frindle（大二下学期泛读老师推荐小说）

Frindle Frindle By Andrew Clements Illustrated by Brian Selznick Introduction He really just likes to liven things up at school—and he has always had plenty of great ideas. When Nick learns some interesting information about how words are created, suddenly he has got the inspiration for his best plan ever—the frindle. Who says a pen has to be called a pen? Why not call it a frindle? Things begin innocently enough as Nick gets his friends to use the new word. Then other people in town start saying frindle. Soon the school is in an uproar, and Nick has become a local hero. His teacher wants Nick to put an end to all this nonsense, but the funny thing is frindle does not belong to Nick anymore. The new word is spreading across the country, and there is nothing Nick can do to stop it. Chapter 1 Nick If you asked the kids and teachers at Lincoln Elementary School to make three lists—all the really bad kids, all the really smart kids, and all the really good kids—Nick Allen would not be on any of them. Nick deserved a list all his own, and everyone knew it. Was Nick a troublemaker? Hard to say. One thing’s for sure: Nick Allen had plenty of ideas, and he knew what to do with them. One time in third grade Nick decided to turn Miss Deaver’s room into a tropical island. What kid in New Hampshire isn’t ready for a little summer in February? So first he got everything to make small palm trees out of green and brown construction paper and tape them onto the corners of each desk. Miss Deaver had only been a teacher for about six months and she was delighted. “That’s so cute!” The next day all the girls wore paper flowers in their hair and all the boys wore sunglasses and beach hats. Miss Deaver clapped her hands and said, “It’s so colorful!” The day after that Nick turned the classroom thermostat up to about ninety degrees with a little screwdriver he had brought from home. All the kids changed into shorts and T-shirts, took their shoes off and went around in their bare feet. And when Miss Deaver left the room for a minute, Nick spread about ten cups of fine white sand all over the classroom floor. Miss Deaver was surprised again at just how creative her students could be. But the sand got tracked out into the hallway, where Manny the custodian did not think it was creative at all. And he stomped right down to the office. The principal followed the trail of sand, and when she arrived, Miss Deaver was teaching the hula to some kids near the front of the room, and a tall, thin, shirtless boy with chestnut hair was just spiking a volleyball over a net made from six T-shirts tied together. The third-grade trip to the South Seas ended. Suddenly. But that didn’t stop Nick from trying to liven things up. Lincoln Elementary needed a good jolt once in a while, and Nick was just the guy to deliver it. About a year later, Nick made the great blackbird discovery. One night he learned on a TV show that red-wing blackbirds give their high-pitched chirp when a hawk or some other danger comes near. Because of the way sound travels, the hunter birds can’t tell where the high-pitched chirp is coming from. The next day during silent reading, Nick glanced at his teacher, and he noticed that Mrs. Avery’s nose was curved—kind of like the beak of a hawk. So Nick let out a high, squeaky, blackbird “peep!” Mrs. Avery jerked her head up from her book and looked around. She couldn’t tell who did it, so she just said, “Shhh!” to the whole class. A minute later Nick did it again, louder. “Peeep!” She couldn’t tell who did it, so she just said, “Shhh!” to the whole class. A minute later Nick did it again, louder. “Peeep!” This time there was a little giggling from the class. But Mrs. Avery pretended not to hear the sound, and about fifteen seconds later she slowly stood up and walked to the back of the classroom. Without taking his eyes off his book, and without moving at all, Nick put his heart and soul into the highest and most annoying chirp of all: “Peeeeep!” Mrs. Avery pounced. “Janet Fisk, you stop that this instant!” Janet, who was sitting four rows away from Nick, promptly turned white, then bright crimson. “But it wasn’t me . . .” There was a catch in Janet’s voice, as if she might cry. Mrs. Avery knew she had made a mistake, and she apologized to Janet. “But someone is asking for big trouble,” said Mrs. Avery. looking more like a hawk every second. Nick kept reading, and he didn’t make a peep. At lunchtime Nick talked to Janet. He felt very bad that Mrs. Avery had pounced on her. Janet lived in Nick’s neighborhood, and sometimes they played together. She was good at baseball, and she was better at soccer than most of the kids in the whole school, boys or girls. Nick said, “Hey Janet—I’m sorry you got yelled at during reading. It was my fault. I was the one who made that sound.” “You did?” said Janet. “But how come Mrs. Avery thought it was me?” So Nick told her about the blackbirds, and