Gordon Korman


Gordon Korman is a Canadian American author. Korman has written over 80 children's and young adult fiction books. Korman has sold more than 28 million books over a career spanning four decades and has appeared at number one on The New York Times Best Seller list.

Early life

Korman was born in Montreal, Quebec, where he lived until 1970. He grew up in Thornhill, Ontario just north of Toronto, Ontario and attended German Mills Public School and public high school at Thornlea Secondary School in Thornhill, Ontario. He then moved to the United States to attend college at New York University where he studied film and film-writing. Korman received a BFA from New York University in 1985; with a degree in dramatic visual writing and a minor in motion picture and television.

Career

Korman wrote his first book when he was 12 years old. While attending German Mills Public School, his seventh grade English teacher required the students to write a book report as an assignment. Not wanting to read any of the books available at the library, Korman created his own and then wrote a report on it. This became the manuscript for Korman's first book, This Can't Be Happening at Macdonald Hall, the first book in his Macdonald Hall series.
Korman was the Scholastic Arrow Book Club monitor for the class; after completing the assignment, he mailed his manuscript to Scholastic. This Can't Be Happening at Macdonald Hall was published by Scholastic Press in 1978 when Korman was only 14 years old. Before graduating from high school in Thornhill, Ontario, Korman wrote and published five books.
Korman has written more than 80 books which have sold more than 28 million copies in a career that has spanned four decades.

Works

Non-series books

Macdonald Hall series

Titanic

''The 39 Clues''

The Monday Night Football Club series was adapted as the Disney Channel TV series The Jersey, which ran for four years between 1999 and 2004.
Swindle was adapted into a movie that aired on Nickelodeon in 2013.
The Macdonald Hall series has a TV adaptation of one of the books, called "Bruno and Boots Go Jump in the Pool". It stars Jonny Gray, Callan Potter and Peter Keleghan. It aired April 1, 2016 on the Canadian network YTV. Two more adaptations aired there the following year, April 1, 2017.
Other optioned books include No Coins, Please, I Want to Go Home, the Island trilogy and The Twinkie Squad.

Awards and recognition