[Marc Virgo]

Dear Mr. Korman,

I thought you might enjoy a rather unusual story about how your books found their way into my childhood.

In the late 1970s and early 1980s, my grandmother, Audrey Virgo, worked as a secretary in a large black office tower in downtown Toronto, possibly for a bank or an insurance company. My recollection is that her employer was your uncle, and through that family connection she occasionally obtained advance copies of your early Macdonald Hall novels.

Those books invariably made their way to me.

My grandmother was a reserved, fiercely independent Scottish woman, and we shared a love of reading. Some of my fondest childhood memories are of the two of us spending entire summer afternoons in lounge chairs on the dock at our family cottage, each engrossed in a book, occasionally interrupting our reading for a swim.

Among the books I read there were your early adventures of Bruno and Boots. I loved the characters, their ingenuity, and especially their elaborate schemes and practical jokes. Coming from a family with a rather alarming tradition of practical jokers, I felt quite at home in their company.

Here’s where the story takes an amusing turn.

About twenty years ago, I returned to university to become a teacher, completing my teacher education at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario.

I remember attending lectures in Macdonald Hall at Queen’s and recalling a disclaimer in one of your books explaining that your fictional institution was not intended to represent the real one. The coincidence made me smile. After all those years, I had somehow found myself at a university associated with the very name that had featured so prominently in my childhood reading.

I’ve now spent approximately twenty years teaching, and recently I’ve begun contemplating writing a bilingual historical novel inspired by my family’s rather improbable history. As I’ve reflected on the people and stories that shaped me, I’ve found myself thinking about the books I loved as a child—and particularly about the importance of memorable characters.

Which brings me back to Bruno and Boots, and to my grandmother.

I don’t know whether you ever knew Audrey Virgo, or whether you were aware that copies of your early books were finding their way from your uncle’s office to a young reader spending his summers at a cottage in Northern Ontario.

But I thought you might appreciate knowing that they did, and that nearly half a century later, both the characters and the memories of reading those books with my grandmother remain with me.

Thank you for that small but lasting part of my childhood.

Warm regards,

Marc Gilbert Virgo

 

Hi, Marc,

Thanks so much for posting and passing along the story of you and your Grandmother and Bruno and Boots! I'm pretty sure you're talking about my Uncle Willie Korman, who was high up in the hierarchy of Commercial Union, an insurance company with its roots in England. I had no idea that he was sharing my books, but I'm very glad he did! And absolutely thrilled that you liked them so much that you think of them still!

Thanks so much for reaching out. I'm no longer the preteen boy author, and my booklist now stands at 108 titles. But I never fail to feel a thrill when someone like you contacts me with a story like yours from th good old days!

                                                             Kindest regards,                                    -----Gordon Korman-----