[LISTENED TO: April 2013] Frindle
I went to the Princeton Public Library looking for audio books for the kids (we’ve exhausted most of our town library’s books). There was a nice new selection of audio books at PPL, and this was one of them. I wasn’t familiar with the story but Sarah knew it already.
So in Frindle, (which was Clements’ first chapter book after several picture books), Nick Allen is upset to find out that he has Mrs Granger as his English teacher this year. You see, Nick is beloved by his classmates for his ability to ask the perfect and perfectly timed question that will distract the teacher so he or she forgets to give homework. He has even sidetracked teachers so that they barely taught any lessons at all. But Mrs Granger has been around and has a reputation as being a really really tough teacher.
One the first day, Nick comes up with the perfect question. He learns that Mrs Granger loves dictionaries–she has one propped up on a lectern in the front of the class–so he waits until there’s about six minutes left and he asks her how all those words got in the dictionary. It was genius, it was brilliant. It didn’t work. She turned it around on him and asked him to give do research and give a report about the question. Tomorrow. Ack!
Nick is distraught. But then he decides to get really into it. And the next day he gives a presentation that lasts over thirty minutes. Mrs Granger knows what he’s up to but she is impressed by his tenacity. They have a kind of friendly stand off. But she makes a small comment that sets the rest of the book in motion. She tells Nick that it is him, and really everyone, who decides what words mean. If everyone agrees that a word means something, then it does.
And a light goes off in Nick’s head. (more…)
I Just Read About That... 