My Book

Deborah C. Washington’s picture book story, A Fish in a Tree, is a sweet, charming story intended to teach and encourage young readers to be mindful of their environment. Told in rhyming verse, this lyrical story follows a journey led by the discarded fish-shaped balloon as it threatens one ecosystem after another until the climax is reached when the little boy finds it on the beach. The colorful illustrations are spectacular and certainly help move the story along. The language is simple, structured with four lines in a row that end the same rhyming vowels, like “see, me, he, flee,” and some more complicated rhymers, like “around, found, down, ground.” This will encourage young readers to look for and recognize similar sounding words. Their reading skills will improve alongside the important message this story shares about being resourceful and creative in ways to reuse, recycle and renew. Loved it!