Frindle

At Lincoln Elementary School, Nick Allen is a kid in a category all to himself—he's not an exclusively good kid, bad kid, or smart kid. Instead, he just has a lot of ideas and knows what to do with them all. In third grade, for instance, he turned Miss Deaver's room into a tropical island. He first encouraged his classmates to make palm trees out of construction paper, then coordinated a dress-up day in which the kids all wore tropical outfits. Miss Deaver thought all of this was fantastic. Then, Nick turned up the thermostat, sprinkled sand on the floor, and the kids kicked off their shoes. The principal found Miss Deaver teaching kids to hula while others played volleyball.

A year later, Nick learned that red wing blackbirds make high-pitched noises that confuse birds of prey. The next day, he noticed that his teacher, Mrs. Avery, had a hooked and beak-like nose like a hawk. He began imitating the blackbird noise but Mrs. Avery couldn't identify which student was doing it. She wrongfully accused Janet Fisk but apologized when she realized she’d made a mistake. Nick apologized to Janet at lunchtime and told her about the blackbird noises, which she found very interesting. For the rest of the school year, both she and Nick made the noises at least once per week. Mrs. Avery never figured out who did it.