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  • What an awesome story! It's a quick read, but well worth it.

    Nick is ornery. Smart, but ornery. He has a history of organizing "disasters" at school. Fifth grade is no different as he takes on the hardnosed language arts teacher, Mrs. Granger.

    She loves the dictionary and wields it a ... Continue

    What an awesome story! It's a quick read, but well worth it.

    Nick is ornery. Smart, but ornery. He has a history of organizing "disasters" at school. Fifth grade is no different as he takes on the hardnosed language arts teacher, Mrs. Granger.

    She loves the dictionary and wields it as a punishment. Nick counters and the fun begins. But fun has a way of getting away from Nick and his contribution soon becomes a burden.

    But like all good stories, this has a happy ending. It's a page turner.

    

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• ― Batona said on Apr 30, 2007 about the Paperback edition| Add your feedback

Nicholas Allen has plenty of ideas. Who can forget the time he turned his third-grade classroom into a tropical island, or the times he fooled his teacher by chirping like a blackbird? But now Nick's in fifth grade, and it looks like his days as a troublemaker are over. Everyone knows that Mrs. Granger, the language arts teacher, has X-ray vision, and nobody gets away with anything in her classroom. To make matters worse, she's also a fanatic about the dictionary, which is hopelessly boring to Nick. But when Nick learns an interesting tidbit about words and where they come from, it inspires his greatest plan yet: to invent a new word. From now on, a pen is no longer a pen -- it's a frindle. It doesn't take long for frindle to take root, and soon the excitement spreads well beyond his school and town. His parents and Mrs. Granger would like Nick to put an end to all this nonsense. But frindle doesn't belong to Nick anymore. All he can do now is sit back and watch what happens.

This quirky, imaginative tale about creative thought and the power of words will have readers inventing their own words. Brian Selznick's black-and-white illustrations enhance the humor in this unforgettable story.

• power of wordsteachersschool storychildren's literatureChristopher AwardwordsnovelschoolJuvenile fictionLanguage
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