Life

     Andrew Clements is a passionate advocate for books and reading.  Clements attributes his interest to his parents, who were avid readers who shared their passion for books with their children, and to an elementary school librarian who “kept [him] well-stocked” in books:

   On his first trip to the school library, Clements chose a thick book on myths.  The next day he asked his teacher if he could take it back to the library.  “’Is it too hard, dear?’ she asked sympathetically,” Clements recalled.  The teacher’s eyebrows shot up when Clements informed her that it was not the difficulty of the book that was the problem.  He had already finished it and wanted more. “That event created for me an open invitation to head to the library just about any old time I wanted to.  And the librarian was a gem.”
   “I will always love that librarian at my elementary school, because she made me feel like I was the owner of every book.  That’s one of the greatest things about reading a book – read it, and you own it forever.” (SATA 104:23)

    After majoring in English at Northwestern, Clements earned a master’s degree in education and taught for seven years in both grade school and high school.  After that experience, he moved into children’s publishing as an editor charged with acquisition; he also began translating and adapting foreign picture books.  It wasn’t until he was 35 that he began to write his own books.

    Most of his work to date has been picture books, including books written for school reading programs and adaptations from a children’s television show, “Real Monsters.” Frindle was his first book for middle-grade readers, although he has recently published The Landry News for the same age group and is working on a series of middle-grade books for a publisher.

Frindle

     Frindle was nominated for at least 30 awards, including many state awards similar to the Prairie Pasque award here in South Dakota (i.e., it has been on the reading list for awards voted on by kids).  It won such an award in Rhode Island, and is currently on the reading list for the South Dakota honor.  It has also received attention from various national organizations, including Horn Book and the Christopher Award.

     Clements told SATA that Frindle originated in a discussion about word meanings with elementary students in Rhode Island:

“I was trying to explain to them how words only mean what we decide they mean.  They didn’t believe me when I pointed to a fat dictionary and told them that ordinary people like them and like me had made up all the words in that book – and that new words get made up all the time.”  To illustrate his point, Clements pulled a pen from his pocket and told the students that they could change the name of this instrument from pen to anything they made up.  Clements chose a made-up word, “frindle,” and challenged students to start calling it by that name instead of “pen” to see if such a name would stick.  (SATA 104:25)

    Frindle is a chapter book, meaning that text is considerably more dominant than in picture books.  But it can be useful to look at the illustrations here, too, and consider the relationship between picture and text, especially in view of Clements’ considerable experience as a picture-book writer creating text to be read alongside pictures.  The pictures here seem to augment the meaning of the text rather more than do the illustrations for The Good, the Bad, and the Goofy.

Characters

    Nick Allen is introduced through a brief biographical sketch of his school career to date, emphasizing his ability to create a stir in the classroom.  Note, however, that his activities are not malicious but rather inventive, creative; he is in some ways a common type in children’s literature, the bright kid who gets into (and out of) trouble through his imagination and curiosity.  Even his most disruptive act, the “great blackbird discovery” (3), reflects curiosity more than (or as much as) a desire to annoy.  One of his best disruptive tricks is the question that distracts the teacher, but note that such questions usually produce new ideas or information – in other words, while homework is disrupted, a further opportunity to learn is provided.

    Nick is also not the stereotypical school troublemaker in that he grows and develops, learning to challenge his impulses into more socially useful activities: consider what happens to his next “great idea,” to boycott the school lunchroom.  First, he decides not to share the idea, because the experience with “frindle” has made him cautious (89); but two years later, “all the school cafeterias in town were serving delicious food at least four days a week, all because of Nick the consumer” (93).  Nick also becomes quieter in the classroom, enough so to catch his teacher’s attention (90).

    Mrs. Granger is described as a somewhat stereotypical “schoolmarm”: she is older (she’s taught at the school for 35 years), single (she lives alone in an older neighborhood), primly dressed (she always wears a white blouse with a skirt and jacket and white hair drawn back away from her face) (6-7).  Look at Selznick’s illustration on page 9: she appears rigid, stern, sitting almost preternaturally upright.  But then, too, she has a hint of a smile and a quizzical expression conveyed by the upraised eyebrow (note that Clements' description includes the fact that she tells good jokes, p. 7).  She loves the dictionary, and her mantra, “Use the dictionary” appears behind her in the illustration; the circle around the words suggests a halo around Mrs. Granger’s head, perhaps consistent with her role in this story as the secret “angel” helping establish the word “frindle.”

