The Frindle Files - Softcover

Clements, Andrew

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0399557660 ISBN 13: 9780399557668

Verlag: Random House Children's Books, 2026

Inhaltsangabe

In the long-awaited follow-up to the beloved classic Frindle, a new generation of kids discovers the power of words and imagination—and yes, even screens—to solve a mystery and change their world!

“A fitting final work from a master storyteller.”—Kirkus Reviews

Josh Willet is a techie, a serious gamer. Which is why Josh and his friends can’t stand Mr. N’s ELA class; it’s a strict no-tech zone. Mr. N makes them write everything out by hand, he won’t use a Smartboard, and he’s obsessed with some hundred-year-old grammar book. Then Josh discovers a secret; turns out Mr. N's been keeping a lot more than technology from his students! Together with his best friend Vanessa, and using all the computer skills they’ve got, Josh is determined to solve the mystery of Mr. N’s past. And maybe get some screentime back, too?

Andrew Clements’s final novel is a timely one—about the importance of language, the changes that come along with technology (good and bad), and how sometimes you have to challenge what you think you know. Set a whole generation later, this novel can be read on its own or alongside Frindle and is destined to become another timeless classic.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

ANDREW CLEMENTS (1949–2019) was a New York Times bestselling author whose beloved modern classic Frindle has sold over six million copies, won nineteen state awards (and been nominated for thirty-eight!), and been translated into over a dozen languages. Before writing Frindle, Andrew worked as a public school teacher outside Chicago. Called the “master of school stories” by Kirkus Reviews, Andrew wrote over eighty acclaimed books for kids, including, most recently, The Friendship War and The Losers Club, which School Library Journal called “engaging and funny . . . a laugh-out-loud first purchase” in a starred review.

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Chapter 1


Results


The only thing Josh Willett liked about homework was how quickly he could access his assignments. All he had to do was turn on his laptop, then click the SIXTH-GRADE HOMEWORK portal he’d bookmarked on his browser at the start of the school year.

This system let Josh zoom through his homework so he could get back to the things he cared about most--like a new coding problem, or a new digital animation project, or a new action sequence for the online game he wanted to build. Because Josh always had something new to work on, a plan he was hatching. And usually, it involved his computer.

On this Monday evening in mid-September, without taking his fingers off the keyboard or his eyes off the screen, Josh sat at the kitchen table and crushed his homework for math, science, and social studies in less than twenty minutes--including the time it took to post each finished assignment.

Then he clicked the link for his ELA class.

The image of a handwritten note popped open on his screen:


Homework due Tuesday

Describe something you think is beautiful. Make your description at least one hundred words long. Avoid cliches, and remember this advice from page 70 of The Elements of Style: “Write in a way that comes naturally.” Copy your final draft onto lined paper in blue or black ink, and turn in the assignment Tuesday at the beginning of class. As always, neatness counts.

Mr. N


The assignment itself, plus the way it had been written by hand, plus the whole “neatness counts” thing? All of it made Josh scowl and grit his teeth. A chore like this should only take about ten minutes: type it, format it, spellcheck it, post it, and whoosh! Done.

But having to write out every language arts assignment in ink on paper? It was annoying, slow, and totally pointless--not to mention bad for the environment. Didn’t Mr. N understand anything?

It wasn’t that Mr. N was mean or unfair. He just seemed so backward. And also dull--except for the way he dressed.

He owned at least ten Hawaiian shirts, and he wore one each day, along with surfer shorts, hiking socks, and sandals. He would wear cargo pants, but only if the outdoor temperature got below sixty-five degrees. His dark red hair never looked completely tamed, especially when he rode his bike to school. Some days it seemed like he was trying to grow a mustache. Or a beard. Or both. Plenty of people in Southern California wore casual clothes, but at Clara Vista Middle School? Mr. N could win a prize for Least-Dressed-Up Teacher every single day.

The most backward thing about Mr. N? He was the only teacher in the whole school who didn’t let kids use laptops in class. He claimed there was no rule saying he had to allow them. Josh had checked the school handbook after getting the first assignment, just to make sure.

