Radio Fifth Grade by Gordon Korman (1989) Book Review

 Hey everyone! How's it going? I'm doing pretty well for a Thursday. Today I'm here to talk about a book that I just finished reading for the first time in 23 years. So join me as I talk about Radio Fifth Grade by Gordon Korman. So let's get into it.

Radio Fifth Grade is a standalone novel written by Canadian author Gordon Korman and published by Scholastic Inc. in 1989. It was the eighth standalone novel that Korman had written since 1978. The story is about a elementary school radio called Kidsview hosted by fifth graders named Benjy Driver, Mark Havermayer, and Ellen-Louise Turnbull. It's also one of my favourite books from when I was a kid.

I first read the book in either late 1998 or early 1999. I was in grade six and I had been introduced to the novels of Gordon Korman the previous school year through my grade 5 teacher, who used the fourth Macdonald Hall book, The War with Mr. Wizzle, as one of our novel studies for the year. The edition I read was the 1991 Apple Paperbacks edition from Scholastic. I actually found it at the school library. I was looking for something different to read and I hadn't discovered Animorphs yet. However, I saw Gordon Korman's name on the spine of this book, and I grabbed it immediately, not even caring what the book was. If Gordon Korman wrote it, then that was good enough for me. Actually one of the draws of this book for me is that it focuses on an elementary school radio show. I was still in elementary school and had actually started watching a show called Radio Active on YTV, which was about a high school radio station. I was also a huge radio listener, so this book basically begged me to borrow it from the library that week. I read it and loved it.

 As I said earlier this book is about three fifth graders who run an elementary school radio show at a local radio station. The show, called Kidsview, is sponsored by a pet store called Our Animal Friends (all of this is fictional of course), which is their only sponsor. For their Mascot of the Week segment Benjy, Mark, and Ellen-Louise are given a parrot named Winston Churchill, but it takes six weeks for them to sell the bird due to various misshaps on each show. Meanwhile the kids get a new teacher, Ms. Panagopoulos after their old teacher Miss Gucci won the lottery and skipped town. The new teacher does things in a more sophisticated manner, giving the kids more homework, and angering Benjy in a way that is very reminiscent of Bruno Walton and Cathy Burton when they got mad at Mr. Wizzle and Ms. Peabody in The War with Mr. Wizzle.

Having not read this book in 23 years, there was so much of the details of this book that I had completely forgotten. I remembered the basic story of the parrot and the radio show, but I didn't remember any of the characters's names, not even Ellen-Louise, who I share a last name with, or the quiz segment based off the kids's homework assignment, or how they prevent Ms. Panagopoulos from listening to Kidsview and discovering what they using for the questions in their quiz segment. I also forgot about Arthur Katz, the student who goes on a rant every week about various environmental and scientific topics. Those parts of the book were pretty funny.

Benjy, Mark, and Ellen-Louise very much feel like the usual Gordon Korman characters. Mark is clumsy and does questionable things much like Sidney Rampulsky and Benjy is very close to Bruno in some ways. Ellen-Louise isn't like any of the characters in the Macdonald Hall series. Maybe she's like some characters in other Korman books, but again, I haven't read his other standalone novels, nor have I read his other series or trilogies so I can't tell you. Especially since, besides this one and the Macdonald Hall series, the only Gordon Korman written book I've read is book 2 in the 39 Clues series, and those weren't his original characters he was writing there. 

Because Scholastic had this thing where they liked to update the books whenever they were republished in the 2000s and 2010s, I was expecting Radio Fifth Grade to have alot of changes made to it since radio broadcasting has changed alot since 1989. I was in the radio broadcasting program for a semester when I was in college, and that was only three years before the edition of the book that I have was published, and a year after the book was first republished in 2006. However, the only change is that in one sentence when Mark tells Ellen-Louise that it's "2010" the year was changed from 1989 to 2010. But, none of the broadcasting equipment has changed. When I was in college we still used a soundboard for the microphones, but the equipment was in the same room as the broadcasting desk, and sound effects, songs, commercials, and the canned station callsigns were all routed through the computer. So I just thought that was interesting as someone who has read the revised versions of the Macdonald Hall series and knows how arbitrary Scholastic's decisions for what would be changed and what wouldn't.

I am so glad that I got to revisit this book again after 23 years. I was so afraid it wouldn't hold up rereading it as an adult, but you know what? It absolutely does. Proving that Gordon Korman writes books and creates characters who are timeless. If you're a Gordon Korman fan and have never read this book I recommend you pick up Radio Fifth Grade. It's out of print everywhere, but it's available on Amazon through secondary sellers. That's how my grandmother got the copy she gave me for Christmas.

Okay, I think that's it for me for today. I might be back tomorrow for another post or I might just wait until next week. We shall see. In the meantime I hope you all have a wonderful evening. I'm gonna be settling down in about two and a half hours for this week's episode of Star Trek: Discovery and this season is interesting so I'm looking forward to that. So until next time have a wonderful evening and I will talk to you all later. Take care.