I’ve mentioned my love for the book Frindle before, in a post about Summer Reading. For this ‘Bout Books review I thought I would take the chance to profess my love for all things written by Andrew Clements.
Andrew Clements writes “independent reader” fiction—a label given to books typically enjoyed by readers aged 9-12…though I guess at 30, I’m a little bit older than his target audience. His books are quick reads, I can get through one of his books in an afternoon, and they never fail to entertain. This is a man who understands how kids’ brains work and creates characters that the kids will recognize as being “real kids” while the grown ups say, “I used to know someone like that.”
What makes Andrew Clements’ writing even more entertaining is that each book teaches kids a practical lesson, whether it is on leadership (The Holiday Concert), governmental topics (The Landry News), entrepreneurship (School Story) or something very specific like where words originated (Frindle). These lessons can be very subtle or they can be blatant, but they always are entertaining.
In The Landry News, Cara Landry gets fed up with her teacher for never really teaching. Instead of teaching lessons, he spends his time reading the newspaper behind his desk and ignoring his students. So, Cara decides to start her own newspaper and gets her entire class involved. Together the students learn about writing a newspaper, the first amendment and censorship and even manage to inspire their teacher to get more involved—all within 144 pages!
These books are perfect for kids who have become good readers but might not yet feel like they are ready to make the jump into “real chapter books” (for some kids reading chapter books is very scary). The type is large, there are pictures every few pages and the stories move quickly!