Josh wasn’t sure if Mr. N even owned a computer. There was a rumor that once he’d had a big argument with Mr. Ortega about posting his homework assignments on the school website. Mr. N had told the principal that writing assignments on the board in his classroom was enough--and he didn’t mean one of the SMART Boards that every other teacher used. No, Mr. N had an actual chalkboard that he could move around the room on wheels. The whiteboard was there, but Mr. N kept it hidden behind a huge poster about the parts of speech.

And that miserable little grammar book, The Elements of Style? Most of it was over a hundred years old.

Almost every day Mr. N made the entire class open to a certain page, and then some poor kid would have to stand up and read something out loud. If you forgot to bring your copy to class, you’d get a red mark in the gradebook--and three marks made your whole grade drop five points.

Antique books, ancient chalkboards, handwriting on paper--Mr. N’s class felt like being stuck inside a broken time machine. . . . More like a time-wasting machine. It was so frustrating to Josh, who just wanted Mr. N to appreciate the world his students were actually living in.

But grumbling was also a waste of time, so Josh opened a new document on his laptop. He had to write out the final copy by hand, but he always typed his first draft--like a normal human being living in the twenty-first century.

Something beautiful . . .

Josh stared at the empty document on his screen, watching the cursor as it blinked and blinked. He had no ideas, not even a bad one.

But as he looked at that blinking cursor, he decided it must be appearing once each second--a half second on, a half second off. He opened the stopwatch app on his iPhone and ran a quick test.

Yup, one blink per second.

And Josh understood why.

The cursor blinked once each second because somewhere inside his laptop there was a line or two of computer code. A programmer had written that code, which told the computer what to do. And the computer obeyed--it had no choice. Because good code is like a set of unbreakable rules. And if the programmer gets everything right, that code keeps working, and working perfectly, practically forever, and . . .

And that’s what I’m going to write about!

A few hours earlier during his after-school coding club, Josh had finished writing a perfect Python loop statement--a sequence of instructions that repeated itself until a specific goal was met. And that loop was beautiful! A flurry of words rushed into his mind, and Josh’s fingers zipped around the keyboard. Six or seven minutes later, the counter at the bottom of his document showed he had typed 136 words, just like that.

After some quick proofreading, he began writing his final copy on a sheet of lined paper. Neatly. Josh knew he had scrunchy handwriting. But his spelling was perfect, and his sentences made sense. The page looked clean and organized, and word after word flowed onto the paper in bright blue ink.

With only four sentences left to copy, disaster struck. The pen skipped, and the dry point almost tore his paper--it was out of ink.

Josh shook the pen and tried it again. Nothing.

He banged it on the edge of the kitchen table, but that didn’t help either, so he dug around in his backpack and found two other pens.

He tested one on a scrap of paper. Black ink.

He tried the second. More black ink--and he needed blue ink to match what he’d started with for Mr. N, the neatness nut.

I guess I could start over and use black ink . . . ?

Josh shouted, “Hey, Mom?”

“I’m right here, and quiet down--Dad’s putting Sophie to bed.”

Josh hurried through the doorway into the family room.

“I need a pen with blue ink so I can finish Mr. N’s homework.”

“Check the middle drawer of my desk.”

Josh opened the drawer, and the first pen he tried? Blue ink.

“Got one--thanks!”

Back at the kitchen table, Josh was about to start writing again. Then he noticed something printed on the side of the pen--one word, in bold black letters:


Frindle®


It was a word he’d never seen before, which made him curious. And Josh did what any other plugged-in kid would do: He searched the word on his browser--f-r-i-n-d-l-e. And then he hit return.

Whoa, 270,000 results?!

After clicking a few links, Josh opened up the images that were part of the search results--a lot of images. The very first picture showed some kid on a TV talk show, smiling at the camera and holding up a pen. And in another image halfway down his screen, Josh saw a close-up of a pen that was...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Random House Children's Books
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2026
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0399557660
• ISBN 13: 9780399557668
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 241
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar