Frindle

Frindle-
By, Andrew Clements


This is a story about a made up word. It started at Western elementary school; it started there by a boy named Nick, Nicholas Allen. He was in the fifth grade when he made up this word “Frindle”. He was in Mrs. Granger’s class for grammar. Mrs. Granger loved words. Nick was famous for tricking teachers out of making him do homework. He could not trick Mrs. Granger though she just gave him more homework everyday. When he had to do a dictionary assignment he found out that the words in the dictionary did not just happen, he found that they came from people who made up the words so, he decided to make up his own word. One day when he was walking with his friend she dropped her pen and instead of saying here’s your pen he said here’s your frindle.
Each day in school he called pens frindles. Then he took his friends to the store one at a time to buy a pen and told them “this is a frindle”. Soon everyone was saying the word frindle instead of pen. Mrs.Granger was angry about this and made the kids stay after school to write 100 sentences of “I’m writing this sentence with a pen” but instead they would write in Frindle instead of pen. Then it was like a chess game with the students against the staff.
In the end Nick won. The word frindle traveled around the world. People from his town went traveling and shared the word and on and on. People in his town started making frindle things to sell, like frindle shirts and pens and hats. Nick became famous and rich, the town became known for being the place where the word frindle started. In the end Nicholas Allen sent Mrs. Granger an engraved pen that had written on the pen, “you can call this you want” and that meant a big deal to Mrs. Granger.
I liked this book, it has three stars. I did not like that Mrs. Granger was mean and they had to stay after school. I did like that Nick made up a word and, I liked that this book was silly in that he wrote frindle for pen. I learned from this book that you can make up anything you want to. I think you can also learn how to be respectful a bit from this book.

Twenty one Balloons by William Pe'ne du Bois

This story is about Professor Sherman. He is an old man who taught school but he did not like teaching school because he had to go room to room at certain times and he was tired of it. So he decided to build a balloon and go floating away. He hoped that his balloon would stay in the air for a year or a lot of months. However , he ran into Krakatoa , an island in the Atlantic ocean.
On this jungle island of Krakatoa there were so may diamonds and everybody who lived there owned a share of diamonds. Everybody on the island was very nice and very rich. Each family owns a restaurant and on their day of the week they have to make food for everybody on the island. Each restaurant serves a different type of ethnic food. Professor Sherman's favorite day was I day because he loved spaghetti and on I day you get whatever you want.
Krakatoa was an volcanic island. The ground moved there up and down and back and forth. The people there thought it might explode - so just in case they made and escape plan. It was already made when Professor Sherman got there. One day there was an explosion and they used the escape plan. The plan was twenty one balloons some small and some big tied to a rectangular platform. Everybody had a family parachute - except Professor Sherman did not , he had to crash into an ocean.
A ship came and picked him up in the ocean. The captain of the ship was Sam. He wanted to know all about Professor Sherman and why he was in the ocean. But Professor Sherman did not tell the story until he got back to San Francisco. By then so many people wanted to know all about him that they made a big party for him.
The people of Krakatoa valued their riches and were greedy. In the end they learned that lives were more important than money.


I liked this book a lot - super dupper a lot. The best part of all was his balloon it had a house built of bamboo and a porch made of bamboo that surrounded his house. I wish someday I could travel on something like that.

Review of Ginger Pye by Eleanor Estes

This is a story about Ginger Pye. Ginger Pye is a dog. It starts with a boy named Jerry and his sister named Racheal. They try to earn a dollar to get a dog. They earn the dollar by dusting the pews at their church. Their uncle Benny who is 3 years old helps them. That is a very young uncle. They got payed before they dusted the pews. Then they bought the dog. It was a puppy at a neighbors house. And then Mrs. Speedy let them have the dog after they payed her. There was another boy who wanted their dog. While they were in the barn they saw a boy with a yellow hat. Then when the were on the way home they heard some footsteps. Then when they were at the reservoir swimming they saw the same hat fly right into the water. Then their friend had an idea. He had a red crayon and he marked a line on the inside band of the hat. They left the hat on a rock at the reservoir.
Jerry and his sister loved their puppy and they thought he was the smartest dog ever. One day Ginger missed them so much when they were at school that he tracked them all the way to school and he climbed up the fire escape and gave Jerry his pencil and the whole class was amazed. The teacher was mad and slammed a stick on the desk. He said, " Jerry put this dog under your desk. "
On Thanksgiving Ginger Pye disappeared. They put him in the backyard while they were eating and then when they went out to find him, Ginger Pye was gone. They went looking for him. They told the chief at the police station. They also gave him a drawing of the man they thought stole their dog. A man wearing a yellow hat. They went knocking on peoples doors they remembered not to knock on Mrs Mincemeat's door - or so they called her - but they did knock on Wally Bullwinkle's door. He said "get away there is a big dog"!!! They were surprised at his being mean especially because he was in Jerry's class at school and the whole class was amazed at Ginger Pye.
They looked and looked and they could not find him. They thought maybe he would come back on Christmas, because they thought he might be a holiday dog since he went missing on Thanksgiving. But he did not return on Christmas . On Jerry's birthday they went out to west rock. When they got home their mama thought Jerry had the German Measles. Then Mama gave Racheal 2 pennies to go to the penny shop. She asked Jerry what he wanted .. He said a yo yo. She went to the penny shop through the valley and through the thicket and she got to the penny shop and got a yo yo for Jerry. Then Uncle Benny found Ginger Pye and grandma did not believe that it was Ginger Pye because he was full grown and had a owie on his head. He was coming from the direction of Wally Bullwinkle's house. Grandma and Uncle Benny went to the Pye's house and Ginger Pye followed them. While they were doing this Jerry and Rachel were picking strawberries and on the way home they spilled all of Uncle Benny's strawberries. Then when they got home they saw Ginger Pye and remembered him and they were very happy. He licked everybody but only Jerry twice because he was holding the yellow hat. Then when Jerry dropped the yellow hat Ginger Pye jumped up into his arms and started licking him. By this time they knew it was Wally Bullwinkle that had stolen Ginger Pye because when they saw him get on a train he lent his head out a window and his hat flew away and landed at Jerry's feet. It was a yellow hat and inside there was a red crayon mark on the band.



I liked this story very much. Whoever made this story I would love to listen to all of the stories that they might tell. The best part was when they were doing the mysteries. I like mysteries because they are like secrets that can not be discovered until they learn all the clues.

The swimming pool

Today we went to the swimming pool. We had lots of fun. I got really cold. I went down the slide a few times. There are two slides. They have water coming out. They go really fast. We like to go to the swimming pool because we like to swim. We like to swim because we like to be in the water. This pool is different because it is in a building, this is nice because it is warmer than the neighbors pool right now. It is called the Rio Rancho aquatic center. We had so much fun. Then we had to go.

I like to transpose music.

I started it a lot of days ago . I changed Man in the moon in G major to Man in the moon C major. Then the day after that I changed Mountain climbing from C major to G major. That is when I decided I like to transpose music. "Mama , Mama ", I said," I think I could be a very famous music writer some day!!"
To transpose music is to change a piece of music from one key to another key. You can do it with any kind of music. I tried to transpose Silver Skates from C major to G major but it sounded really disgusting!
On Friday, I went to my piano lesson and Mrs. Roose said, "you are very good at transposing music." She told me what transposing music means. I played the transposed music to her. We played the rest of my music and then I was done with my lesson. Then I went out to play with my friends.
I am going to transpose my next piece of music too. Then I may be done with transposing for a while.