99 pages • 3 hours read
Andrew ClementsThe School Story
Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 2001A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Background
Authorial Context: Andrew Clements’s Childhood and Early Career
The School Story’s author, Andrew Clements, draws from much of his childhood and early career when considering the perspectives of the characters and the challenges they face in the publishing industry. Like Natalie Nelson, Clements lived in New Jersey until he was Natalie’s age, and the experience of being adjacent to major metropolitan areas comes through in Clements’s exploration of New York City as a setting. This is particularly evident in Chapter 4: “City Kid,” when the narrative expands upon the dangers of Natalie Nelson navigating a large city at the age of 12.
Clements also wove his own passion for reading and writing into Natalie Nelson. Like Natalie, Clements’s love for reading and writing came at a young age with the help of his parents, who would read to him regularly. Additionally, Clements worked as a teacher in his early career, which contributed to the shaping of Ms. Clayton’s character. The shift to Ms. Clayton’s perspective in chapters 10-12 allows the audience a look into the challenges of teaching, which Clements faced in his own career before deciding that teaching was not for him.
Clements went on to work for a publishing company in New York City, and the behind-the-scenes knowledge of the industry in The School Story is a direct reflection of Clements’s firsthand experience. Clements’s second publishing job was at a publishing company that worked with children’s books, much like Hannah Nelson’s job at Shipley Junior Books. Clements’s perspective on the way publishing companies were run in the 1990s and early 2000s is present in the passages that take place at the publishing office.
As an author, Clements also experienced the other side of the publishing business from the perspective of an aspiring writer. Clements began his publishing work with picture books, getting his first book published in 1987. He went on to work on several more picture books. One book, however, turned out to exceed the demands of a picture book and became his first novel Frindle in 1996. Having spent over a decade in the publishing industry and now working as a writer, Clements wrote The School Story as not just a continuation of his passion for writing children’s stories but also a snapshot of the children’s publishing industry in the early 2000s.
Physical Context: The School, the Office, and the City
The two settings of the Deary School, where Natalie Nelson and Zoe Reisman attend sixth grade with Ms. Clayton, and Shipley Junior Books, where Hannah Nelson works under Letha Springfield, provide helpful backdrops for a well-paced plot. At the school, Natalie and Zoe’s daily meetings keep the plot rolling with their briefings of the progress they’ve made and the ideas they’ve had. Additionally, this setting allows the reader to stay with the viewpoints of the sixth-grader main characters as they visit their teachers’ classrooms and the library to conduct business. This setting also allows Natalie and Zoe to involve a trusted adult, Ms. Clayton, and gives the reader perspective into their teacher’s motivations and concerns regarding helping the girls.
Additionally, the office building in which Shipley Junior Books occupies several floors allows the narrative to shift to the perspective of Hannah Nelson when there is nothing happening on the side of Natalie and Zoe. Hannah’s own battles with her overbearing boss Letha over the editing rights to Natalie’s story propel the plot forward. This setting also allows Natalie a glimpse into the publishing world as she goes straight from school to her mother’s work every day. Natalie learns how the publishing business operates and observes the progress of her own novel, which aspiring authors are normally not privy to. Through Natalie’s visits to Shipley Junior Books, she obtains behind-the-scenes knowledge about the processes involved with publishing that allow her an advantage when working her own novel through the system.
The larger setting of New York City makes the operation of the two smaller settings possible. Because Natalie and her mom live in New Jersey on the other side of the Hudson River, Natalie cannot go straight home from school on her own. Instead, she must spend every afternoon commuting through the city from her private school to her mother’s place of business. The tight geography of the setting makes it possible for Natalie to observe all facets of the publishing process as she bounces between the two main settings. New York City’s public transportation and notorious traffic create moments within the narrative where Natalie and her mother have time to talk as their bus crawls through the Lincoln Tunnel. These moments are possible because the greater setting of New York City forces Natalie and Hannah into system of commuting and adjustments as they work around their respective school and work schedules.
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