Janet thought it was pretty interesting. Then she tried making a peep or two, and Janet’s chirps were even higher and squeakier than Nick’s. She promised to keep everything a secret. For the rest of Nick’s fourth-grade year, at least once a week, Mrs. Avery heard a loud “peeeeep” from somewhere in her classroom—sometimes it was a high-pitched chirp, and sometimes it was a very high-pitched chirp. Mrs. Avery never figured out who was making that sound, and gradually she trained herself to ignore it. But she still looked like a hawk. To Nick, the whole thing was just one long—and successful—science experiment. And Janet Fisk enjoyed it, too. Chapter 2 Mrs. Granger Fifth grade was different. That was the year to get ready for middle school. Fifth grade meant passing classes. It meant no morning recess. It meant real letter grades on your report cards. But most of all, it meant Mrs. Granger. There were about one hundred fifty kids in fifth grade. And there were seven fifth-grade teachers: two math, two science, two social studies, but only one language arts teacher. In language arts, Mrs. Granger had a monopoly—and a reputation. Mrs. Granger lived alone in a tidy little house in the older part of town. She drove an old, pale blue car to school every morning, rain or shine, snow or sleet, hail or wind. She had a perfect attendance record that stretched back farther than anyone could remember. Her hair was almost white, swept away from her face and up into something like a nest on the back of her head. Unlike some of the younger women teachers, she never wore pants to school. She had two skirt-and-jacket outfits, her gray uniform and her blue uniform, which she always wore over a white shirt with a little cameo pin at the neck. And Mrs. Granger was one of those people who never sweats. It had to be over ninety degrees before she even took off her jacket. She was small, as teachers go. There were even some fifth graders who were taller. But Mrs. Granger seemed like a giant. It was her eyes that did it. They were dark gray, and if she turned them on full power, they could make you feel like a speck of dust. Her eyes could twinkle and laugh, too, and kids said she could crack really funny jokes. But it wasn’t the jokes that made her famous. Everyone was sure that Mrs. Granger had X-ray vision. Don’t even think about chewing a piece of gum within fifty feet of her. If you did, Mrs. Granger would see you and catch you and make you stick the gum onto a bright yellow index card. Then she would safety pin the card to the front of your shirt, and you would have to wear it for the rest of the school day. After that, you had to take it home and have you mom or dad sign the card, and bring it back to Mrs. Granger the next day. And it didn’t matter to Mrs. Granger if you weren’t in fifth grade, because the way she saw it, sooner or later, you would be. All the kids at Lincoln Elementary School knew that at the end of the line—fifth grade—Mrs. Granger would be the one grading their spelling tests and their reading tests, and worst of all, their vocabulary tests—week after week, month after month. Every language arts teacher in the world enjoys making kids use the dictionary: “Check your spelling. Check that definition. Check those syllable breaks.” But Mrs. Granger didn’t just enjoy the dictionary. She loved the dictionary—almost worshipped it. Her weekly vocabulary list was thirty-five words long, sometimes longer. As if that wasn’t bad enough, there was a “Word for the Day” on the blackboard every morning. If you gave yourself a day off and didn’t write one down and look it up and learn the definition—sooner or later Mrs. Granger would find out, and then, just for you, there would be two Words for the Day for a whole week. Mrs. Granger kept a full set of thirty dictionaries on a shelf at the back of the room. But her pride and joy was one of those huge dictionaries with every word in the universe in it, the kind of book it takes two kids to carry. It sat on its own little table at the front of her classroom, sort of like the alter at the front of a church. Every graduate of Lincoln Elementary School for the past thirty-five years could remember standing at that table listening to Mrs. Granger’s battle cry: “Look it up! That’s why we have the dictionary.” Even before the school year started, when it was still the summer before fifth grade for Nick and his friends, Mrs. Granger was already busy. Every parent of every new fifth grader got a letter from her. Nick’s mom read part of it out loud during dinner one night in August. Every home is expected to have a good dictionary in it so that each student can do his or her homework properly. Good spelling and good grammar and good word skills are essential for every student. Clear thinking requires a command of the English language, and fifth grade is the ideal time for every girl and boy to acquire an expanded vocabulary. And then there was a list of the dictionaries that Mrs. Granger thought would be “acceptable for home study.” Mrs. Allen said, “It’s so nice to have a teacher who takes her work this seriously.” Nick groaned and tried to enjoy the rest of his hamburger. But even the watermelon for dessert didn’t cheer him up much. 