Swimmy 5Paragraph Essay SampleWestford Pulic Schools.doc

Swimmy by Leo LionniA happy school of little fish lived in a corner of the sea somewhere. They were all red. One of them was as black as a mussel shell. He swam faster than his brothers and sisters. His name was Swimmy. One bad day a tuna fish, swift, fierce and very hungry, came darting through the waves. In one gulp he swallowed all the little red fish. Only Swimmy escaped. He swam away in the deep wet world. He was scared, lonely and very sad. But the sea was full of wonderful creatures, and as he swam from marvel to marvel Swimmy was happy again. He saw a medusa made of rainbow jelly… A lobster, who walked about like a water-moving machine… Strange fish, pulled by an invisible thread… A forest of seaweeds growing from sugar-candy rocks… An eel whose tale was almost too far away to remember… And sea anemones, who looked like pink palm trees swaying in the wind. Then, hidden in the dark shade of rocks and weeds, he saw a school of little fish, just like his own. “Let’s go and swim and play and SEE things!” He said happily. “We can’t,” said the little red fish. “The big fish will eat us all.” “But you can’t just lie there,” said Swimmy. “We must THINK of something.” Swimmy thought and thought and thought. Then suddenly he said, “I have it! We are going to swim altogether like the biggest fish in the sea!” He taught them to swim close together, each in his own place, and when they had learned to swim like one giant fish, he said, “I’ll be the eye.” And so they swam in the cool morning water and in the midday sun and chased the big fish away. The first thing I have to do is identify my theme. So what did I like about the story? I liked how Swimmy overcame his fear of the ocean by seeing how beautiful it was and then was brave enough to help others. So… In his children’s story, Lionni teaches young readers that in order to see the beautiful world around them they must overcome their fear and then they should actively help others do the same. That sounds like a pretty good theme! I need three body paragraphs.. In the beginning he was scared but overcame his fear, then he saw others afraid and would not allow it, and finally Swimmy helped the other fish to be brave. Sounds good! For an introduction I know I need: a grabber, TAG, summary of story, my three BP topics and then my thesis at the end. To come up with a grabber I’m thinking of my own childhood. Being little, unsure, and standing in front of the ocean - it seemed so big and scary but once I went in I liked it more. Maybe I can use that.Often times in life, people find themselves standing on the edge of the shore, frightened to step into the unknown. A small child may dream up evil sea witches, monsters ready to chomp off tiny toes, and the darkness alone will keep her paralyzed where the sand and the water meet. And yet, once she dives in, a whole new world of fun, magic and mystery is uncovered. Similarly, Leo Lionni illuminates the rewards for overcoming one’s fears through his children’s story Swimmy. A young fish survives a tuna fish attack and is left all alone only to uncover the beauties of the world and his own bravery. First, despite being alone and scared in the big ocean, Swimmy realizes the sea can be a beautiful place. When he finds other little fish that are scared, he refuses to let them hide in the dark and insists that they must see the ocean. Finally, Swimmy thinks up a crafty plan to help the fish go out in the open waters as well as gain more confidence. In his children’s story, Lionni teaches young readers that in order to see the beautiful world around them they must overcome their fear and then actively help others to do the same.I just copy and pasted the theme from what I had written already. Now I need to write the topic sentence for my first body paragraph. I need a transition word or phrase, the scene from the book I’m going to talk about, and how that proves the theme. In the beginning, readers see Swimmy overcome his original fear of the ocean once he sees new magical creatures, proving Lionni’s theme that one must overcome one’s fears in order to truly see the beauty in one’s environment. Now to continue the paragraph I want to briefly explain my example and lead into my quotation. So I have to think about what happens BEFORE my quotation and build up to it. I also need to remember to use a lead-in instead of just dropping the quote into the paragraph as a sentence on his own. Swimmy is left all alone after a tuna fish eats all of his little red fish friends. At first Swimmy did not like being all by himself and was “very sad” (Lionni 1). Soon, though, Swimmy was able to see his new life as positive when he noticed new creatures he had never seen. He encounters a colorful medusa, a mechanical lobster, magical fish, seaweed that looked like candy and a long, long eel. Perhaps another fish would have been frightened by such sights, but as “he swam from marvel to marvel Swimmy w。