50 Fun Facts About Big Nate

Which bestselling author wrote Lincoln Peirce a fan letter in college and later helped him land the Big Nate novels?

Jeff Kinney was a student cartoonist when he wrote, and the two became pen pals; years later, after Diary of a Wimpy Kid took off, he helped Peirce secure the book deal for the Big Nate novels.

What grade is Nate Wright in?

Sixth grade is harder for Nate because his older sister got there first: his teachers keep asking why he can't be more like her.

What is the name of Nate's school?

P.S. 38 turns a hundred years old in the novel Lives It Up, and it shows: the building is so run-down that a ceiling tile drops on Nate's head.

What subject does Nate's nemesis Mrs. Godfrey teach?

Social studies is Mrs. Godfrey's subject, and for all their feuding she once saved Nate's life, using the Heimlich manoeuvre when he choked on a peppermint in her class.

In the Big Nate comic strip, what is the name of Nate's rock band?

Enslave the Mollusk began with Nate as lead singer, until a classmate dropped in on a rehearsal, sang 'I Fought the Law' and got the job; the TV series renames the band Fear the Mollusk.

Which instrument does Nate play in his band?

Drums are Nate's job, and he takes it seriously: when a power cut silenced the band at a school dance, he offered to keep the crowd happy with a killer drum solo.

Which classmate sings lead in Nate's band, dates his crush and beat him at chess?

Artur, an exchange student from Belarus in the strip, seems to Nate to be perfect at everything, yet he has no idea he is resented and counts Nate as a friend.

In Big Nate, which classmate became Nate's long-running crush back in first grade?

Jenny has never been interested, yet Nate kept coming back to her: Peirce once had him break up with a girlfriend he met at soccer camp because he couldn't get over the crush.

Which teacher's pet, Mrs. Godfrey's favourite student, does Nate loathe?

Gina prides herself on a spotless record, so it stings when a shouting match with Nate in the library earns her the first detention of her life at the end of Strikes Again.

Which of Nate's classmates loves 'The Book of Facts' and owns a cat named Pickles?

Francis Pope sealed his friendship with Nate back in third grade by confiding his embarrassing middle name, Butthurst, and in Flips Out Nate blurts it out in the heat of an argument.

What is Teddy Ortiz's middle name?

The square root symbol is Teddy's middle name because both of his parents are maths teachers, which makes him, in full, Teddy Square Root Ortiz.

What is the name of Nate's older sister?

Ellen is the responsible one now, but she began the strip as a ditzy, rebellious teenager; only later did she become the model student Nate is forever compared with.

What is Nate's dad's first name?

Martin Wright is a health nut who hands out prunes instead of sweets at Halloween, and the neighbourhood's trick-or-treaters turn them down every single year.

What snack does Nate love above all others?

Cheez Doodles come straight from Nate's creator: Lincoln Peirce says he loves them too, just as he shares Nate's hatred of egg salad.

What is the name of the neighbour's dog, the closest thing Nate has to a pet of his own?

Spitsy wears a cone because he would chew his own paws off without it, and Nate, who longs for a real dog of his own, calls him 'the ultimate dog nerd'.

What is Nate's favourite comic book series?

Femme Fatality is the comic Nate swears he reads only for the stories; it inspired his own heroine, Eve of Destruction, whom he later rewrote as a man called Steve.

Which modern rival school beats Nate's classmates at almost everything?

Jefferson Middle School has a food court where Nate's school has a cafeteria, and when water damage shut his own building his whole class was sent there, to be taught in trailers.

Which phobia does Nate Wright suffer from?

Fear of cats, or ailurophobia, finally pays off for Nate in Flips Out: the school Trivia Slam comes down to a question about that very word, and he wins it for his team.

In the Big Nate comic strip, which day do students treat as 'Prank Day'?

The last day of school is Prank Day, and one year a heavily pregnant Mrs. Godfrey spent the eve of it warning her class that no student with a shred of dignity would prank her.

What was Lincoln Peirce's day job before Big Nate was syndicated in 1991?

Art teacher: he spent three years teaching art and coaching baseball at a boys' school in Manhattan, and he says one of his students became the model for a friend of Nate's.

Which book, published in 2010, was the first Big Nate novel?

Big Nate: In a Class by Himself covers a single school day: a fortune cookie tells Nate he will surpass all others, so he spends the day looking for a way to prove it right.

Which school record does Nate set in the first Big Nate novel?

Most detention slips in one day: seven, each from a different member of staff, which is not quite what Nate expected when a fortune cookie promised that he would 'surpass all others'.

In Big Nate, which elderly science teacher is rumoured never to have laughed at anything?

Mr. Galvin confiscates Nate's pen in the first novel, and it leaks in his pocket: Nate is the one who can't stop laughing as the ink stain spreads across the teacher's shirt, and Mr. Galvin punishes him for it.

In Big Nate Strikes Again, which historical figure is Nate assigned to research?

Benjamin Franklin wins Nate over, and the comics he draws about him rescue the grade: Mrs. Godfrey is about to fail the pair over his partner's unoriginal visual aids, then gives the project an A-plus.

In Big Nate Strikes Again, what is the official name of the fleece-ball team Nate captains?

Kuddle Kittens was handed in by a teammate before Nate could submit Psycho Dogs, the name the dog next door had inspired; he refuses to use it, and the Kittens still win the title.

In Big Nate: On a Roll, what are the Timber Scouts selling to raise money for camping gear?

Warm Fuzzies are wall hangings with little sayings on them; Nate only bothers because the top seller wins a skateboard, and after a dead heat he takes it on the flip of a coin.

