27 pages • 54 minutes read
Sara PennypackerClementine
Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 2006A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
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BetaChapters 5-7Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 5 Summary
Chapter 5 revolves around appearance: Margaret comes home with her new braces, and Clementine shows off her new hairstyle. Since Margaret’s mother is at the movies with her boyfriend, they go to Margaret’s apartment, where they see Margaret’s brother, Mitchell.
In Margaret’s room, Clementine lets Margaret color in her hair: all green curls. Meanwhile, Margaret talks about how the braces feel, describing them like “heaven” even though it might seem like they are all pointy parts. Clementine lies and says she is getting braces too, then runs to her parents “to make this be a non-lie” (60).
Clementine’s parents tell her she isn’t getting braces. Even though Clementine is upset by this, she still plays with her little brother. At the end of the chapter, Clementine wonders about whether Margaret and her would ever look alike.
Chapter 6 Summary
Thursday starts with the “spectacularful idea” to glue Clementine’s own cut-off hair onto Margaret’s head. She finds herself once again in Principal Rice’s office. Principal Rice tries to ask Clementine what happened, and Clementine has an unexpected outburst about how Margaret “SAT ON [HER] SPARKLE-GLITTER PAINT SET, WHICH WAS [THE] BEST PRESENT” (67). Principal Rice lets Clementine leave the office.
In the afternoon, Clementine and Margaret get into an argument about how close in age they are. Margaret leaves after Clementine brags about being in the gifted class for math.
Clementine’s father stops her from trying to shave in the bathroom. He attempts to cheer her up by taking her to clean the pigeons off the front of their building. The pair try to brainstorm about how to get the pigeons to stop making the building a mess, but the chapter ends without a solution.
Chapter 7 Summary
Friday starts out extra bad “right from the beginning” when there are clear parts touching the white and yellow parts in Clementine’s eggs for breakfast (81). She realizes that she’s missing her homework and can’t find it under her bed. In school, Margaret plays with Amanda-Lee instead of Clementine, and Clementine is kept in from recess to write in her journal. She writes “I DON’T CARE!” all over the page until her pencil breaks (84).
At home, Clementine helps her father with a new plan to try to get the pigeons away: a plastic owl. While they work on setting it up, Clementine talks about missing her cat. When she describes some of her thoughts to her father and he hugs her, she notices that she feels better but also mixed “with feeling sad and lucky, which was extremely confusing” (74).
She comes up with the idea of putting up a giant picture of Polka Dottie to scare the pigeons. Upon coming back from the copy shop where she orders the picture, Clementine gets worried hearing her parents talking on the phone about “One’s all we need” (91). She imagines that they are talking about only needing one kid instead of two.
Chapters 5-7 Analysis
Clementine’s emotions are the focus in these chapters as she explores her grief, anger, and sadness. The book introduces difficult situations, but in her narration, Clementine often avoids discussing them. She brushes aside her sadness about her cat, Polka Dottie, dying, and ignores her many conflicts with Margaret. However, Clementine starts admitting her feelings in Chapters 5 through 7, first to Principal Rice, then to her father. This is an important turning point in the book and helps move the plot toward a resolution.
We see Clementine’s emotions emerge in Principal Rice’s office, when she unexpectedly explodes about her relationship with Margaret. For an eight-year-old, navigating emotions about friendships can be difficult, since they are still learning about their social world. Clementine doesn’t realize she is “going to yell” until she does (67). The relief Clementine feels after this conversation isn’t immediate or explicit, but it does seem to lead to her discussing her feelings with her father later that day, rather than holding them in.
Pennypacker shows how challenging it can be to figure out feelings as a young person. By having adults who listen and pay attention to her, Clementine is given a safe place to process her emotions, as shown by her positive interaction with her father about Polka Dottie’s death.
As a novel, Clementine doesn’t follow a straightforward plot arc with one major conflict: Instead, all the difficulties are wrapped up together, which mimics the way that Clementine experiences them. Over the course of the week, she has trouble with Margaret, has lots of feelings about her former cat’s death, is unsure about whether she’s a bad kid, and so on. As these experiences happen simultaneously and are seen through an eight-year-old’s perspective, Pennypacker presents them in a stream-of-consciousness style. This allows the reader to experience Clementine’s ongoing learning: She uses her creativity to approach each problem separately, yet the growth she has is cumulative. By the end of the book, readers should be able to see Clementine as a more mature and capable young person as she resolves multiple conflicts at once.
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By Sara Pennypacker
