Frindle / by Andrew Clements.
Bibliographic Citation:
Clements, A. (1996). Frindle. New York, NY: Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers.
Summary:
Nick Allen is a smart kid who is always looking for ways to get
out of working at school. Mrs. Granger, the fifth grade language arts teacher
loves dictionaries and students spend the whole year learning words. On the
first day of school, Nick tries to outsmart Mrs. Granger when he asks where all
the words in the big classroom dictionary came from. Instead of falling for his
ploy, Mrs. Granger gives Nick an extra homework assignment to do a report the
next day about the origin of words. Nick takes on the challenge and uses most
the next class day to give his report. At the end of his report, Nick says that
he still doesn’t understand why all words mean different things and how d-o-g
came to mean the animal what barks. “Who says dog means dog?” Nick asks. Mrs.
Granger replies that he does and she does and everyone else does who accepts
and uses the word d-o-g to mean the animal that barks.
Later that afternoon as he is walking home, his friend Janet
Fisk, picks up a pen off the sidewalk. Nick gets an idea and the next day when
he went to the Penny Pantry, he asks for a frindle.
As time goes on, all of Nick’s friends start calling the thing we know as a
pen, a frindle. The word eventually
spreads outside of the school and makes the state, national and international
news. A man in Nick’s town even starts a company to make and sell frindles.
At first, it appears that Mrs. Granger is angry at Nick for
not giving in or giving up on calling the pen a frindle, but years later, he learns how truly proud and inspired
she was by him and his determination to make a word mean something.
Impressions:
This is a fun story. I had no idea what the book was about
before I read it. The pen on the cover should have been a clue, but I honestly
didn’t pay that much attention to it. Nick is such a clever boy to come up with
the ideas he has to get out of work. He appears to be a bit stubborn to when
the frindle game seems to have gone
on long enough and Mrs. Granger appears to be losing her patience. But at that
point, even though Nick says he would stop it if he could, frindle had taken on a life of its own. Years later, Nick (and the
reader) finds out that Mrs. Granger was rooting for him all along.
The wonderful reality to this book is that kids can make a
difference in the world. They may not create a new word for an ordinary item,
they may not end up on the news and with a huge trust fund, but they can make a
difference. Even a small difference can be huge to another person.
Library Use Suggestions:
I think this would be a great book to do a book introduction to get kids interested in reading it. I would introduce the title and ask if anyone knows what a frindle is, have them make predictions, etc. After giving a short review to promote the book, I would direct students to a few items and tell them that they can be like Nick and create new words for different objects too and challenge them to think of new words to represent the objects provided.
Reviews:
Nicholas is a
bright boy who likes to make trouble at school, creatively. When he decides to
torment his fifth-grade English teacher, Mrs. Granger (who is just as smart as
he is), by getting everyone in the class to replace the word "pen'' with "frindle,''
he unleashes a series of events that rapidly spins out of control. If there's
any justice in the world, Clements (Temple Cat, 1995, etc.) may have
something of a classic on his hands. By turns amusing and adroit, this first
novel is also utterly satisfying. The chess like sparring between the gifted
Nicholas and his crafty teacher is enthralling, while Mrs. Granger is that
rarest of the breed: a teacher the children fear and complain about for the
school year, and love and respect forever after. With comically realistic
black-and-white illustrations by Selznick (The Robot King, 1995,
etc.), this is a captivating tale--one to press upon children, and one they'll
be passing among themselves.
(1996, July 1).
[Review of Frindle]. Kirkus Reviews. Retrieved
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