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. When Nick ran into a word he didn’t know, he asked his brother or his dad or whoever was handy what it meant, and if they knew, they’d tell him. But not Mrs. Granger. He had heard all about her, and he had seen fifth graders in the library last year, noses stuck in their dictionaries, frantically trying to finish their vocabulary sheets before English class. It was still a week before school and Nick already felt like fifth grade was going to be a very long year. Chapter 3 The Question The first day of school was always a getting acquainted day. Books were passed out, and there was a lot of chatter. Everyone asked, “What did you do over the summer?” Periods one through six went by very smoothly for Nick. But then came period seven. Mrs. Granger’s class was all business. The first thing they did was take a vocabulary pretest to see how many of the thirty-five words for the week the kids already knew. Tremble, circular, orchestra—the list went on and on. Nick knew most of them. Then there was a handout about class procedures. After that there was a review paper about cursive writing, and then there was a sample sheet showing how the heading should look on every assignment. No letup for thirty-seven minutes straight. Nick was an expert at asking the delaying question—known as the teacher stopper or guaranteed-time waster. At three minutes before the bell, in that split second between the end of today’s class work and the announcement of tomorrow’s homework, Nick could launch a question guaranteed to sidetrack the teacher long enough to delay or even wipe out the homework assignment. Timing was important, but asking the right question—that was the hard part. Questions about stuff in the news, questions about the college the teacher went to, questions about the teacher’s favorite book or sport or hobby—Nick knew all the tricks, and he had been very successful in the past. Here he was in fifth grade, near the end of his very first language arts class with Mrs. Granger, and Nick could feel a homework assignment coming the way a farmer can feel a rainstorm. Mrs. Granger paused to catch her breath, and Nick’s hand shot up. She glanced down at her seating chart, and then up at him. Her sharp gray eyes were not even turned up to half power. “Mrs. Granger, you have so many dictionaries in this room, and that huge one especially . . . where did all those words come from? Did they just get copied from other dictionaries? It sure is a big book.” It was a perfect thought grenade—KaPow! Several kids smiled, and a few peeked at the clock. Nick was famous for this, and the whole class knew what he was doing. Unfortunately, so did Mrs. Granger. She hesitated a moment, and gave Nick a smile that was just a little too sweet to be real. Her eyes were the color of a thundercloud. “Why, what an interesting question, Nicholas. I could talk about that for hours, I bet.” She glanced around the classroom. “Do the rest of you want to know, too?” Everyone nodded yes. “Very well then, Nicholas, will you do some research on that subject and give a little oral report to the class? If you find out the answer yourself, it will mean so much more than if I just told you. Please have your report ready for our next class.” Mrs. Granger smiled at him again. Very sweetly. Then it was back to business. “Now, the homework for tomorrow can be found on page twelve of you Words Alive book . . . .” Nick barely heard the assignment. His heart was pounding, and he felt small, very small. He could feel the tops of his ears glowing red. A complete shutdown. An extra assignment. And probably a little black mark next to his name on the seating chart. Everything he had heard about this teacher was true—don’t mess around with The Lone Granger. Chapter 4 Word Detective It was a beautiful September afternoon, bright sun, cool breeze, blue sky. But not for Nick. Nick had to do a little report for the next day. Plus copy out all the definitions for thirty-five words. For Mrs. Granger. This was not the way school was supposed to work. Not for Nick. There was a rule at Nick’s house: Homework First. And that meant right after school. Nick had heard his older brother, James, groan and grumble about this rule for years, right up until he graduated from high school two years ago. And then James wrote home from college after his first semester and said, “My grades are looking great, because when I came here I already knew how to put first things first.” That letter was the proof Nick’s mom and dad had been looking for. “Homework First” was the law from September to June. This had never bothered Nick before