Fish In a Tree

By Lynda Mullaly Hunt

Read on the 1/9/2020

Genre- Novel, Fiction

PARAGRAPH 1 Ally has moved from school to school managing to hide her inability to read from her numerous teachers, leaving them all thinking that she was just slow and missbehaved. But in reality she is very smart but just dyslexic, but then her new teacher, Mr Daniels, notices her disability and he strives to help her unlock her potential.

PARAGRAPH 2 A character that I found interesting was Ally’s big brother Travis. I found him interesting because he had dyslexia and struggled with reading and writing like Ally did, but managed to make his way through school and develop his knowledge of mechanics and engineering.  He didn’t let his learning difficulties change the person that he was, and he was a supportive brother to Ally whilst their dad was away at war.  He was an important role model in Ally’s life, he was not just a sibling, but a sibling that takes care of her and looks out for her. “An older brother is older. A big brother looks out for you and smiles when you walk into a room.”

PARAGRAPH 3 An important message that I took from the text is that many people have things going on in their lives that may affect their attitude, personality, and behaviour.  Ally had dyslexia, which meant she couldn’t read, Shay had a mother who was not kind and expected too much from a child, Albert’s challenge was poverty, and Oliver had ADHD. These are all examples from the text, that also happen in real life.  We always need to remember that there will always be people who have these struggles and we need to look out for them. 

PARAGRAPH 4 A challenge that the characters had to face was dyslexia.  The main character Allly has dyslexia, and she didn’t tell anyone about not being able to read and write and having difficulty remembering.  This was challenging because when her teachers asked her to read or write something she would panic and say something stupid, or make up an excuse to get out of it.  This would often result in her being sent to the Principal’s office.  I can relate to this because my sister has dyslexia and I myself have dysgraphia.  I have had trouble in the past with teachers telling me that I am not trying hard enough, and perhaps sometimes I wasn’t trying, but more often than not the work was just too difficult and wasn’t ex[lained properly to me.  I have also had some teachers who have gone out of their way to help me be the best version of myself that I can be, and this makes me want to work harder so I can succeed.

PARAGRAPH 5 I think that the title of this text is appropriate because it is titled “Fish in a tree” and in the text it even says “Everyone is smart in different ways. But if you judge a fish on its ability to climb a tree, it will spend its whole life thinking that it’s stupid.”this quote shows that if you judge someone on their ability to read and write they will live their whole lives believing that they are not good enough, where they may well have fantastic strengths in other areas.

PARAGRAPH 6 I would recommend this book to people of all ages because it shows how some people struggle with dyslexia and other learning difficulties. This would be beneficial to kids with SLD’s(Specific Learning Difficulties) so that they could learn that with practice reading and writing can be easy. This book would also be beneficial for kids without an SLD just so that they can be aware of them and learn to help the kids that have them.it would even be good for kids who are either to young to read or just cant read to have it read to them.