Eleanor— Frindle by Andrew Clements

Eleanor Loprest
3rd August 2015

DISCLAIMER: Frindle is way, way below the average 7th grade reading level, but I felt like writing about it.

Frindle a book by the so-called "school story" author Andrew Clements, is a short book with large type, miles below my reading level. However, I still enjoyed rereading it. The story is about an outspoken young boy named Nicholas, who uses his considerable creativity to bother his teachers— until one of them, the uptight Mrs Granger, tries to end his shenanigans. She forces Nick to write an essay about the origin of words, which results in his learning that people basically make them up. This makes him wonder if he could create his own word. And so the 'frindle' is born— a word his classmates, led by Nick, use in place of the word 'pen.'  Mrs Granger is furious about the new word— but it is spreading across the nation, and there's nothing Nick can do to stop it.

The etymology-centered premise of Frindle reminds me of a particular scene in a favorite book of mine, E. L. Konigsburg's The View from Saturday (which I reread immediately after finishing Frindle). In this scene, a character is asked to name acronyms that have entered our everyday speech as words, and names the examples 'posh' and 'tip.' This resembled Frindle to me in that the two books both discuss ways in which the English language has formed and changed over time due to the words created by normal people. I find this concept fascinating. I would recommend Frindle, not to anyone my own age, but to any inquisitive 3rd-to-5th-grader who wants to learn about an interesting language arts concept through an entertaining fictional tale. If you know a kid like that, suggest it to them!

7/10

Thanks for Reading!
(Again, both this recommendation and in general :) )

—E. Loprest