[Darren]

Originally, I was thinking of starting this off by going over the Good, the Bad & the Ugly, but there is no bad or ugly, it's all good. I would have been impressed enough with this series had it been written by an adult, but for the bulk of it to be written by a pre-teen/early teen absolutely blows my mind. There might be spoilers in this post, so if you haven't read them all consider yourself forewarned.

For an author that tends to move on to new works and isn't big on revisiting old characters, I would guess that Bruno and Boots are a bit of an anomaly as that series has spanned seventeen years in publishing. I wonder if this series is a little more near and dear to GK's heart than others. One thing I notice with these books is a lack of in-depth description. We'll know if someone is blonde or has a crew cut or steely grey eyes, but that's about as far as it goes. I think this is great for a couple of reasons: It allows us, as readers, to flesh out the images of the people and the settings in our own minds, and it keeps the pace moving, allowing for more plot and dialogue to take place. These books also show us Gord's writing style where he's got the beginning and end plotted out, plus some set pieces in between. This appeals to my analytical side. The creativity really blows me away too, especially with something like all the fund-raising ideas in Go Jump In The Pool (which makes me think of all the schemes of Artie Geller in No Coins, Please). I recall an interview with the actress Beverly D'Angelo where she said (not verbatim) that the obligation of an artist is to take the consumer to a place where he or she couldn't go themselves. GK certainly does that for me. I also have to laugh whenever elephantiasis shows up, it always reminds me of The Breakfast Club.

It must be interesting for younger readers to encounter things that might not even exist since they were born. I think of things like developing pictures, flashbulbs, television with antennas, VHS players, phone booths and fax machines. I liked the callbacks GK did from previous installments of the series. Like in Macdonald Hall Goes Hollywood where he mentions the contract between Elmer and Bruno from Zucchini Warriors or the Cougars' mascot having kittens from the first book. He also mentions the Rec Hall from Zucchini Warriors in The Joke's On Us. I like that GK keeps it Canadian with the inclusion of the maple leaf flag, mentions of the CFL, hockey and using the metric system for measurements (I'm younger and still use inches, feet and pounds).

I did notice some errors which I'm not sure have been rectified in subsequent printings.

In This Can't Be Happening At Macdonald Hall! the pay for dishwashing is $2 an hour (p. 45) but later it's listed as one dollar an hour (p. 82).

In Beware The Fish, "insistantly" (p. 21) and Coach "Flyn" (p. 91).

In The War With Mr. Wizzle, the first time the name is mentioned, it's written as "C. Gavin Gunhold" (p. 111).

In Macdonald Hall Goes Hollywood, "Mac stripped" should be "Macs tripped" (p. 110). It gave that sentence a whole new meaning!

While this isn't an error, I did think Wilbur Hackenschleimer would have figured a little more prominently in the football play in the Zucchini Warriors. The big bad opponent of Craig Trolley is described as three Wilburs, yet Wilbur is also the biggest student in Macdonald Hall... and the dude can lift an entire piano! We had touched on GK's humour in a thread on the other forum, mostly in the form of dialogue, but in this book, Sidney Rampulskey's touchdown celebration elicited a good laugh out of me. It was quite reminiscent of a play that I saw happen live, where a former quarterback for my city's team was playing against us. He ran the ball in for a touchdown, spiked the ball and it bounced right up into his nether regions. As he clutched himself in pain, he got pushed over by our defensive back and also got a penalty for taunting at the same time. A hilarious triple play.

What a great series, now on to Bugs Potter!

[Raymond Jardine]

Nice list of errata, @Darren. Regarding the "C. Gavin Gunhold" typo, that's been a source of great debate over the years—was it purposeful or just a misprint?—but I think Scholastic resolved the argument by changing it to "G. Gavin Gunhold" years later when the story was re-released as The Wizzle War.

You probably have a later copy of The War With Mr. Wizzle because you didn't mention another well-known error, one that was impossible to overlook: In the first printing, the text for pages 178 to 181 was printed in reverse order, undoubtedly leading to some reader confusion at the time!

As for the wage cut in TCBHAMH, you must be reading the earliest printing of the Scholastic-Apple edition of the book. The $2 / $1 error appears in all versions of the book up until that edition, and got corrected (coincidentally) at the same time as Apple added a barcode on the back cover.

And, of course, just by calling the seventh title The Joke's On Us, you're pretty clearly reading a much more recent copy of Something Fishy at Macdonald Hall.

I also enjoy your list of continuity details, which relates to another fan-favorite: "Easter Egg" callbacks in future books. I hope you'll note the ones you spot as you continue through the long list of books.

[Darren]

Hi Raymond!

Yes, the first four Apple paperbacks I probably got through Scholastic while I was in school, so they're fairly old. The last three I bought recently at used bookstores.

I never saw the Wizzle page-swap as an error because I remember a little slip of paper coming with the book that said something to the effect of Wizzle's computer having a glitch and it swapped those two pages around. So I thought that was done on purpose.

Thank you for all that information!

[Gordon Korman]

Hi, Darren,

I enjoyed your comments re: my Bruno & Boots series. Thanks for liking it so much!

One thing nobody knows but me (although it's true that Raymond knows pretty much EVERYTHING!!!) A young Scholastic Canada mailroom employee named David was having a quiet day, so he picked up the manuscript from the 12-year-old and read it. He liked it, and thought it should be bumped up to an editor. Without David, there may not have been a Bruno & Boots. I think about that a lot.

Also, the editors wore kid gloves when it came to me. They understood that, to me, every word in the story was the perfect word for that spot, so they were tender and kind with me. I didn't know to appreciate it then, but I sure do now!

I look forward to future comments from you.                                                       -----Gordon Korman-----

[Darren]

Hi Gord,

That's an interesting piece of trivia there. I think with every success story there is always an element of luck in there somewhere. Do you think the trajectory of your life would have changed at all had David not checked out your manuscript? I think it would have been the same end result eventually as the work was good enough to be picked up by somebody, plus your age at the time made it a compelling story.

[Raymond Jardine]

Two Scholastic employees clearly deserve the Gunhold Award for their literary contributions: 

> Mailroom David
> The marketing genius who came up with the idea to insert a slip of paper into "Wizzle" to make a flaw into a fun feature

I've had a few of the error edition copies but none has retained the slip of paper you mention. I've seen a photo of one, but I'll be on the lookout for an original!

[Jon B]

That is some massively cool trivia there! Thank you for that!

I think the very first Gordon Korman I read was Beware the Fish, chosen because it was the longest of the first three books. Got the other two on my -next- trip to the bookstore.

[Darren]

Raymond,

Unfortunately I'm fairly positive I lost my little slip of paper as well.

[Christopher]

I have been a fan of the MacDonald Hall Book series since about the age of seven or eight.  I first took This Can't Be Happening At MacDonald Hall out of the London (Ontario) Library in like 1983 and absolutely loved it! I always laughed at the segments in the books where Mr. Sturgeon was always complaining about something that Bruno and Boots had done and Mrs. Sturgeon never seemed to believe him.   Poor guy! ha ha ha!

Hi, Christopher,

Any Bruno & Boots fan who laughs in all the right places is a friend of mine! Thanks for posting and for all the nice things you said about the series. I've written over 100 books now, and I hope you'll check out some of the new stuff. But I'm glad my very first series was your favorite!

                                               Best regards,                                                      -----Gordon Korman-----