Frindle

Amanda judges a book quite critically by the description on the back of the book. I may have heard good things about a book that I am sure she will enjoy, but she turns up her nose at it because, "I read the back of the book, and it doesn't sound interesting." She is most often proven wrong when I force her to read the first chapter and lo and behold, she enjoys it. My shortcoming regarding choosing books is that I often judge a book by (the front of) its cover. As a school library volunteer, when I am shelving books, I will see a compelling spine and I will immediately pull out the book for a closer look. Conversely, there are some books that I have branded as "bratty" (for lack of a better term) because of their cover art. I try to avoid disrespectful, bratty, kids-know-it-all attitudes in books and on TV because we live it quite well on our own. For some reason, I had lumped Frindle into this category, until I heard a great review for it (on this informative children's book podcast), and then saw that it in the Short Novels recommendations in the The Read-Aloud Handbook. I put it on our Read to Me list. She was unsure about the book, after her face-value judgment, but then she got excited about it as well.

This was a wonderful book! It was funny, and not at all bratty or disrespectful. It was smart and clever, real and yet fantastical. Frindle is the story of a boy, Nick Allen, who is not quite troublemaker, not quite class clown, and not quite the brain. He does however think up and execute a plan to test his teacher's assertion that we decide what words mean, and the dictionary simply records our usage of words. Mrs. Granger is the kind of dedicated, caring professional that we all want our children to have as a teacher, and the kind that all students remember and respect, if not while they are in her class, at least years later when they look back.

Title: Frindle
Author: Andrew Clements
Publisher: Aladdin Paperbacks by Simon and Schuster
Pages: 105
Book Source: Public Library by way of recommendations (see above)
Recommended for: Ages 8 and up, boys and girls--an especially good read aloud selection


Some general tips that I've gleaned so far from my part in the mission is that I need to select books that I really like, and that are good read-aloud books. Reading two short novels helped us get a good jump start by completing each of them in less than a week. Since our time to read aloud is limited, the pacing of a shorter novel works for us. We actually are reading a book that's a bit longer now, but it fits my criteria of being a book that I like and that I want to read. In fact, I selected it after reading a fascinating memoir by the author. When I looked her up on amazon, I was delighted to find that she had written many juvenile and young adult books. You'll have to stay tuned for my review of both the adult book and the kids' book (which Amanda and I are both enjoying immensely as well).

Click over to Semicolon's Saturday Review of Books for more reviews of all sorts of books.