The Report Card by Andrew Clements

Guest Blogger Day

The assignment was: Pretend you are the author of a book. Tell us why you wrote it and what you hope readers will get out of it. Write it from the first person point of view.

The Report Card is about a girl, Nora, who is a true genius. In school she gets bad grades on purpose to prove that grades aren’t everything. She is a brave girl that is trying to prove that taking tests is a stupid way to measure intelligence. As the author, I wrote this book for many reasons.

Ever since Nora was little, she hid her talent from everyone. Nora pretended she didn’t know anything while she did. Purposely, Nora gets average grades, simply to avoid the pressure of being in the gifted program. The reason I put this in the book was to help kids realize that just because you aren’t “gifted”, doesn’t mean you aren’t smart. Everyone has their own subjects in which they are smart. Nora was always just trying to prove that. She tried to prove this for her best friend, Stephan. She soon got a few classes to riot with her by filling out silly answers for tests.

Another point I tried to make was that bad grades don’t mean you are “dumb” in any way. You could have just missed something or got a bad grade on the test because you lost your concentration or were just tired. And just because you are in the gifted program or get fantastic grades doesn’t mean you can boss everyone around and act like they’re more stupid than you are.

I also wrote this book to help people understand the difficulties of being a kid. You have to worry about friends, grades, family pressure, and everything. When you’re with friends you have to try to figure out things like would you should do to make them like you more, what you could do together for fun and you have to worry about losing them. Your parents may always be asking you if you’ve studied for your next history test or grounding you because you got a bad score on a quiz. This causes pressure in grades. Family pressure would include things like having a sick grandparent who won’t live long, having a mom or dad who is a drug addict, or even having divorced parents.

Nora is great girl just stating her opinion. She is trying to change the fact that grades aren’t everything. Everyone is smart. Don’t judge others by what you see. Being a kid is a big challenge.

Elly, 7the Grade

The Report Card by Andrew Clements

Tags: children's books genius authors Andrew Clements