January 24, 2012

Content

Photography by Emily Behan

Two-time winner of the Black Eyed Susan Book Award, Gordon Korman, is the author of books such as the Swindle series, Schooled, and Pop. He wrote his first book in seventh grade, which was published when he was in ninth grade, and he continued to write 71 other books, with more on the way.

How do you come up with names for your characters? For example, Wallace Wallace, in No More Dead Dogs.

The character Wallace Wallace was inspired by someone I knew, Pierre Pierre. I thought this was a hilarious concept, so I based the name off of him. For most other characters, I go on the social security website, or I look at all of the baby names for a year. When I’m choosing a name, the most important is to have a good nickname.

How do you get into the mind of a middle school girl such as Naomi in Schooled?

It’s obviously easier to get into the mind of a boy, since I used to be one. However, to get my female characters up to the standard of the male characters, I can ask my wife, mother, or editor what it felt like. My mom is 73; but, she still recalls her middle school years. The hardest thing to do is to write about siblings because I’m an only child. I can’t imagine growing up with another person!

Do you have to simplify your vocabulary to adapt to younger audiences?

I usually don’t have to alter my vocabulary; although, I had to use simpler language for dialogue in Liar, Liar Pants on Fire because of its eight-year old character. The biggest challenge was to use the vocabulary of 1912 in the Titanic series. You can’t say, “Yo dawg, our ship is sinkin’. Bummer.”

How do you come up with titles for your books? At what point in the writing process do you usually come up with a title?

The first title isn’t usually the final title, although Schooled was the first and final title for the book. However, for Swindle, we came up with many titles such as Griffin’s Million. For the first book of the second 39 Clues series, we called it Book One until we later came up with The Medusa Plot.

We can’t wait for Unsinkable, his next book, to come out in late summer!

Check out Gordon Korman’s blog, http://gordonkorman.com/.

Burleigh Manor Middle School students Nina Parekh, Ashley Rous and Lauren Young all contributed to this story. Nina has strong interests in writing, singing, dancing, acting, and playing clarinet. Ashley enjoys drawing, creating comics, writing short stories, and playing saxophone. Lauren hopes that this will be the first publication of her journalism career.