The Frindle Files
by Andrew Clements; illus. by Brian Selznick
Intermediate    Random    224 pp.
8/24    9780399557637    $17.99
Library ed.  9780399557644    $20.99
e-book ed.  9780399557651    $10.99

The student has become the teacher in this sequel to Frindle (rev. 11/96). Nick Allen is now Mr. N, a Hawaiian shirt–wearing sixth-grade ELA teacher who makes his students bring a paperback copy of Strunk and White’s The Elements of Style to class and doesn’t allow the use of laptops, much to the chagrin of protagonist Josh Willett. Mr. N is the antithesis of computer-savvy coder Josh…or so Josh believes, until he stumbles upon Mr. N’s secret past when, looking for a pen to complete an assignment, he finds his mother’s childhood “frindle.” While he and his friend Vanessa figure out what to do with the information in his “Frindle Files,” Josh discovers there’s a bigger issue to address: getting a pirated version of Elements removed from the internet. With help from his classmates and Mr. N and a rallying cry “for Wilbur!” (in honor of White’s Charlotte’s Web), Josh learns about the power of language to enact change and the potential ills of technology if used improperly. Rebellious, smart, persistent Josh is a classic Clements main character, and the parallels between this plot and the original are evident (student/teacher battle, learning from a reference book, national fame). In his straightforward storytelling, Clements pulls modern young readers in by connecting something they might relate to (coding philosophy) to the principles of good writing. This posthumously published novel brings Clements’s impressive collection of middle-grade stories to a satisfying close. Black-and-white spot illustrations “drawn entirely with a frindle” are interspersed.

From the ">November/December 2024 issue of The Horn Book Magazine.