Authors message on Fish in a tree

              In the book Fish in a Tree the author Lynda Mullaly Hunt shows the message that to not let people judge on who you are this is seen in chapter 14 "boxed in and boxed out" where Ally's new teacher Mr.Daniels gives Ally's class a assignment which is to try and find out what is inside a closed box by doing anything but opening it to find out and as Ally's group continues her other teammates acknowledge how Ally uses a lot of different  procedures to try and find out what is in the box then Oliver says "here you go Ally you're good at this" this surprises Ally because nobody really compliments her for doing anything, everyone think shes dumb however for once somebody thinks that shes good at something even after people teasing her Ally's self esteem is down and is forced to think that she really is dumb and can't do anything good in her class this also makes Ally believe that there's no point in doing work if shes dumb this is shown in the first chapter where Ally is supposed to write a page that describes herself but Ally doesn't want to do it and after some talking with the teacher when Ally does agree to do it she just writes from top to bottom "Why?".