SOURCE CITATION
"Andrew Clements." Major Authors and Illustrators for Children and Young Adults, 2nd ed., 8 vols. Gale Group, 2002. Reproduced in Biography Resource Center. Farmington Hills, Mich.: Thomson Gale. 2007.
Photography by Bill Crofton; provided by Simon & Schuster.
BIOGRAPHICAL ESSAY
Andrew Clements has all the bases covered in the field of children's books. An avid reader as a child, he later taught the joys of reading to students in elementary and high school, then went on to the world of publishing, acquiring, editing, and marketing, developing quality children's books for several publishing houses. In 1985, he decided to contribute his own work to that market, beginning with his first picture book, Bird Adalbert. The author of the award-winning Frindle, a book about the power of words that Kirkus Reviews called "something of a classic," Clements has also attracted a wide readership for his picture books, including the popular Big Al, Santa's Secret Helper, Temple Cat, Bright Christmas, and his "Real Monsters" books.
"I've got a special place in my heart for libraries and librarians," Clements once commented. "As a kindergartner in Oaklyn, New Jersey, I confess that I was something of a showoff. I was already a good reader, and I didn't mind who knew about it." With parents who were compulsive readers themselves and who passed on the love of books to their children, it was no surprise at home that Clements should be such an early reader. At school, however, it was a different story. On his first trip to the school library, Clements chose a thick book on myths. The next day he asked his teacher if he could take it back to the library. "'Is it too hard, dear?' she asked sympathetically," Clements recalled. The teacher's eyebrows shot up when Clements informed her that it was not the difficulty of the book that was the problem. He had already finished it and wanted more. "That event created for me an open invitation to head to the library just about any old time I wanted to. And the librarian was a gem. She kept me well stocked."
"Clements made his way through the classics, from A. A. Milne to Robert Louis Stevenson, and from Robin Hood to King Arthur. Later loves included Sherlock Holmes and the Hardy Boys, Robinson Crusoe, The Swiss Family Robinson, works by Dumas and Jack London, as well as adventure stories and biographies. "I loved owning books. And I will always love that librarian at my elementary school, because she made me feel like I was the owner of every book. That's one of the greatest things about reading a book--read it, and you own it forever."
"Clements attended Northwestern University and then earned a master's degree in education at National Louis University. For seven years thereafter, he taught school, at both grade school and high school levels. "I liked it," Clements once commented. "The kids and I laughed a lot. I enjoyed the hundreds of little conversations every day, the running jokes--I even liked the noise and the craziness of a Friday afternoon right before Christmas vacation. And I loved reading good books with kids--the kids at school and also the four boys my wife and I had at home. As a teacher, it was a thrill to read a book aloud, and see a whole class listen so carefully to every word, dying to know what would happen next. And I was amazed at the wonderful discussions a good book can spark. Good books make good things happen in real life. They can make a big difference. So when I was given the chance to start writing for children, I jumped at it."
"That chance began for Clements with a job as editor of children's books at various publishers, including Alphabet Press and Picture Book Studio, where he not only acquired titles but also helped translate and adapt European picture books for the American market. "I didn't start writing books until I was about thirty-five years old," Clements once commented. "But I began writing a long time before that. And the way I really got started writing was by reading. Before too long I found myself reading something good and saying to myself, 'I wish I had written that!' I think the more good books you read, the better you learn what good writing sounds like and feels like. Every good writer I know started off as a good reader."
"One of Clements's most popular titles is his second picture book, Big Al, a "simple story about the need for friendship," as Gratia Banta described the book in School Library Journal. Big Al of the title is a rather ugly and scary-looking fish who desperately tries to be liked by the smaller fish. When Big Al saves the lives of the little fish, he accomplishes his mission, becoming their fast friend. Noting illustrator Yoshi's use of silk batik and painting, Banta wrote that the "magnificence" of the illustrations matches "Clements' international story of friendship. . . . The book offers a welcome sense of something other than western culture."
"Other picture books followed. Santa's Secret Helper was the first of several Christmas books. Illustrated by Debrah Santini, Santa's Secret Helper features Mrs. Santa as a stand-in for her exhausted husband, dressed just like Santa and filling stockings with great care. Back at the North Pole, she gets a big hug from her husband. "This story is appealing in its simplicity," noted Booklist's Ilene Cooper, who gave high praise to the artwork which keeps the helper's identity a secret until the very end. Another holiday title is Clements's Bright Christmas: An Angel Remembers, the story of the Nativity told from the point of view of an angel. Publishers Weekly remarked that in "the voice of a seasoned spinner of yarns, Clements imagines a heavenly perspective on the birth of Jesus." Writing in Booklist, Shelley Townsend-Hudson described the book as a "lovely blend of words and pictures" which "attempt to explain the idea of eternity." School Library Journal noted that the book was told "in spare, tempered, and reverent prose," and concluded that Bright Christmas "is a fine combination of text and illustration that tells a familiar story."
