26 pages • 52 minutes read
Freckle Juice
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Chapter 5 Summary
After breakfast, Andrew cooks up a plan. He looks for a brown marker but can only find a blue one. As soon as he gets to school, he “[takes] out the magic marker and decorate[s] his whole face and neck with blue dots” (33). When Andrew gets to class, his classmates start giggling until Miss Kelly finally notices. She asks Andrew what he has done to himself, and he declares that “[he] grew freckles” (35). He takes the opportunity to stick his tongue out at Sharon for good measure. Miss Kelly doesn’t question him any further, and Andrew sits in class all day with blue freckles. Finally, at the end of the day, Miss Kelly calls Andrew over to her desk and asks if he wants to “use [her] secret formula for removing freckles” for free (36). She gives Andrew a package and tells him to wash his face with the magic freckle remover in the boys’ room.
When he returns to class without freckles, Miss Kelly tells him that he’s “a very handsome boy without freckles!” (38). Nicky asks if he could please use the magic freckle remover too, because “[he] hate[s] [his] freckles. [He] hate[s] every single one of them!” (38). Andrew is shocked to learn that Nicky doesn’t like his freckles, but Miss Kelly assures Nicky that his freckles make him special and look wonderful on him. Andrew decides that “He [is] through with freckles” (38), but he later overhears Sharon telling Nicky that she knows how to get rid of his freckles. She tells him that “the secret recipe for removing freckles has been in my family for years. That’s how come none of us have any” (40), and she offers to sell him the recipe for 50 cents. Sharon then shoots Andrew an ugly face.
Chapter 5 Analysis
Even after getting sick and being discovered, Andrew still hides the truth of his freckle fascination from his mother. Instead, he waits until he gets to school to cover himself in blue freckles because he knows his mother wouldn’t approve of these shenanigans. A child’s home life might be completely separated from their school life, and Andrew’s secrecy shows the reader that he doesn’t want his mother to know about the self-esteem issues he has been struggling with or what he has been doing to fix them.
Andrew’s decision to show up at school with fake freckles has nothing to do with solving his original problems and everything to do with “not letting Sharon get away with it.” He won’t give her a chance to laugh at him, even if it means that everyone else at school will laugh at him. Andrew makes one final attempt to save face at school and show Sharon that he knows what she did.
Miss Kelly’s discretion shows that she cares for her students, and she doesn’t want to embarrass Andrew by drawing more attention to his obviously fake freckles. Instead, she uses the moment to create a learning opportunity. Miss Kelly may be strict, and she may have high expectations for her students and their behavior, but she also recognizes that Andrew is going through a serious issue with his self-esteem. She gives him a chance to drop the charade, and when the blue freckles are gone, she assures Andrew that he looks great without freckles. When Nicky unexpectedly declares that he hates his freckles, Miss Kelly pivots and turns the freckles fiasco into a message to her students about the importance of self-love. She assures her students that they are perfect the way they are, and she reminds readers that a teacher’s role often does not stop with teaching children how to read, write, or complete math problems.
Sharon, however, is nothing like Miss Kelly. While Miss Kelly helps her students by offering words of affirmation and free magic freckle remover, Sharon is ready to make more money. She jumps at the chance to capitalize on Nicky’s insecurities, and just like she approached Andrew at the beginning of the story, she twists the truth to reach her target audience. By shooting Andrew one more final ugly face, Sharon shows both sides of her personality: the smooth-talking salesperson and the spiteful, manipulative frog that is only interested in catching flies—or, in this case, people she can make money off of. Andrew may have learned his lesson, but there will always be people like Sharon who are ready to take advantage of unsuspecting victims like Nicky. Blume uses her cast of characters to remind readers that, unlike freckle juice, self-love is free and won’t leave anyone with a stomach ache at the end of the day.
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By Judy Blume
