Gordon Korman (and P.G. Wodehouse, too!)
When he was twelve years old, Gordon Korman wrote his first novel. Less than two years later, in 1978, Scholastic had published it under the title This Can’t Be Happening at MacDonald Hall. By the time he turned 21, in 1984 (coincidentally, the year I was born) Korman had nine published children’s novels under his belt.
Korman was one of my very favourite authors when I was young. No children’s author made me laugh the way he did—and it wasn’t just me. Every friend who’s read his books has found them hilarious. Even my mother thought they were funny (I can still remember reading a particular scene from the end of The Twinkie Squad (”blah blah blah“) aloud, and both of us laughing so hard we could barely breathe.) And they’ve stood the test of time: I still laughed at even No Coins, Please and I Want to Go Home, surely the most juvenile of his early works.
It’s strange to realize it, but I was very young when I read Korman’s books. The last book of his that I read as a child was The Toilet Paper Tigers, which I remember buying as soon as it was released, in 1993, when I was only nine. By then, I’d already devoured 12 of the 18 novels he’d already written. Among my favourites of his children’s novels are the first four Bruno and Boots books (This Can’t Be Happening at MacDonald Hall, Go Jump in the Pool!, Beware the Fish!, The War with Mr. Wizzle), I Want to Go Home, and The Twinkie Squad. I also loved two of his YA novels, Don’t Care High and Son of Interflux. If you’re at all interested in children’s fiction, and particularly if you have a child about 6-9 years old, you should check out some of his books.
I was thinking about I Want to Go Home this afternoon. It’s one I found hysterically funny as a child. Mike Webster is “rewarded” for good grades by his parents by being sent to Camp Algonkian Island. No athlete, Mike is looking forward to a long, tedious summer when he meets fellow camper Rudy Miller. Rudy, straight-faced and sarcastic, manages to keep Mike in stitches while hatching progressively wilder schemes to escape from Camp Algonkian Island.
Today, I had an epiphany—I realized who Rudy Miller is. He’s Psmith! A modern-day, pre-teen, Canadian Psmith, it’s true, but despite those differenced (and the lack of a monacle) he is incredibly Psmith-like. He even has a sidekick called Mike. I would love to know whether Psmith inspired Rudy at all—I Want to Gome Home was published when Korman was eighteen, so it’s possible, I suppose. It would be awesome if he were, but even if he isn’t, it’s still a fun parallel to think about.
Tags: Gordon Korman, P.G. Wodehouse, Psmith