"Clements has explored themes ranging from strengthening counting skills, to accepting people's differences, to the concept of ownership, in his ambitious picture books. A simple task such as learning how to count is transformed by Clements into an exploration "of the diverse wonders of our planet," as Steven Engelfried described Mother Earth's Counting Book in a School Library Journal review. The seven continents and four oceans of this planet all figure into Clements's counting scheme. Billy and the Bad Teacher tells a story of acceptance that "will have students and teachers rolling out of their chairs," according to Jeanne Marie Clancy in School Library Journal. Neat and compulsive Billy is initially horrified when he gets the unorthodox Mr. Adams for his new teacher, but slowly comes to love this teacher who makes long division fun and reads The Swiss Family Robinson to the class each day. "The story makes a nice point about accepting the foibles of others without hitting readers over the head with it," concluded Clancy.
"The concept of ownership comes under scrutiny in Who Owns the Cow?, a story about a cow, a farmer, and the many people who come into contact with both. A little girl thinks of the cow when she hears its bell; a milkman earns a living by delivering its milk; an artist paints it. So who really owns it? While several reviewers felt this question of ownership might be too philosophical for most young readers, Deborah Stevenson of the Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books maintained that Who Owns the Cow? is an "offbeat book with an appealing style" that "will puzzle some and become the favorite of others." Horn Book Guide called the book "almost ecological in spirit," and a "thoughtful consideration of ordinary cause-and-effect relationships." Relationships also figure in Temple Cat, the story of an ancient Egyptian feline who is the lord of a temple but is tired of being pampered. The cat longs simply to be loved, and finds such love in the arms of two children after it has run away. Susan Middleton, writing in School Library Journal, asserted that "this endearing tale is sure to find favor wherever cat stories are in demand," while a Kirkus Reviews critic remarked that "Clements pens a tale for consummate cat enthusiasts or lovers of antiquity."
"A further adventure in the picture book format is Double Trouble in Walla Walla. Young Lulu is sent to the principal's office when she cannot stop speaking in a sort of hyphenated slang, in a book that Barbara McGinn in School Library Journal dubbed "side-splitting fun." "In this breathlessly verbose tale, a rash of compound nonsense words infects an elementary school," commented a Publishers Weekly reviewer, who concluded that "children with a fondness for wordplay may delight in this dizzying romp."
"More such wordplay is served up in Clements's first novel for middle graders, Frindle. The book was inspired by comments Clements once made when talking to students at a Rhode Island school, "teaching them a little about the way words work." As Clements once explained, "I was trying to explain to them how words only mean what we decide they mean. They didn't believe me when I pointed to a fat dictionary and told them that ordinary people like them and like me had made up all the words in that book--and that new words get made up all the time." To illustrate his point, Clements pulled a pen from his pocket and told the students that they could change the name of this instrument from pen to anything they made up. Clements chose a made-up word, "frindle," and challenged students to start calling it by that name instead of "pen" to see if such a name would stick. "The kids loved that story, and for a couple of years I told that same story every time I went to talk at a school or a library. Then one day in 1990 as I was sifting through my life, looking for a story idea, I wondered what would happen if a kid started using a new word, and other kids really liked it, but his English teacher didn't. So the idea for the book was born."
"In the novel, Nick, who always stays one step ahead of his teachers, can usually manage to sidetrack the teacher from assigning homework. However, when he meets Mrs. Granger, his new fifth-grade language-arts teacher, this simple ruse breaks down. To irritate her, he invents the word "frindle" for pen and convinces other kids in the school to use the neologism. Soon the word spreads to the city, the state, the nation, and ten years later "frindle" has even made it into the dictionary. And only then does Nick realize that Mrs. Granger has secretly been rooting for him and his new word all the time. "The chesslike sparring between the gifted Nicholas and his crafty teacher is enthralling," commented a Kirkus Reviews critic, who concluded that "this is a captivating tale--one to press upon children, and one they'll be passing among themselves." A Publishers Weekly commentator remarked that "dictionary lovers will cotton to this mild classroom fantasy, while readers who have a hard time believing that one person could invent a word out of thin air will be surprised to learn that the word 'quiz' was invented the same way." Booklist's Kay Weisman concluded her review of Frindle by noting that the book is sure to be "popular with a wide range of readers (and) will make a great read-aloud as well." In a starred review, Elizabeth S. Watson of Horn Book remarked that Clements "has created a fresh imaginative plot that will have readers smiling all the way through, if not laughing out loud." Award committees agreed with the critics: Frindle garnered more than thirty award nominations, and won the 1997 Christopher Award.
