Books like Andrew Clements

Jackson Greene has supposedly retired from elaborate schemes—until a school election appears to be rigged. What follows begins as a delicious exercise in ingenuity: Jackson assembles a team whose members have sharply different talents and personalities, then tries to outthink a system stacked against them.

A Frindle reader will recognize the thrill of watching intelligence become collective power. Johnson understands school politics as its own miniature world, where rules matter, reputations linger, and children can be far more strategic than adults expect. The book became popular enough to launch further adventures, and its buoyant, precision-engineered plotting makes it difficult to read without rooting fiercely for the crew.

Nick Allen discovers that a word can be made; bored young Milo discovers that words can remake the way he sees everything. A mysterious tollbooth sends Milo into a world governed by puns, idioms, numbers, and ideas taken wonderfully—and sometimes alarmingly—literally.

The kinship lies deeper than wordplay. Both novels treat curiosity as a form of rebellion against received wisdom, while trusting young readers to enjoy arguments about meaning without turning them into lessons. Since 1961, Juster’s novel has inspired generations of devoted rereaders because its jokes grow richer as they do. Anyone exhilarated by Frindle’s proof that language belongs to its users should not miss this exuberant classic about learning to notice what words can do.