In Big Nate Goes for Broke, what do the members of Mr. Rosa's cartooning club call themselves?

The Doodlers were all boys until Mr. Rosa suggested inviting girls, and when Nate stammered out the first invitation she took it as an invitation to the school dance and said yes.

In Goes for Broke, what contest does Nate invent to finally beat the rival school?

A snow-sculpting contest, which Nate calls the Snowdown, goes his school's way because the rivals have only packed snow over an old suit of armour; his own team sculpts Achilles with an icicle in his heel.

In Big Nate: In the Zone, Chad's good-luck charm is a small plastic what?

Foot it is: Chad found the charm on the cafetorium floor, and it brings Nate a run of good luck until Mrs. Godfrey spots it, calls it a toy and shuts it in her desk drawer.

In Big Nate Lives It Up, the new student Nate is assigned to buddy has what elaborate name?

Breckenridge Puffington III turns out to be 'Bobby', the boy who picked on Nate when they were small; Nate blows up at him, then forgives him and puts him on his scavenger-hunt team.

In Big Nate Lives It Up, what find in a storage room pays for repairs to Nate's school?

A mural by the folk artist Granny Peppers, one of whose paintings had fetched two million dollars; the school sells it to a folk-art museum and spends the money on the building.

In Big Nate Flips Out, what does Teddy's uncle Pedro use to turn Nate into a neat freak?

Hypnosis, and it works too well: in this fifth of the eight novels Nate tidies his room and his locker but stops enjoying anything, until a scuffle with the school bully turns him back into a slob.

Which Big Nate novel, published in 2016, was the last in the series?

Blasts Off ends the series on a win: Nate's team takes the 38th Mud Bowl, his school's first victory in the game since his dad helped win the very first one.

Which online game added a 'Big Nate Island' in February 2009?

Poptropica would bring Nate to children who had never heard of him, as Peirce recalls the game's creator predicting; the island arrived a year before the first Big Nate novel.

On which streaming service did the animated Big Nate series premiere in February 2022?

Paramount+ launched the show in February 2022 and took it down again in March 2024, saying it had decided to focus on content with mass global appeal.

Which Disney Channel star voices Nate's sister in the animated series?

Dove Cameron, the voice of Nate's big sister, was born Chloe; she legally took the name Dove because it was what her late father had always called her.

Which character was created for the Big Nate TV series and uses an electric wheelchair?

Amy is voiced by Ali Stroker, who uses a wheelchair herself and dedicated her 2019 Tony Award to every child with a disability who was waiting to see themselves represented.

In 2013 a Maryland children's theatre turned Big Nate into what kind of stage show?

A musical: Peirce had his doubts when the theatre asked for the stage rights, but he agreed, and then went through the script himself so that the characters sounded like themselves.

Which cartoonist does the creator of Big Nate cite as his greatest inspiration?

Charles Schulz was his boyhood hero, and in Big Nate's early years the two talked by phone as fellow cartoonists; Peirce says Schulz once invited him to California to play ice hockey.

What advice from his first editor turned Lincoln Peirce's strip 'Neighborhood Comix' into Big Nate?

Focus on one character: Peirce chose the strip's quiet brother, Nate, gave him a far bigger personality and renamed the strip after its new star.

Lincoln Peirce says Big Nate started out as what kind of strip before the school jokes took over?

Domestic humour was the plan: Peirce meant to build the strip around two children being raised by a single dad, but within months he found the school gags were the ones he most enjoyed writing.

What did Peirce write after finishing the Big Nate novels, a comedic adventure set in the Middle Ages?

Max & the Midknights plays a trick on Big Nate's readers: Peirce kept the hero's name and looks neutral and waited nearly fifty pages before revealing that Max is a girl.

In the animated series, which of Nate's friends is president of the school drama club?

Dee Dee Holloway lives for drama, yet in Flips Out she is the one who quietly films the real culprit's confession on her phone and clears Nate over the missing yearbook camera.

Kevin Michael Richardson voices which head of Nate's school in the animated series?

Mr. Nichols would rather be liked than feared: in the novel In the Zone he even books Nate's band to play a school assembly, hoping it will sell his new fitness drive to the pupils.

Which film star guest-voices the legendary prankster Brad Gunter in the first episode of the Big Nate animated series?

Jack Black plays Brad Gunter in 'The Legend of the Gunting', an episode built on a school myth: land in trouble five times in one week and you are 'gunted', never to be seen again.

After running daily since 1991, Big Nate switched in 2026 to what publishing schedule?

Sundays only, from June 2026: Peirce had said that after almost 35 years it was harder to keep the strip fresh, with only so many jokes he could tell about the same school year.

The Big Nate animated series was originally due to premiere in September 2021 on which channel?

Nickelodeon ordered the show in 2020 for a September 2021 launch, watched it open on a streaming service instead, and finally got to air it in September 2022, a year late.

For which network was Big Nate optioned as a Saturday-morning cartoon in 1991, just before it scrapped that entire line-up?

NBC it was: producer Lee Mendelson rang Peirce to plan a meeting with the network's executives, then rang back the very next day to say the deal was dead, because the Saturday-morning shows had all been cancelled.

Lincoln Peirce's surname is pronounced like which everyday word, rather than 'pierce'?

Purse: Peirce says he might have changed the spelling years ago, but he is named after his father and grandfather and felt that altering it would not be respectful.

Which sport do Nate's school and its rival play in their annual Mud Bowl?

Ultimate Frisbee: Nate's dad, who played in the very first Mud Bowl, says it began as a single muddy game for bragging rights, with the Frisbee itself as the winner's prize.