Frindle

by Andrew Clements

Mrs. Granger is the fifth grade language arts teacher at Lincoln Elementary School, and she loves the dictionary. Let me repeat, she loves it. At the front of her classroom sits an enormous dictionary, practically daring someone to defy it's authority. Nick Allen is a creative rebel. He has ideas, lots of them. He's always looking to break the status quo and liven things up. What better way to spend fifth grade than to challenge the almighty dictionary? If you've ever written with a pen, well, no you haven't. Didn't you know? It's actually called a frindle. And it's all because of Nick.  Who says you have to be by the book? Who says you can't create a new word, introduce it to your classmates, and get the whole nation talking about it? Frindle is a word so meaningless, yet so powerful. It's not the word itself, but the act of daring to use something other than the prescribed word, pen. But Nick will have to contemplate the innocence of his creative rebellion, with the way he goes about it, because Mrs. Granger is not happy. Why would she be happy, when all her students deliberately misspell the word pen on her spelling tests? Frindle, written by Andrew Clements, was published in 1996. It's about challenging authority, so some adults may find Nick's behavior disrespectful. But I think it's important to introduce the possibility of challenging the status quo, and to encourage personal autonomy, even over something as apparently inconsequential as misspelling words and creating new ones.

Love it! I like it! Love it.

Amber N.