New Favorite

Remember when I said Almost Home was in the running to be my favorite Reading Olympics book?  Well, I was wrong.  My new favorite is Lynda Mullaly Hunt's Fish in a Tree.  To quote my students, 'I can't even!"  I can't.  I don't have the words to describe how fantastic this book is.  Ally is a student who doesn't understand why the letters move whenever she looks at them, why reading gives her headaches, and why everyone else seems to get it but she just can't.  School is exhausting and painful and the other students are just plain mean.

That is until there is a new teacher, Mr.Davis.  I have to be honest, I cried reading this book.  Teaching only learning support reading, with students who believe (often incorrectly) that they are bad readers I strive every day to be a Mr. Davis.  I want to shove this book into the hands of every teacher, every person.  You must read this book.

Rather than give you my summary I want to share some of my favorite quotes from the book.  There's a lot so you should probably just stop reading this post here and go read the book yourself. Except for this quote because it's something I try to instill in my students each and every day: "I guess maybe, 'I'm having trouble' is not the same as 'I can't."  

I'll even do my closing line early.

Having grit...that's kids stuff.

"No matter how many times I have prayed and worked and hoped, reading for me is still like trying to make sense of a can of alphabet soup that's been dumped on a plate.  I just don't know how other people do it."

"Most teachers seem to like their students to be all the same-perfect and quiet.  Mr. Daniels actually seems to like that we're different"

"seeing him shuffle away in those sneakers makes me want to be better.  I'm not perfect, but at least I'm not mean."

"I can't help thinking about the girl on the train and how she feels-like she wants to do so much but she's held back, and it makes her feel heavy and angry."

"People act like the words 'slow reader' tell them everything that's inside.  Like I'm a can of soup and they can just read the list of ingredients and know everything about me.   There's lots of stuff about the soup inside that they can't put on the label, like how it smells and tastes and makes you feel warm when you eat it.  There's got to be more to me than just a kid who can't read well."

"but being lonely is never a choice.  It's not about how is with you or not. You can feel lonely when you're alone, but the worst kind of lonely is when you're in a room full of people, but you're alone."

"But what really gets me is that in order for Mr. Daniels to come up with this plan, he must have thought of me outside of school-when he didn't have to think of me.  I bet other teachers have never let me sit in their head one second longer than they had to."