Essay Questions

Mrs Granger had a very bad reaction to the spread of Nick's new word. Why is this?

Mrs Granger's reaction seems to be explained by her natural desire to keep order both within language and within the classroom. She seems to view Nick's word as somehow disrespectful to language and its development, and also feels that Nick is challenging her authority. However, at the end of the book we realize that her reaction was quite deliberate and was in fact designed to enable Nick's word to become common usage, her logic being that the harder she tried to prevent students from using the word the more they would want to use it.

How does his success in creating a new word change him both in the short term and long term?

In the short term Nick does not like all of the attention the rising popularity of his word brought him and retreats into his shell a little as he does not want to repeat the experience, so consequently when he does have an idea that will definitely gain momentum he keeps it to himself in a very uncharacteristic way. In the long term, though, the word makes him an enormous amount of money from merchandising rights, which puts him through college and enables him to change not only his life but the lives of his family as well.

How does the author use the novel to teach the reader about language arts?

From the beginning of the novel Mrs Granger teaches not only her fictitious class but the reader as well; Nick's first assignment about the dictionary outlines its history and development and we also learn how new words enter the dictionary, which is what inspires Nick to create a new word of his own. When both teachers and parents fear the onset of the usage of slang, and agree that kids cannot go around using words like "ain't", the reader is also learning about the usage of proper language and the importance of having respect for its history and richness.