Mrs. Avery
One night while watching TV, Nick learns about hawks and the next day the metaphor is set in stone. Not once, not twice, but on three different occasions in less than three pages he thinks to himself that his fourth-grade teacher, Mrs. Avery looks “like a hawk” due to the beaklike curvature of her nose.
Mrs. Granger
A big more detail is offered in the descriptive imagery of Nick’s fifth grade teacher. Mrs. Granger is:
“small, as teachers go. There were even some fifth graders who were taller. But Mrs. Granger seemed like a giant. It was her eyes that did it. They were dark gray, and if she turned them on full power, they could make you feel like a speck of dust.”
Legal Mumbo-Jumbo
Frindle is a word that Nick decides is going to be used in place of the word “pen.” Great fun, but then things beyond his control get out of hand and before too long—well, read the story to find out what happens. Early on, Nick has a discussion with Mrs. Granger over the implications of defining a word arbitrarily and then making that definition the convention simply because enough people agree on it. Seems like a crazy, anarchic world until Miss Granger sets him straight:
“...that dictionary was worked on by hundreds of very smart people for many years, so as far as we are concerned, that dictionary is the law.”
Maybe Joy a Little More than Pride
Miss Granger, you see, is kind of…well…maybe just a little insane on the subject of dictionaries. How can this be said about another human being? Because, in an example of mixing metaphors—or, technically, mixing metaphors and similes:
“Mrs. Granger kept a full set of thirty dictionaries on a shelf at the back of the room. But her pride and joy was one of those huge dictionaries with every word in the universe in it, the kind of book it takes two kids to carry. It sat on its own little table at the front of her classroom, sort of like the altar at the front of a church.”
That’s with a capital G, Kemo Sabe
Nick is famous—or perhaps infamous—around school for inventive pranks that cause problems, but can also be admired for the sheer ingenuity. Of course, it helped facilitate things that developing a reputation in elementary school is much more difficult than high school. By the time he reaches fifth grade, the reputation finally meets its match. Mrs. Granger, who is hip to all his trickery and a force to be reckoned. In fact, Mrs. Granger has developed a reputation herself, expressly simply but effectively through her metaphor-rich nickname:
“The Lone Granger.”
