Troy Elementary School.

“It’s always exciting to me to have anybody in our school family become a published author,” said Geoffrey Spann, principal at the school. “We tell our children then when they write anything, they’re authors. Now, they know someone who is an author and they can see their classmate, Lyndsey, who contributed an illustration to the book.”

Fox authored and illustrated “Tnetnoc: A Special Star,” a children’s book filled with lessons about God, life and learning to be content no matter your place in life. On Tuesday, he and his daughter, Lyndsey, donated a copy of the book to the TES library.

“I’ve been working on this book for five years,” Fox said. “The story came to me at Christmas one year, at a time when I’d just lost my job.”

That year, Fox said he found himself looking around at church, thinking about others in the congregation and their state in life and feeling a bit sorry for himself.

“I was sizing people up and thinking, ‘here I am unemployed.’ The next thing I know here’s this story coming together,” he said.

Fox kept the story to himself for nearly five years.

This spring, “the urge was so strong to publish it,” he said. “Now, you turn on the news and see there are 50,000 people from Citibank losing their jobs, automakers cutting jobs … it’s a message that seems timely.”

Fox lives in Troy with his wife, Sheri, and their four children, Michael, Nathan, Reilly and Lyndsey. He is an active in the Children’s Ministry of Southside Baptist Church.

Fox’s book is available online at Amazon.com or through his website,www/garylfoxjr.com.