This Can't Be Happening at Macdonald Hall! by Gordon Korman

When I was ten that filled me with wonder. Korman wrote This Can’t Ben Happening at Macdonald Hall! as an English assignment when he was twelve. Through it all, there is The Fish, the omnipotent headmaster who has a far better sense of humour than he can allow the students to see. Bruno and Boots’ plans – first to annoy their roommates into forcing another change, then to try to frame them for outrageous pranks – are simple but their tactics are typically original, from Bruno’s freeing of Elmer’s ant colony (wild creatures should not be caged, he explains) to Boots’ elaborate hoax convincing George that he is suffering from a rare and life-threatening illness that has infected half the school. It is a slim book and the other characters aren’t as fully realised as later in the series but it is very well done. Whatever it takes, the two boys vow, they will find a way of being reunited. Bruno finds himself rooming with the brilliant but very odd Elmer Drimsdale while Boots is unfortunate enough to land with the snobbish hypochondriac, George Wexford-Smyth III. Sturgeon (“The Fish”) decides to separate them after one too many of their spectacularly inventive pranks.

When the series begins Bruno and Boots, best friends and roommates, are having a wonderful time until their headmaster Mr. Located somewhere near Toronto, this fictitious boy’s school was the home for many years (and seven books) of Bruno Walton and Melvin “Boots” O’Neal. There’s the Chalet School, there’s Hogwarts and, for me at least, there was always Macdonald Hall. There is something irresistible to a child about novels set at boarding schools. But no one – absolutely no one – received (and answered, it should be noted) more letters from me than Gordon Korman after I discovered his Bruno and Boots series that starts with This Can’t Be Happening at Macdonald Hall! I kept this up for two or three years, probably from the age of nine to eleven, encouraged and provided with stamps by my parents. Almost any time I read and enjoyed a book, I would sit down and write to the author (provided they were living – though at my most fanciful stage there might have been some letters written to L.M. There were the usual ones to grandparents and pen pals but the bulk of my correspondence went to my favourite authors. When I was little, I used to write a lot of letters.

This Can't Be Happening at Macdonald Hall! by Gordon Korman