Monday 11 May 2020

'Who says 'dog' means dog? You do, Nicholas'

Frindle | Children’s Novel

One of the most powerful axiomatic lines in all of Shakespeare, [albeit next only to Hamlet’s!] ;-) is Juliet’s discourse on words in general, or names in particular!

Says she –

What’s in a name? That which we call a rose / By Any Other Name would smell as sweet.

Saussure seizes upon this sweet idea and makes it yet-a-bit-a-explosive for all of academia! ;-)

To  Saussure, the word in itself ain’t gonna matter at all, as long as it is accepted by every speaker of that particular language to represent the same thing!

Similarly, Orwell, who’s given us a lorry load of loveable words including Newspeak and Big Brother, in his delightful little essay titled, ‘New Words’ opines that,

It would be quite feasible to invent a vocabulary, perhaps amounting to several thousands of words, which would deal with parts of our experience now practically unmeanable to language.

Added, he also gives us such raving rubrics to go ahead gung ho and create words!

David Crystal, again, in his 500-page Encyclopedia on Language, also attests to this interactive, participatory nature of language!

Says he –

The language as a whole belongs to no one, yet everyone owns a part of it, has an interest in it, and has an opinion about it. In a sense, we are all truly equal when we participate in the language game!

How trueee!

And that’s exactly what Nick, a fifth grader in school does, in this quite fascinating childrens novel!

A motivational read especially for language teachers / professors and parents towards tapping the fullest potential of their kids in the most creative of ways!

This engrossing children’s novel of 68 pages is by Andrew Clements, titled, Frindle, and for a reason at that!


Frindle opens thus –

IF YOU ASKED the kids and the 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 everyone 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!”

That’s little Nick in a nutshell for us all!

Fastforwarding now, with Nick, to his fifth grade!

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.

She was small, as teachers go.

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.

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.

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.

That’s a pretty good chunk for a teaser ain’t it!

So how does Nick work his way in fifth grade and does an Orwell or a Shakespeare? ;-)

Well, thanks to Mrs. Granger who brings out the wordsmith in Nick, just in the nick of time! 

And how!

Over to vibrant Mrs. Granger –

Who says dog means dog? You do, Nicholas.

You and me and everyone in this class and this school and this town and this state and this country.

We all agree.

If we lived in France, we would all agree that the right word for that hairy four-legged creature was a different word—chien—it sounds like ‘shee-en,’ but it means what d-o-g means to you and me.

And in Germany they say hund, and so on, all around the globe.

But if all of us in this room decided to call that creature something else, and if everyone else did, too, then that’s what it would be called, and one day it would be written in the dictionary that way.

We decide what goes in that book. A

And she pointed at the giant dictionary.

And she looked right at Nick. And she smiled again.

Nick stooped over and picked up the pen and held it out to her.

“Here’s your …”

And that’s when the third thing happened.

Nick didn’t say “pen.” Instead, he said, “Here’s your … frindle.”

“Frindle?” Janet took her pen and looked at him like he was nuts.

She wrinkled her nose and said, “What’s a frindle?”

Nick grinned and said, “You’ll find out. See ya later.”

And by the time he had run down the street and up the steps and through the door and upstairs to his room, it wasn’t just a big idea.

It was a plan, a whole plan, just begging for Nick to put it into action. And “action” was Nick’s middle name.

The next day after school the plan began. Nick walked into the Penny Pantry store and asked the lady behind the counter for a frindle.

She squinted at him. “A what?”

“A frindle, please. A black one,” and Nick smiled at her.

She leaned over closer and aimed one ear at him. “You want what?”

“A frindle,” and this time Nick pointed at the ballpoint pens behind her on the shelf.


“A black one, please.”

The lady handed Nick the pen. He handed her the 49¢, said “thank you,” and left the store.

Six days later Janet stood at the counter of the Penny Pantry.

Same store, same lady.

John had come in the day before, and Pete the day before that, and Chris the day before that, and Dave the day before that.

Janet was the fifth kid that Nick had sent there to ask that woman for a frindle.

And when she asked, the lady reached right for the pens and said, “Blue or black?”

Nick was standing one aisle away at the candy racks, and he was grinning.

Frindle was a real word. It meant pen. Who says frindle means pen?

“You do, Nicholas.”

Half an hour later, a group of serious fifth graders had a meeting in Nick’s play room.

It was John, Pete, Dave, Chris, and Janet. Add Nick, and that’s six kids—six secret agents.

They held up their right hands and read the oath Nick had written out:

From this day on and forever, I will never use the word PEN again.

Instead, I will use the word FRINDLE, and I will do everything possible so others will, too!

And all six of them signed the oath—with Nick’s frindle.

The plan would work.

Thanks, Mrs. Granger.

An enthralling exemplar of sorts that teaches us all lessons in lorry loads, ain’t it?

And all of us have had our own sweet shares of those lovely, delightful language teachers like Mrs. Granger, ain’t we?

Those memorable, loveable grangers, oops teachers, who gave us all our love for language! ;-)

In fact, when a learner in class is taught well enough, they tend to apply their learning to real life situations!

And that, dearie folks, makes the difference, ain’t it!

As the difference there is, betwixt chalk and cheese!

So why wait!

Let’s all granger with grandeur!

T is not too late to seek a newer world!
image: amazondotcom
drawing: brianselznick