February 11, 2025 - Anastasia Suen

The Frindle Files
by Andrew Clements (Author)
@ Amazon | Bookshop

Booktalk: 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?

Snippet: 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.