Andrew Clements's Frindle Summary

Title of Book: Frindle

Author: Andrew Clements

ISBN: 978-0-689-81876-9

Summary

‘Frindle’ is a captivating story about a fifth grade boy, Nick Allen, who loves to outsmart his teachers at school. This was until, he was challenged by his language arts teacher, Miss Granger, to discover how words were created. Nick’s greatest plan to invent a new word – frindle, will start a trend to spread like wildfire not only in Lincoln Elementary School but also worldwide! The book’s theme on friendship and school life is what makes it so attractive and entertaining to readers.

Prominent Literary Features

I. Characters

The development of characters plays a huge part in making a story interesting and believable. In Frindle, I feel that Andrew Clements

38). In Frindle, the pattern of the plot is dramatic. It is commonly referred to as a Story Mountain (Netto-Shek, 2014). It begins by introducing the characters of the story – Nick Allen and Miss Granger. The setting was also introduced subtly throughout the book. Next, the conflict is being explained. One can clearly see the beginning of the conflict between Nick and Miss Granger from Chapter 3 of Findle. This conflict is then intensified when Nick came up with a plan to call a pen a frindle. It is being further intensified when the usage of frindle began to spread like wildfire not only within Lincoln Elementary School but also worldwide, garnering the interest of reporters. Once reaching the climax, the falling action will occur and this is when Nick’s school life began to recede back to normal. This structure tends to be in chronological order (Russell, 2012, p.

This was done in the first chapter to describe the character of Nick using past events that he has done. Although the story is focused on Nick as a fifth grader, the use of past events when Nick was in third and fourth grade allowed readers to see the type of character Nick is. I found this method to be very effective in building the main character by describing past events. As stated by Russell (2012, p.36), “it is through actions that some of the most convincing evidence about characters is revealed”.

III. Style

Clements style of writing is clearly that of imagery. According to Temple (2006, p.56), it is about using the 5 senses to experience the detail of the story. He also uses onomatopoeia to add humour in his writing. This can be seen in the first chapter where Mrs Avery was described as a bird, “nose was curved – kind of like the beak of a hawk. So Nick let out a high, squeaky, blackbird ‘peep!’” (Clements, p. 3). One must also note that the name ‘Avery’ is closely linked to aviary, which is an enclosure for birds. Thus, leading readings to have a clear imagery in their mind as they read the text.

Conclusion

These are just some of the prominent literary elements that I found to be more relevant and brought out the development of the story very well. All these features play a crucial part in engaging readers