Jake Drake, Know-It-All

American author Andrew Clements grew up as an early and avid reader and studied literature and education when he went to college. After graduating, he took a job teaching near Chicago, Illinois. Before leaving teaching, Clements taught fourth grade, eighth-grade English, and high-school English. He next took a job working for a publishing house that specialized in how-to books. Although he had written occasional poems and songs for years, it was not until he switched jobs to work for a company that imported European children’s books that he decided to write his own picture book. In 1985, he published his first book, Bird Adalbert. Clements wrote several more picture books before moving into editorial positions at Houghton Mifflin’s school division and the Christian Science Publishing Society, where he began writing his first books for school-aged readers as a contributor to the Watch Me Read series of beginning chapter books.

In 1990, Clements was asked to give an author talk to a group of children at JFK Elementary School in Middletown, Rhode Island. One of the topics he talked about was word meanings. He explained that ordinary people can make up words—and that, if enough people start to use the new word, it ends up as part of the language and makes it into the dictionary. The students were skeptical when he made up a silly new word for a pen—“frindle”—and said that if enough people started to use it, someday it would end up in the dictionary. This conversation gave Clements an idea for a new book. This story idea would become Clements’s first middle grade novel, Frindle, published in 1996. Frindle is the story of a boy, Nicholas Allen, who creates his own word. The book was wildly popular and launched Clements’s career as a full-time writer.

After Frindle was published, Clements wrote many more books—both picture books and books for middle grade readers. In total, he published more than 80 books before he passed away in 2019. His books for middle grade readers tend to be humorous looks at school life and the social relationships of their young protagonists. Some of his novels in this category are The Friendship War (2001), The Report Card (2004), Lunch Money (2005), No Talking (2007), and The Losers Club (2017). Clements was a highly respected author who was honored with dozens of awards and award nominations in his lifetime, including the Phoenix Award for Frindle, a Christopher Award for Frindle and another for Extra Credit, and an Edgar Award for Room One: A Mystery or Two.