SEQUEL REQUESTED

Hello,

I am reaching out to you from Dyer, Indiana. I am a junior high teacher and I teach mainly ELA in a private, Christian school. Every year since I’ve begun teaching (I’m currently in my fifth year), I’ve chosen your book I Want To Go Home! as my first read-aloud to my 6th grade students. They always thoroughly enjoy it, but this year, my students asked right after I finished, “Is there a second book?!” They wanted more, and they wanted it badly! I told them that there isn’t a sequel, but maybe they could try to continue the story in their next writing assignment for me… This idea did not thrill them 🙂 I said then, “Perhaps I can reach out to the author,” so here I am!

I grew up reading your books – I Want To Go Home!, This Can’t Be Happening at Macdonald Hall! and the other Bruno and Boots books, the Dive, Island, Everest, and Kidnapped series, Schooled, The Toilet Paper Tigers, and many more. I’m the youngest child of eight (born in 1998) so I grew up with a lot of your books in the house! I have many titles in my own classroom and your name is often one that comes up when I have students looking for books that include both good writing and humor at the same time. I very much enjoyed your books as a kid, so I’m happy to recommend your name to them.

I write to you now, though, wondering if you have ever considered writing a sequel to I Want To Go Home! or if you ever would consider the possibility. We brainstormed ideas this morning for you 🙂 Maybe the book could be about Rudy trying to break in instead of break out of Camp Algonkian… Perhaps it could center around Rudy’s younger brother Jeffrey who gets sent to the camp… and maybe he tries to escape (with Rudy’s help). One student thought it could otherwise be about Rudy being sent to a different camp! Of course, this is just coming from a random group of 6th graders in the U.S. spit-balling ideas…

… but we would love to hear from you, regardless of your thoughts about this! If you are able and willing to reach back out, we would be most excited to get a response. Our school year ends on May 22, though I will still have this same group of kids returning next year for seventh grade. I did tell them that, if Gordon Korman does respond and if he does write a sequel to this book, I would ask IF AT ALL POSSIBLE whether he could have the new book published before May 2027 so that I can read it aloud to them before they graduate from eighth grade. Take that as you will 🙂

Sincerely,

Martha Mahtani