Schooled

Gordon Korman is from Great Neck, New York

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Gordon Korman was born in Montreal and grew up in Thornhill, Ontario. He wrote his first novel at age 12 as a grade-seven writing assignment. It was a story about the adventures of two friends, Bruno and Boots, at a boarding school. He submitted it to Scholastic Canada where it was published in 1978 as This Can't Be Happening at Macdonald Hall.

Since then, he has written more than 50 books for middle grade and young adult readers, including five ALA Best Books for Young Adults: Son of the Mob, A Semester in the Life of a Garbage Bag, Son of Interflux, Losing Joe's Place and Jake, Reinvented. Schooled, about a home-schooled hippie boy suddenly dropped into a public high school was released in 2007. Gordon's new book, Swindle, will be released by Scholastic in March ‘08.

Gordon always starts off his writing with something real, "but then I unleash my imagination to make it more exciting, funnier, or a better story. To be honest, by the time a book is done, you can't recognize much of the real-life part. It's been changed too much," he admits. With the publication of the Island trilogy in 2001, Gordon made the leap from humour to suspense. His next challenge is as one of four authors handpicked by Scholastic to pen The 39 Clues, a new multi-platform mystery adventure series for ages 8 to 12 that combines reading and online games. The series will launch in September 2008, with Gordon's book appearing early in 2009

Gordon is a graduate of New York University's School of Dramatic Writing and now lives in Long Island, New York with his family.