because he hardly ever had homework. Oh sure, he looked over his spelling words on Thursday night, and there had been a few short book reports in fourth grade, but other than that, nothing. Up to now, schoolwork never spilled over into his free time. Thanks to Mrs. Granger, those days were gone. First he looked up the definitions in the brand-new red dictionary that his mom had bought—because Mrs. Granger told her to. It took almost an hour. He could hear a baseball game in John’s yard down the street—yelling and shouting, and every few minutes the sharp crack of a bat connecting with a pitch. But he had a report to do. For Mrs. Granger. Nick looked at the very front of the dictionary. There was an introduction to the book called “Words and Their Origins.” Perfect! Nick thought. It was just what he needed to do his report. It would all be over in a few minutes. Nick could already feel the sun and the breeze on his face as he ran outside to play, homework all done. Without question this modern American dictionary is one of the most surprisingly complex and profound documents ever to be created, for it embodies unparallel etymological detail, reflecting not only superb lexicographic scholarship, but also the dreams and speech and imaginative talents of millions of people over thousands of years—for every person who has ever spoken or written in English has had a hand in its making. What? Nick scratched his head and read it again. And then again. Not much better. It was sort of like trying to read and understand the ingredients on a shampoo bottle. He slammed the dictionary shut and walked downstairs. Nick’s family did a lot of reading, so bookshelves covered three of the four walls in the family room. There were two sets of encyclopedias—the black set was for grown-ups, and the red set was for kids. Nick pulled out the D volume from the red set and looked up dictionary. There were three full pages, with headings like Early Dictionaries, Word Detectives, and Dictionaries Today. Not very exciting. But he had to do it, so Nick just plopped down on the couch and read all of it. When he was finished with the kids’ book, he opened up the black encyclopedia and read most of what it said about dictionaries, too. He understood only about half of what he read. He leaned back on the couch and covered his eyes with his arm, trying to imagine himself giving a report on all this boring stuff. He’d be lucky to have three minutes worth. But because Nick was Nick, he suddenly had an idea and it brought a grin to his face. Nick decided that giving this report could actually be fun. He could make it into something special. After all, Mrs. Granger asked for it. Chapter 5 The Report By lunchtime the next day, Nick had a bad feeling in the pit of his stomach. Seventh period was coming. He was going to have to stand up in front of Mrs. Granger’s class. The eyes of everyone in the class would be glued to his face. And Mrs. Granger’s eyes would be cranked up to maximum punch power. He looked over his notes again and again—the first English dictionary, the growth of the English language, William Shakespeare, words from French and German, new words, old words, new inventions, Anglo-Saxon words, Latin and Greek roots, American English—it all became a jumble in his mind. And his grand plan from the night before? In the harsh fluorescent light of the school day, it seemed impossible. What is it with the clocks in school? When you’re planning to go to the carnival after school, the clocks in every class practically run backward, and the school day lasts for about three weeks. But if you have to go to the barber or go shopping for clothes after school, zzzzip—the whole day is over before you can blink. And today? After lunch, periods five and six went by in two ticks. As the seventh-period bell rang, Mrs. Granger walked into the classroom, took four steps to her desk at the side of the room, flipped open her attendance book, glanced out at the class, and made two little check marks. Then looking up at Nick, she said, “I think we have a little report to begin our class today. Nicholas.” Fifteen seconds into seventh period, and Nick was onstage. This lady plays for keeps, thought Nick. He gulped, grabbed his crumpled note cards and his book bag, and walked to the front of the room. He stood next to the giant dictionary on its little table, and Mrs. Granger walked to the back of the classroom and sat primely on a tall stool next to the bookcases. She was wearing her blue uniform. Taking a deep breath, Nick began. “Well, the first thing I learned is that the first English dictionary—“ Mrs. Granger interrupted. “Excuse me, Nicholas, but does your report have a title?” Nick looked blankly at her. “A title? N-no, I didn’t make a title.” “Class, please remember to include a title whenever you prepare an oral or written report. Now, please go on, Nicholas,” and she smiled and nodded at him. Nick began again. Looking right at