Who Says? Fish In A Tree by Lynda Mullaly Hunt

Getting an award for not being smart enough to deserve it is the worst feeling. Like getting this certificate is going to make me pat myself on the back and transform into a different person. I swear I'll never accept an award that I don't deserve.

Keisha calls my name as I run from the classroom. I run into the bathroom and hide in a stall.

The door opens. "You okay?" Keisha asks.

"No. I'm not."

"Who runs from an award?" Keisha asks.

"I didn't win it for real. Mr. Daniels is just trying to be nice. You don't understand. Go away."

"You're right, Ally. I don't understand."

"Look," I say. "Imagine if every time you got on your bike, you had to worry if the wheels would come off. And they do. But you still have to ride."

"Why in the world are you talking about bikes and wheels coming off?"

"My brain," I say, leaning my head against the cold wall. "My brain will never do what I want it to do."

Ally has a great memory for anything she hears. Math is easy for her, and she's a talented artist. Everyone says so. But letters and words seem to wiggle across the page when she tries to read them. To hide her difference from everyone else, Ally has a whole bagful of tricks to distract attention from her inability to read, which means she spends a lot of time hiding in the bathroom or sitting in the Principal's office. Her teacher Mrs. Hall and her hard-working mother just tell her she needs to try harder.

But Ally knows that trying harder to read the wiggly letters only makes her brain freeze like a broken Etch-A-Sketch. She's in constant fear of being discovered and risking the scorn of the whole class, led by Shay, who might as well have CLASS MEAN GIRL on a sign around her neck. But when Mrs. Hall takes a leave of absence, things get better when Mr. Daniels comes to take her place. Mr. Daniels seems to value what she can do well, and without a word to the class, he changes her assignments to make them possible to complete. Slowly, Ally begins to understand herself and see that she's not the only one who doesn't always fit in. As her friend Keisha tells her...

"Look.  You don't fit in. I don't fit in. Albert doesn't fit in. Who says who fits in anyway? Who wants to fit in with people like Shay?"

You can't judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree is the theme of Lynda Mullaly Hunt's latest, Fish in a Tree (Penguin Group, 2015).  Recognizing individual differences mean that accepting our own and others' abilities and deficiencies goes deeper than just giving the nod to "diversity." Writing for middle graders, Hunt's singling out archetypes such as Shay, the mean queen bee, Albert the class brain, Keisha the street-smart black girl, and Jessica, the needy wannabe who apes the "popular" kid, may appear a bit obvious, and it seems a bit strange that a veteran teacher and principal can't recognize a case of dyslexia right under their noses, but Hunt is not writing for adults; she is writing for youngsters for whom these are brand new problems. And with her new understanding that her reading problem is just one among those her classmates share, Ally comes to see that in a way, her mom and Mrs. Hall were right--she does have a lot of hard work ahead. What is different is that she knows she's not the only one and she's not afraid to ask for help any longer.

Hunt's latest book is a worthy companion to the recent notable classroom-centered novels that help preteen students understand and deal with differences, their own and those of others in the school setting. Notable among these are Rob Buyea's Because of Mr. Terupt, Jennifer L. Holms' The Fourteenth Goldfish, Ann M. Martin's Rain Reign, and R. J. Palacio's Wonder.

Word Power: The Wild Book by Margarita Engle

Word-blindness,
The doctor hisses it
like a curse.
--Some children can see everything
except words.

But mama
does not listen.

For Fefa, words on the page are like living things that leap and crawl and slide away from her mind, off of the page, and refuse to be tamed. Her classmates laugh when she is made to read aloud, her brothers and sisters scoff and tease, but Fefa's mother loves poetry and knows the power that words have, and she refuses to accept the doctor's prognosis that Fefa will never read, never be happy in school. She gives her a book, not one filled with those slippery words, but with blank pages.

"Think of this little book
as a garden,
Mama suggests.

Throw wildflower seeds
all over each page she advises.
Let the words sprout
like seedlings.
Then... watch
as your wild
diary grows."

And grow it does. Through the turbulent times in Cuba following the Spanish-American War, despite bandits and kidnappers roaming the countryside, Fefa tries to spend some time writing in her book every day, first writing the names of people in her family, her favorite cousin Carmen's short and friendly name, and one day she sees that she is able to write her own long and wigglesome name:

Josefa de la Caridad Uria Pena.

Seeing her own name on her page, under her command, gives Fefa hope. Go slowly. Have patience, her mama counsels and gradually Fefa begins to recognize some words that are familiar and friendly, and then she begins to see them as full of syllables that she can decode, slowly, maddeningly slowly, but still finding the word, the meaning inside them.

When she receives an autograph book for her eleventh birthday, she still wonders if she will ever be able to read what her friends write, ever be able to read a love note if some boy ever likes her enough to write there. But then, their handyman Fausto offers to write in her book, and she realizes that she can read it, slowly and with patience, and she does not like his words, speaking of her as a rose in his garden. It seems words are not always friendly, and she puts the gift book away, telling no one.

Still, slowly and with patience, she writes daily in her wild garden book, and she realizes that she is learning to write and to read.

The loops of my letters
are almost beautiful.

They look like the tendrils
of a garden vine as it climbs
over a tall fence
to go exploring.

But when the family returns from a week of camping on the beach, they find their cattle tied up and waiting for rustlers to take them away under threat of capturing all the children in her family for ransom. Fefa finds the ransom note first and realizes that she recognizes those twisted letters. Fausto is the outlaw, and when she shows her father his poem in her autograph book, Fefa is the family's hero whose slow and careful reading has identified the threat and enabled his capture. The family is safe, but Fefa sees something else in her success. She is a reader.

My wild book is full.
I am surprised to discover
that I can no longer bear
the thought of an entire day
without the natural flow
of twining,
vinelike words...

In a beautiful free-verse novel, The Wild Book (Harcourt, 2012), forthcoming in mid-March, Margarita Engle tells her own grandmother's story, how her own mother showed her the way to escape the walled garden of dyslexia. "A beautiful tale of perseverance," says Kirkus in their starred review.

Margarita Engle is both a Pura Belpre and Newbery Honor Award winner. Her earlier books include The Surrender Tree: Poems of Cuba's Struggle for Freedom The Poet Slave of Cuba: A Biography of Juan Francisco Manzano (Pura Belpre Medal Book Author (Awards)) and Hurricane Dancers: The First Caribbean Pirate Shipwreck.