Conflict

    Conflict arises between the characters because Nick at first dismisses Mrs. Granger’s passion:

Nick had no particular use for the dictionary.  He liked words a lot, and he was good at using them.  But he figured that he got all the words he needed just by reading, and he read all the time.  (11)

    The main plot is set in motion when these two characters clash over Nick’s delaying tactic, the “thought-grenade” designed to distract the teacher and avoid a homework assignment.  Mrs. Granger is too clever to be subverted in this way and turns the question into a special report assignment.  Nick suffers because of his family rule of “Homework first,” so that he is stuck inside researching the oral report while his friends play outside.  This is nicely shown by the illustration, where Nick wears a glum expression as books and papers cascade from the desk, while behind him is a framed picture of a baseball player (19).

    Consider the final result of the report, though: it becomes “one of the greatest time-wasters he had ever invented” (28) and Mrs. Granger really can’t complain; she pointedly comments that the report “was a little long,” but has to acknowledge it was a good one and highlights some of the interesting points.

    We should consider the extent to which the conflict is real.  Mrs. Granger seems adamant about stamping out the use of this abominable new word, but – as we know from her letter at the end of the book – she has adopted this stance intentionally, knowing that the children are more likely to persist if they get some resistance.  She tells Nick “may the best word win” with an ambiguous expression: “There was a frown on her face, but here eyes, her eyes were different – almost happy.” (47) Is this a battle of wills, or a clever teacher turning her student’s imagination to more positive ends? At its heart, this is after all a story about a special relationship between teacher and student.

Language/Literacy

    Frindle is a book that celebrates reading and language.  Almost despite himself, Nick becomes fascinated with what he learns about the origins of dictionaries and of words.  The information is described as “not very exciting” and “boring” (21), but it inspires him to make something special.  The list of topics he arrives at for his report (22) quickly sketches in some linguistic background and might whet some readers’ appetites to learn more.  There are some more fleshed-out pieces of knowledge as well, notably Samuel Johnson’s contribution to lexicography (24-25), and later the etymology of “quiz” (77).

    The key statement in the developing conflict, one which reflects Clements’ words to the children that helped inspire the book, is Mrs. Granger’s response to Nick’s second delaying question, after he has given his report: “Who decides what words mean?”  Her answer: “We decide” (31).

    It may seem that Nick’s invention of the word “frindle” is too artificial to be realistic, but note that the story itself gives a precedent: Nick’s baby word “Gwagala” for music.  How often do we experience similar “family” names for things, because of young children who have difficulty pronouncing the real names or for other reasons?

     Illustration: observe how the moment of invention of “frindle” is depicted on p. 37.  Nick hands Janet back the gold pen that she had found in the street, and at that moment creates the new word (a “neologism”).  In the illustration, Nick holds the pen upright and gestures toward it with his other hand; the pen itself seems to give off light, with rays extending outward in all directions.  Janet, meanwhile, stands below Nick, looking up at the frindle with an odd expression on her face – she looks somewhat curious.

    Mrs. Granger’s resistance (“friction”) to the word may be part of a classroom strategy, but such resistance is not in itself likely to lead to the adoption of a new word (or is it?  How much does adult annoyance have to do with the perpetuation of teenage slang?).  But other aspects, including the use of the news media to disseminate the new word beyond its local origin, do in fact reflect the way that language continues to grow and change today.

    Although a word may have a distinct origin, if it is to be successful, it must move into the world on its own.  So Nick comments, “even though I invented it, it’s not my word anymore.  Frindle belongs to everyone now, and I guess everyone will figure out what happens together” (76).  We see a merging of individual imagination and community acceptance in the development of the neologism.
 

Sources:  There isn’t much beyond book reviews at this point, but there is an article in Something about the Author [SATA] (Volume 104, pp. 21-26), from which the biographical information given here was obtained.

A. Waller Hastings
Professor of English
Northern State University
Aberdeen, SD  57401

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