"Clements also received a great deal of critical attention for his middle-grades novel The School Story. Natalie, the daughter of a children's book editor, wants to be a writer, but she doesn't think that she can get a whole book published when she is only twelve. Her friend, Zoë, reads a few chapters of The Cheater, her work in progress, loves it, and names herself Natalie's agent. Zoë convinces Natalie to try to get it published, and the two of them, with the help of their English teacher, come up with a plan that involves, among other things, fake names and office space rented by their English teacher to be Zoë's "headquarters." Amazingly, the plan is ultimately successful. Clements "make(s) the scheme seem entirely plausible and its deviousness almost wholesome," declared a Horn Book contributor. Booklist critic Chris Sherman echoed this praise, calling the story "entirely believable" and commenting that Clements's "characters are as real as the reader's best friends." "A comic novel that's a sure winner," concluded Terrie Dorio in a review for School Library Journal.
"Clements has continued his commitment to the world of children's books with classroom appearances and the writing and/or illustrating of early readers, picture books, and more novels for middle graders. "There has been a lot of talk in recent years about the decline of reading," he once commented, "the overpowering influence of the television and multi-media screens, even a national descent into illiteracy. Everyone is so upset when these ideas are voiced, and everyone feels sure that reading and books are important--but why? Apart from the basic skill of functional or task-related reading, why is there a universal conviction that books and literature are indispensable? I think it's because when we read, we're in charge. That's probably the most significant difference between pagetime and screentime. When we read, we decide when, where, how long, and about what. One of the few places on earth that it is still possible to experience an instant sense of freedom and privacy is anywhere we open up a good book and begin to read."
"Clements told MAICYA: "My career as an author began in 1985 with picture books, but I took my first real steps as a writer during college, circa 1968. I didn't work at writing back then. I wrote when I felt like it. I waited until I felt inspired. I loved William Woodsworth's preface to his Lyrical Ballads where he defined poetry as 'strong emotion recollected in tranquility.' And since my college years were jammed with plenty of strong emotion, I didn't lack for subject matter. I felt at home writing poems, and I specialized in short ones. . . .
""Now we fast-forward through college, through summer workshops for high school kids where I taught creative writing, through a year of graduate school in elementary education, and through seven years of teaching in the public schools north of Chicago. . . . Then came a move to New York City: one year of freelance songwriting (nothing sold); one year of work for a book packager (Publishing 101); then a job offer to work for a company that made children's books. And after two years, that company had published my first three picture books. (Yes, it's easier to get something published if you work for the publishing company.)
""I love picture books. And as thousands of children at scores of schools have heard me confess, some of that love derives from the fact that writing is hard work for me. One of the qualities I find so endearingabout picture books is something that most young readers love about them, too: they are deliciously short. (There's that word again.) But as any picture book author will tell you, that brevity is deceptive. As in a good poem, so in a good picture book: a lot of meaning ought to be packed into a few lines. For ten years I wrote nothing but picture books.
""Then came Frindle, published in 1996, and in the wake of that book's success came a series of multi-book contracts from Simon & Schuster, contract which allowed me to simply write.
""Now that I spend most of my time writing longer narrative fiction, it's as if I've become a miner. My accumulated memories and experience--by now a great heap of them--that's where I do my digging. I'll find a rough gem, often something as simple as a conversation or the way a certain person looked on a particular day, and that becomes something to bring up into the light, something to polish and shape into a story.
""I still write picture books, and I certainly continue to write poems. And I still like to look back at poems and songs I wrote long ago. In fact, in the fall of 2001, a poem I had written at college thirty years earlier found its way into my novel Things Not Seen, where it's authorship is attributed to a fifteen-year-old blind girl.
""And this supports my contention that no thought or experience ever goes to waste. Which is as it should be."
PERSONAL INFORMATION
Born May 29, 1949, in Camden, NJ; son of William Denney, Jr. (an insurance executive) and Doris (Kruse) Clements; married Rebecca Pierpont (an actress and homemaker), December 16, 1972; children: John, Nathaniel, George, Charles. Education: Northwestern University, B.A. (English literature), 1971; National Louis University, M.A. (elementary education), 1972. Addresses: Home--23 Old Nourse St., Westborough, MA 01581.
CAREER
Writer, editor, and educator. Sunset Ridge School, Northfield, IL, fourth grade teacher, 1972-74; Wilmette Junior High School, Wilmette, IL, eighth grade teacher, 1974-77; New Trier High School, Winnetka, IL, English teacher, 1977-79. Allen D. Bragdon Publishers, New York, NY, editor, 1980-82; Alphabet Press, Natick, MA, sales and marketing manager, editor, 1982-85; Keller Graduate School of Management, Chicago, IL, director, 1985-87; Picture Book Studio, Ltd., Saxonville, MA, vice president and editorial director, 1987-93; Christian Science Publishing Society, Boston, MA, editor, 1997-98. Served on executive board of Children's Book Council, New York, NY, 1983-85; frequent speaker in schools and at writing and education conferences.
