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Andrew Clements

Born

in Camden, New Jersey, The United States

May 29, 1949

Died

November 29, 2019

Website

http://www.andrewclements.com/

Genre

Children's Books

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I was born in Camden, New Jersey in 1949 and lived in Oaklyn and Cherry Hill until the middle of sixth grade. Then we moved to Springfield, Illinois. My parents were avid readers and they gave that love of books and reading to me and to all my brothers and sisters. I didn’t think about being a writer at all back then, but I did love to read. I'm certain there's a link between reading good books and becoming a writer. I don't know a single writer who wasn’t a reader first.
Before moving to Illinois, and even afterwards, our family spent summers at a cabin on a lake in Maine. There was no TV there, no phone, no doorbell—and email wasn’t even invented. All day there was time to swim and fish and mess around outside, and every night, there was t I was born in Camden, New Jersey in 1949 and lived in Oaklyn and Cherry Hill until the middle of sixth grade. Then we moved to Springfield, Illinois. My parents were avid readers and they gave that love of books and reading to me and to all my brothers and sisters. I didn’t think about being a writer at all back then, but I did love to read. I'm certain there's a link between reading good books and becoming a writer. I don't know a single writer who wasn’t a reader first.
Before moving to Illinois, and even afterwards, our family spent summers at a cabin on a lake in Maine. There was no TV there, no phone, no doorbell—and email wasn’t even invented. All day there was time to swim and fish and mess around outside, and every night, there was time to read. I know those quiet summers helped me begin to think like a writer.
During my senior year at Springfield High School my English teacher handed back a poem I’d written. Two things were amazing about that paper. First, I’d gotten an A—a rare event in this teacher’s class. And she’d also written in large, scrawly red writing, “Andrew—this poem is so funny. This should be published!”
That praise sent me off to Northwestern University feeling like I was a pretty good writer, and occasionally professors there also encouraged me and complimented the essays I was required to write as a literature major. But I didn’t write much on my own—just some poetry now and then. I learned to play guitar and began writing songs, but again, only when I felt like it. Writing felt like hard work—something that’s still true today.
After the songwriting came my first job in publishing. I worked for a small publisher who specialized in how-to books, the kind of books that have photos with informative captions below each one. The book in which my name first appeared in print is called A Country Christmas Treasury. I’d built a number of the projects featured in the book, and I was listed as one of the “craftspeople”on the acknowlegements page, in tiny, tiny type.
In 1990 I began trying to write a story about a boy who makes up a new word. That book eventually became my first novel, Frindle, published in 1996, and you can read the whole story of how it developed on another web site, frindle.com. Frindle became popular, more popular than any of my books before or since—at least so far. And it had the eventual effect of turning me into a full-time writer.
I’ve learned that I need time and a quiet place to think and write. These days, I spend a lot of my time sitting in a small shed about seventy feet from my back door at our home in Massachusetts. There’s a woodstove in there for the cold winters, and an air conditioner for the hot summers. There’s a desk and chair, and I carry a laptop computer back and forth. But there’s no TV, no phone, no doorbell, no email. And the woodstove and the pine board walls make the place smell just like that cabin in Maine where I spent my earliest summers.
Sometimes kids ask how I've been able to write so many books. The answer is simple: one word at a time. Which is a good lesson, I think. You don't have to do everything at once. You don't have to know how every story is going to end. You just have to take that next step, look for that next idea, write that next word. And growing up, it's the same way. We just have to go to that next class, read that next chapter, help that next person. You simply have to do that next good thing, and before you know it, you're living a good life. ...more

Combine Editions
Andrew Clements’s books

Average rating: 3.87 · 280,397 ratings · 18,651 reviews · 171 distinct works • Similar authors

	Frindle 3.85 avg rating — 122,473 ratings — published 1996 — 95 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Things Not Seen (Things, #1) 3.89 avg rating — 26,564 ratings — published 2002 — 38 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	No Talking 3.98 avg rating — 19,772 ratings — published 2007	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Report Card 3.88 avg rating — 13,376 ratings — published 2004 — 42 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The School Story 3.98 avg rating — 12,170 ratings — published 2001 — 46 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Landry News by Andrew Clements, Brian Selznick (Illustrator), Salvatore Murdocca (Illustrator) 3.88 avg rating — 9,054 ratings — published 1999 — 49 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Lunch Money 3.92 avg rating — 8,939 ratings — published 2005 — 28 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Extra Credit by Andrew Clements, Mark Elliott (Illustrator) 3.78 avg rating — 9,190 ratings — published 2009 — 26 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	A Week in the Woods 3.80 avg rating — 6,275 ratings — published 2002 — 30 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Janitor's Boy by Andrew Clements, Brian Selznick (Illustrator) 3.77 avg rating — 5,844 ratings — published 2000 — 10 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

More books by Andrew Clements…

Series by Andrew Clements

Frindle (2 books)
by

Andrew Clements

3.85 avg rating — 123,401 ratings

Things (3 books)
by

Andrew Clements

3.88 avg rating — 32,685 ratings

Benjamin Pratt & the Keepers of the School (5 books)
by

Andrew Clements,

Adam Stower (Illustrations)

3.91 avg rating — 5,934 ratings

Jake Drake (4 books)
by

Andrew Clements,

Dolores Avendaño (Illustrator)

3.74 avg rating — 2,182 ratings

Quotes by Andrew Clements (?)

“Two wrongs don't make a right, but don't three lefts make a right? Two wrongs don't make a right, but don't two negatives make a positive?”
― Andrew Clements, Things Not Seen

tags: andrew, beautiful, clements, inspirational, ironic, life, oxemoron, paradox, wisdom

279 likes

“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 you open up a good book and begin to read. When we read silently, we are alone with our own thoughts and one other voice. We can take our time, consider, evaluate, and digest what we read—with no commercial interruptions, no emotional music or special effects manipulation. And in spite of the advances in electronic information exchange, the book is still the most important medium for presenting ideas of substance and value, still the only real home of literature.”
― Andrew Clements

tags: andrew, books, clements, freedom, reading, things-not-seen

140 likes

“Because a real kiss, a kiss that two real people choose to give each other - it's something that can't be filmed or
photographed or drawn, or even described with words. Because a kiss isn't what it looks like or how it feels.
A real kiss happens down deep inside of two hearts at the same time. It's hidden away. A real kiss is invisible.”
― Andrew Clements

83 likes

See all Andrew Clements's quotes »

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Andrew Clements’s Followers (2,074)

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Andrew Clements

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