Liar, Liar Pants on Fire by Gordon Korman Review

Liar, Liar Pants on Fire is Gordon Korman’s shortest book by far, aimed at younger readers and clocking in at a mere eighty-six pages including illustrations. While Korman typically writes books just to be enjoyed, this is a rare exception as the book preaches the virtues of not lying throughout.

Summary

The book is told in the first person by Zoe, a third grader who is having a really hard time. The problem is that she doesn’t feel like she knows anything or has anything to really talk about, so she makes up really outrageous lies in an attempt to seem important among her classmates.

Of course, her lies are ridiculous and everyone knows they aren’t true a mile away. She gets in big trouble and nobody likes her, but she is able to make her first friend when she stops telling constant lies with the help of her teacher and her dad, himself a former fibber.

Review

This is my least favorite Gordon Korman book, and I don’t recommend it. Even though I love most of his works, this is certainly not a book he wrote to be enjoyed. Sure, there are some funny and crazy things that happen like in any Korman book, but really the point of the book is you don’t have to make up lies because you are valuable just as yourself.

Korman usually excels at providing extremely inspiring messages in his plotlines. In his recent Swindle Series, for example, Griffin and the gang are always trying to do what is right (even if it may be slightly or even highly illegal), but he never directly says a word about it. In hilarious books such as I Want to Go Home! his characters are extremely inspiring, but there is no deliberate attempt on the authors’ part to tell us anything about what we should do.

Liar, Liar Pants on Fire is a book that almost anyone could’ve easily written. I am confident that I could easily write it better, and I know I am not near the level of genius Korman has reached with some of his other books. The whole thing of the book is that Zoe tells a bunch of lies at the beginning and nobody likes her, and when she decides to stop lying her life gets better. This is the type of the book that I really don’t like now and would’ve been disgusted with as a kid. Korman is a great writer, but for his good work look elsewhere.