By Andrew Clements
A clever fifth-grader decides to call a pen a 'frindle,' and the made-up word gets away from him and takes over the whole town.
Nick Allen is the child who can turn any classroom into a circus, and this year he's up against Mrs. Granger, the strict, dictionary-loving language teacher who is not fooled by any of his tricks. So Nick tries something bigger: he decides that a pen is now a 'frindle,' and he gets his friends to say it too. It spreads. It spreads to the whole school, then the town, then farther than Nick ever meant it to go, and Mrs. Granger fights him every step, until you slowly realize whose side she was really on.
This is the read-aloud that makes a room lean in, because every child recognizes the setup, the smart child versus the strict teacher, and then the book outgrows it. It's short, the chapters are brisk, and it's funny, so it holds the strugglers as well as the quick ones. And it hands your class a real idea to chew on, where words even come from, wrapped inside a story that reads like a prank getting gloriously out of hand. The ending turns the teacher you thought was the villain into the person who believed in Nick most, and it lands with a lump in the throat nobody sees coming.