English

The work that I am most proud of in ELA this year is my poem modelled after the book Inside Out and Back Again. The novel tells the story of Ha, a Vietnamese girl who flees her home in war-torn Vietnam to settle as a refugee in the United States. The book is written in the form of several poems, each of which describes one aspect of Ha's life. One of the assignments we worked on in English was to create a poem modelled after a very important poem in the book. The poem describes Ha's precious papaya tree and what it means to her and her family. For my poem, I took a similar symbol that is important to my family - our orange tree.

This is one of my best pieces of work because I spent a lot of thought thinking about what symbol is most important to my family and about what the orange tree means to us. I also worked hard to brainstorm similarities between my symbol and Ha's papaya tree in order to create a poem similar to the one in the book. I believe that this showcases my work in this class because it shows my ability to analyze the novel and then use creative writing to make a similar poem.

Here is my poem: