Frindle (1997)

The first Clements book I ever read, this was a great story and I thoroughly enjoyed it. I was comepletely taken with the idea of a teacher who uses her own brilliant mind motivate an otherwise difficult child. It worked and I have to say I was very impressed with the ending. Clements did an excellant job wrapping this up. On the whole, this was a wonderful book. ( )

In the fourth grade, Nick Allen talked his classmates into turning their classroom to a tropical island, complete with sand on the floor, but fifth grade's different. He has to deal with his teacher, Mrs. Granger.

Nick discovers that the words we use were made popular by people and those same words are defined in the dictionary. He remembers as a baby he used words that are not in the dictionary, but his family knew what he meant. Through a series of events, he began to call an ink pen a frindle and before long the name takes off.

Mrs. Granger wasn't happy about making up words and banned the new word. Thus began the war between student and teacher soon involving the town newspaper and eventually the national news.

Does this commotion change the town, Mrs. Granger, or even Nick? Well, you'll have to read to book to see. I will tell you I smiled and wiped away a tear while reading the end. ( )

4th grade and up; because kids can make a difference

Nick is not a good kid or a bad kid or a really smart kid; Nick is an idea kid. He's also the best class interrupter in the whole school - until he gets to Mrs. Granger's 5th-grade language arts class. A simple question about the dictionaries that Mrs. Granger loves - meant to distract her from giving the night's homework - leads to an oral report by Nick on the history of the dictionary and how words are created. What at first seems like Nick's defeat soon leads to his best idea ever: He will create a word. Which is how Nick and his friends start calling their pens "frindles." Mrs. Granger refuses to accept the new word for pen, which has been quickly adopted by the entire 5th-grade class, fighting against the 5th graders every step of the way. Once the whole school gets involved though, Nick begins to realize that while he started the "frindle" movement, it's now far beyond his control.

Lots of humor and an everykid main character makes this book highly enjoyable - although parts of the story feel smooshed together and Clements seems to do a lot more telling than showing. We hear how the story mushrooms from one news person to the next, but we don't actually see any of the national level attention. We hear that Nick goes on David Letterman, but we don't hear anything beyond that about his experiences traveling the talk show circuit and how missing school(as one would assume he must) affects his life there. Still, Frindle is a very interesting look at word origins that could inspire many curricular projects.

November 2008 Cover 2 Cover selection. ( )

Andrew Clements is coming to a conference in the spring, so I thought I ought to read some of his books before that happens. One of the books I chose to read is Frindle, a book about Nicholas Allen. Nick is a well-meaning 5th grader who has some ideas up his sleeve. When his teacher informs him that words are given meaning by two people agreeing, then he gets the idea to rename pens as "frindles." It catches on far more than he could have imagined. ( )