Good Book - “Fish in a Tree” by Lynda Mullaly Hunt

Fish in a Tree is a fictitious novel about three kids: Ally, Keisha, and Albert, who do remarkable things when they overcome challenges and conflicts.

The scheme begins with Ally, who has been so crafty that she fools many smart people. Every time she lands in a new school, she is able to hide her learning disabilities by creating clever distractions. She is horrified to ask for help. When Mr. Daniels, her new teacher, comes along, he doesn’t just send Ally to the office when she creates distractions, but he finds a way to help her. He invites her to play chess with him after school. Ally ends up liking chess, making the plans in her head, and trying to capture Mr. Daniel’s pawns. Mr. Daniels sees Ally as the bright, creative kid underneath the trouble maker. With his help, Ally learns not to be so hard on herself and that her learning disabilities is nothing to be ashamed of. As her confidence grows, Ally feels free to be herself and the world starts opening up with possibilities. Along the way, she not only learns to overcome her learning disabilities but also that there are more to people, including herself, than a label.

Mr. Daniels says to Ally “Everyone is smart in different ways. But if you judge a fish on its ability to climb a tree, it’ll spend it’s whole life thinking it’s stupid” (p. 159). She learns a very important lesson, not to care about what people say about her no matter what. “My grandpa used to say to be careful with eggs and words, because neither can ever be fixed. The older I get the more I realize how smart my grandpa was.” (p. 159) Toward the end of the book, Shay’s friends realize they don’t like being mean to Ally so they befriend her.

Two other students from Ally’s class, Keisha and Albert, befriend Ally. It turns out Albert has secrets of his own. He comes to school every day with a few new bruises. Keisha is the brave one, she stands up for her friends when the mean girl, Shay, and her gang come after them.

The main theme of the story is friendship because when Ally and Albert are being bullied by Shay, Keisha stands up for them. One day, on the walk home from school, Ally, Keisha, and Albert are confronted the boys who have been beating Albert up. When Albert tells the boys to go away and stay away, the boys push Keisha to the ground. Albert full on screams at the guys and punches one of them in the gut. “My dad always said violence is something to avoid at all costs,” Albert tells us, “But he has also said that you never hit a girl. And so I had to weigh the two. I just…” Then he stops walking and he’s wide-eyed looking at me. It gives me a chill the way he does it “But really.” he says, “it just made everything hurt inside to see them hurt you two, and I would have done anything in the universe to stop it.” As starts to fitting in, surprising things begin to happen in Ally’s classroom that shows her that there is much more to her, and everyone than a label.  The message in the book is that great minds don’t think alike.

I recommend this book to students’ grades five and up, including adults, teachers and parents. Fish in a Tree can teach how to deal with bullies and dyslexia.

SOLVING THE SECRET CODE:

Mr. Daniels wrote on the board for the students to solve.

Ju jt nvdi ibsefs up sfbe xifo zvp epou ibwf uif dpef.

Hints to find the answer.

Each letter stands for another letter in the alphabet and follows a pattern. So, for example, if I told you that every letter in this word < ALD > was really the letter that is three letters after it in the alphabet,  would really be < DOG >. The code follows a pattern similar to this.

Writing out the entire alphabet for yourself and experimenting will make this easier to solve.

Don’t quit if you find this hard. It’s supposed to be hard and it feels AWESOME to solve something difficult.

From Lynda Mullaly Hunt web
http://www.lyndamullalyhunt.com/books/fish-in-a-tree/

Wisdom quotes from

“Fish in a Tree” by Lynda Mullaly Hunt

There are a lot of wisdom in this book. Here are a few of my favorite quotes, which can be appreciated anytime by anybody.

• “Everybody is a Genius. But If You Judge a Fish by Its Ability to Climb a Tree, It Will Live Its Whole Life Believing that It is Stupid.” Albert Einstein
• "Great minds don't think alike."
• "Sometimes the bravest thing you can do is ask for help." - C. Connors
• "My grandpa used to say to be careful with eggs and words, because neither can ever be fixed."
• "I want to give him an answer, but I have both too many words and not enough."
• "Just because someone says it doesn't make it true."
• “A coin with a flaw in it makes it far more valuable than regular coins.”
• "I guess maybe 'I'm having trouble' is not the same as 'I can't.'"
• "I’ve been lucky all along but didn’t see it.”
• “Well…alone is a way to be. It’s being by yourself with no one else around. And it can be good or bad. And it can be a choice…. But being lonely is never a choice. It’s not about who is with you or not. You can feel lonely when you are alone, but the worst kind of lonely is when you’re in a room full of people, but you’re still alone. Or you feel like you are anyway.” 
• “You say that you'll grow up to be nobody. But logically.. if nobody's perfect... well then, you must be perfect.” 
• “One thing's for sure. We're not gonna fit in, but we're gonna stand out" - Keisha” 
• “Alice in Wonderland - a book about living in a world where nothing makes sense made perfect sense to me" -Ally”
• “I believe that the things we put numbers on are not necessarily the things that count the most. you can't measure the stuff that makes us human.” 
• “An older brother is older. A big brother looks out for you and smiles when you walk into a room.”
• “I believe that the things we put numbers on are not necessarily the things that count the most. you can't measure the stuff that makes us human.” 
• “I decide that the craziest, strangest, most unbelievable thing I could ever draw is me doing something right.”
• “You can't make people unhear something. I should be used to this, but it still takes a piece out of me every time.” 
• “I stand tall, but everything inside shrinks. The thing is, I feel real bad.”
• “She doesn't get it. Being funny when you don't mean to be is terrible. Having to laugh at yourself along with everyone else is humiliating.”
• “And I wish I was more like Albert. Seeing him shuffle away in those sneakers makes me want to be better. I'm not perfect, but at least I'm not mean. And then my heart sinks because I realize that I just was. I guess I did it because I was lonely. Now I know that there are worse things than being lonely.”
• “Every word is another shovelful of dirt from the hole I've dug for myself. So I figure my best bet is to shut my mouth.”
• “When I was younger, I loved math. Everything about math. But in school, math now has letters. Like what does x equal? There are also long stories with characters, and although the story is supposed to end with some number, all the words block my path to getting there.” 
• “Rain, rain falling down, Down, down on the ground, All the birds go in the trees, They don't like the rain, you see.” 
• “Reading for me is like when I drop something and my fingers scramble to catch it and just when I think I’ve got it, I don’t. If trying to read helped, I’d be a genius.” 
• “After they leave, I look at the three of us and think about how there are three primary colors. Yellow, blue, and red. Those three colors create every other color ever.”
• “You're talking like a fool saying I don't understand what it's like to be different. But the thing is...I'm only different to the people who see with the wrong eyes. And I don't care what people like that think.”
• “What do you like, then?” “Buffalo wings,” I say. He laughs a little. “What do you like about school?” “Leaving.”