This Can't Be Happening at Macdonald Hall (1978) Book Review

This Can't Be Happening at Macdonald Hall is a book that I have read many many times since the fifth grade when I was first introduced to it by my fifth grade teacher. I was a voracious reader when I was in elementary school and I would read just about any book that I could find in the school library or in the classroom, depending on the teacher I had that year. The Bruno & Boots series by Gordon Korman was one of the series that I was introduced to when we read the fourth book in the series, The War with Mr. Wizzle (now known simply as The Wizzle War) for one of our novel studies in the fifth grade. I enjoyed that one so much that I read any Bruno & Boots book I could find. Luckily Mr. Meredith had a bunch of them as did the school library. I also ended up with older copies of two of the books in my own collection thanks to my grandmother finding them at a garage sale.

Bruno & Boots are two boys who go to a fictional boarding school called Macdonald Hall, located near Toronto, Ontario, Canada. They get into a lot of trouble with the school's headmaster, Mr. Sturgeon, who the students nicknamed The Fish. As punishment, Mr. Sturgeon splits Bruno & Boots up, sending them to different dormitories to live with other boys, namely Elmer Drimsdale, who is the school genius, and George Wexford-Smyth III, who is the school's financial expert. Bruno & Boots spend the rest of the book trying ways to get out of living with their new roommates. They try everything, including being on their best behaviour, but none of it works. I won't tell you how they succeed, you'll have to read it to find out.

One of the things that I like about this book, and the Bruno & Boots/Macdonald Hall series in general is that it feels real. Yes, it's set at a boarding school and was originally written in 1978 when Gordon Korman was only fourteen years old, but there's no pretense of making Macdonald Hall and the equivalent school for girls, Miss Scrimmage's Finishing School for Young Ladies, more special than they need to be. It's just where these kids happen to go to school and so the setting feels like a place I and every other Canadian children could've gone in the sixth or seventh grades. That's what made this series so appealing to me when I was a kid, and what makes it still appeal to me as an adult.

Because this book was originally a standalone novel, without any thought to it becoming a series, there are several differences between this book and the rest of the series in regard to the characters. Bruno and Boots are almost equally mischievious in this book, while in the rest of the series Boots is usually the reluctant one. Also, the boys hardly go over to Miss Scrimmage's at night to visit the girls, but when they do Cathy Burton and Diane Grant, the two girls who we see the most of in this series, are almost role reversed in that Diane is the prominent one with the most dialogue, while Cathy hardly says a thing, which is interesting given that in the rest of the series, Cathy is basically the female version of Bruno, while Diane is more like Boots. Oh and aside from Elmer Drimsdale and Perry Elbert, the rest of the Macdonald Hall students that we come to know and love in the rest of the series are absent here. George is here, but he pretty much only shows up in this book and the next one and that's it. Even many of the teachers that show up later in the series don't show up here.

I have the 2011 publication of the updated edition of this book from 2003 that came in a box set containing all seven books in the series and the updates are a little weird. Unlike the original series of Hardy Boys books that were updated and republished in the '50s and '60s, the overall narrative structure of the Bruno & Boots books were kept intact, though some of the technology that George owns is updated to match what the tech of 2003 would be. For example, in the original book, George has a colour TV with remote control, while in the 2003 update carried over to current publications of the book, he has a 3D LCD TV. Though strangely enough, despite it being 2003, nobody has cell phones and Boots still sends his mother letters via snail mail, instead of e-mail, despite it, again, being 2003 when these updates were made. The updates are more of a problem in a later book, but I'll talk about that when I get to that book.

Final Thoughts and Rating: Overall, for a book written by a fourteen year old back in 1978 This Can't Be Happening at Macdonald Hall is a great novel. If you're my age and remember this series, I would definitely recommend revisiting it as an adult, because it still holds up. If you're in the fifth grade I would recommend reading it because it's a really cool story. Though the updates themselves are pretty unnecessary and easily could've been skipped, since it doesn't actually change any of the dialogue. Because of this I'm giving This Can't Be Happening at Macdonald Hall 9.9/10 because it's still an awesome book, but the "updates" are pointless and really weren't needed.