The book "Frindle," by Andrew Clemens, tells the story of creative fifth-grader Nick Allen challenging his strict, traditional language arts teacher, Mrs. Granger. Nick and his classmates are bored by Mrs. Granger's reliance on the dictionary for teaching, but when Nick begins learning about the origin of words, he realizes inventing a new word could challenge his teacher's fixation on dictionary definitions. The word Nick invents is "frindle," which means "pen." The word begins spreading much more rapidly than Nick had expected. Soon his entire school begins using the word, then his town, and the word quickly continues spreading from there. Mrs. Granger attempts to punish her students for using the word, but soon enough all of them begin using it. Nick's family and teachers step in to try to stop the phenomenon he created, but it has spread far beyond Nick's influence at that point. The epilogue of the book shows Mrs. Granger sending Nick the latest edition of the dictionary, which contains the word "frindle," and claims in an attached letter that she resisted the spread of the word only to increase its popularity.
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