The Report Card [Paperback]

A fifth-grade genius turns the spotlight on grades—good and bad—in this novel from Andrew Clements, the author ofFrindle.

Nora Rose Rowley is a genius, but don't tell anyone. She's managed to make it to the fifth grade without anyone figuring out that she's not just an ordinary kid, and she wants to keep it that way.

But then Nora gets fed up with the importance everyone attaches to test scores and grades, and she purposely brings home a terrible report card just to prove a point. Suddenly the attention she's successfully avoided all her life is focused on her, and her secret is out. And that's when things start to get really complicated....A Reading Group Guide to

The Report Card
By Andrew Clements


About the Book

Fifth-grader Nora Rose Rowley has been keeping an unusual secret for most of her life. The secret is that she is very, very smart. She does not want her family, friends, or teachers to know that she is highly intelligent because she does not want to be singled out as different. She does not want to leave her regular fifth-grade class to attend the Gifted Program. Most of all, she does not want her best friend Stephen to feel less good about himself because she is so much smarter. It is this reason that leads Nora to draw a very smart conclusion: that tests and grades should not be the only way students are judged. To prove this, however, Nora sets a not-so-smart plan into action: She decides to flunk fifth grade. What begins as a simple effort to protect her friend and prove her point snowballs into a classroom-wide “Get a Zero” campaign that ultimately involves teachers, counselors, even school administrators and threatens to get both her and Stephen suspended. Worst of all, Nora’s secret is discovered. Or perhaps this is the best result, for now Nora must find a way to be her true, intelligent self as she navigates through the remainder of flƒB