Sideways Stories from Wayside School

Growing up this was my jam!

Somehow it eluded my child brain that Louis Sachar had written all of these books and more. I didn't realize he wrote Holes and Wayside School, and also every other book that I really really liked at the time. It seems like this man really wrote a bunch of books and I never noticed that they were all by the same person, and I'm sure he wrote even more books that I haven't read and I needed to read as a child. And there's something whimsical about how when you're a child you don't know the author is the same as another book and sometimes you sit in the same section staring at all these books by this one author and never realized they're correlated.

I've never really met anybody who either didn't remember this show more book or couldn't remember this book. If they had read this book at all in their life all I would need to do is remind them of a certain scene and it would immediately come flooding back. This was such a fun book series that I remember singing songs from it on the playground and somebody knowing what book I was singing from.

That said this book absolutely messed me up and so did the other books in this series. I was maybe six and I was reading about a teacher wiggling her ears and turning kids into apples and then the idea of cannibalism maybe? Because if you're students are apples and you eat apples is that not cannibalism? And what if another kid walks in and eats the apples that are also their students? What happens if say a pair of twins one of them gets turned into an apple and the other twin walks in and eats that twin how do you explain that? The ideas that those single scenes cause me to think about probably stayed in my head forever.

I didn't even know what cannibalism was as a child and still I was thinking it's weird that somebody's an apple now does that mean they can be eaten? Would that be a legal? Would they look for the body? I guess there's a little bit of Law and Order going on in my brain even as a child.

The writing was very simple but there is something whimsical about it it gave you just enough to form a picture but enough vagueness that your mind would give more details that didn't exist. The teacher that turns people into apples for example I always imagined her with bigger ears and kind of a more bat face and it turns out that she's not really described as having a bad face but it stuck in my brain is that was in the book. Which is wonderful, Louis has a skill at making us think of details that never existed and sort of Mandela effecting our brain.

There are some flaws and outdated things like obviously some kids are called ginger and some kids are called fat or poorly, but I think that that adds to the childishness of this book. These are children talking about each other and talking like children do, the only difference is between them is usually size, height, and weight. Along with hair color. And in a school like this they very quickly stop focusing on each other and focus on everything else around them.

Even though the flaws are there they add to it instead of taking from it. A rarity among writing. We know that the children are not perfect, what children are? And some of them have nasty habits and nasty flaws.

I cannot think this book enough nor the entire series for shaping me and helping me have a little bit more of a comedy bone growing in me. Louis has such skill with comedy that we fans really miss this guy and I sure hope he's doing well. I have never really looked into his life or if he still writing, I just hope that he knows he really shaped a lot of people's childhoods and it changed some of us.

Holes will always have its place I'm my heart, and it's right beside Wayside School. Perhaps Wayside School will fall into Holes.

5 stars show less

I'm rereading this for the first time since elementary school, and I gotta say, I'm really blown away by the sheer absurdity of it. It reminds me of James Marshall's George and Martha stories: absurd, but lovely in that they never apologize for being absurd or wink at you from beneath the absurdity. It's just absurd all the way down, sincerely and deeply absurd. I imagine after you graduate from George and Martha, you move on to Wayside, and from there you're ready for Beckett and Camus.

I read this as a kid and read it to my kids and reread it again in 2020, so clearly it is a lasting book ... He does a great job sketching these characters -- they are silly, but the characters have depth. Just enough lining among the stories for it to hang together but still have each piece stand alone. And what a great villain.

Wayside School was supposed to be 30 classrooms side-by-side but instead it was build sideways – 30 classrooms tall. This is a book of stories about the class on the 30th floor.

The whole “sideways school” thing never made much sense to me as a kid; I’ve always lived in an urban area and I never went to a school building that had less than 4 stories. A 1-story school would have been far more bizarre to me than a 30-story school. Other than that, this book really holds up! It’s a great intro to absurdism for kids. My particular favorite was the story about Sherrie, who sleeps all through class and the teacher lets her because she assumes Sherrie must be concentrating on learning so much that she falls asleep. Even a story which show more could have aged poorly, about a boy with a girl name and a girl with a boy name who decide to switch names, turned out to be well-handled. If you remember this book from childhood and have considered revisiting it, I highly recommend doing so! Or give it to your own kids with confidence. show less

These wacky absurd stories which may seem irreverent and sometimes mean-spirited to adults really seem to resonate with children. These stories were immediately attention grabbing for my kids and left them begging for more. The humor makes sense to the kids and they enjoyed the absolute absurdity and upside-down-ness of this school and it’s rules.

Wayside school was accidentally built 30 stories high and is leaning. Each chapter tells the reader about one student in the 30th story classroom. Their old teacher, Mrs. Gorf, used to turn the children into apples, but she got turned into an apple herself and now they have a new teacher, Mrs. Jewls. Mrs. Jewl whispers to one of the students that “children are really smarter than their show more teachers,” a fact that was already known to the students. One student can only read upside down and is told he must learn to stand on his head. Another student arranges to sell her “useless” toes to the yard teacher, however, when she is not getting the full price she originally bargained for, the deal is off. When the children laugh, the walls laugh with them and turn purple.

The author, Louis Sachar, has written himself into this book as the yard teacher whom the children see at recess. He features in nearly every chapter, and takes part in the absurdity of the Wayside School practices. This was a fun easy read that was very engaging for my children. The best part of the book, is that within each wacky weird story is a real nugget of truth, something both adults and kids can very much connect with.

For discussion questions, please see: http://www.book-chatter.com/?p=3057. show less

I read quite a few books by this author back in elementary and middle school, and the Wayside series was really enjoyable and funny. There's all kind of weird stories that make no sense if you actually try to make sense of them - you're just supposed to sit back and enjoy the stories. There's no 19th floor in this school and it's brought up a few times, but no sense is ever made of it, though the 19th floor is discovered by accident once. Yeah, weird, right? That's why I liked this series so much. It's funny without being crude, gross, or vulgar.

When I read (especially now, as I'm careening through my 50s), I'm in search of those special books which, once read, I'm so grateful I didn't miss it. This is not that book. This is easily skippable and missable. It's fine—if its on hand, if you want a very short story (each chapter is self-contained), or if your know (or are) a struggling/reluctant reader who enjoys absurd teensy tales, then go for it.

But it's not a great classic of the genre, despite its apparent popularity (at least, in my opinion, but that's all I have). The characters are thin, the stories vary in tone from entirely absurd to entirely prosaic, and the plots themselves are not remotely engrossing. In fact, it reads very much like the author was telling oral show more bedtime stories to his children, and then wrote them down after. I've done that—immortal tales of Bessie the Cow who kept getting into magical trouble—but I didn't write 'em down and publish them, because the quality of spontaneously invented fiction is generally not as high as thoughtful, considered prose.

The story that made the biggest impression was the tale of a boy who having tugged on one pigtail, spoiler alert, felt compelled to tug on the other. The big twist? The class had a 3 strikes rule, so he thought he was safe, until his victim pretended he'd tugged on her again. There. That's the level of thrilling action you can expect.

On the plus side (which is why it's 3 stars from me, not 2), it's got some inventive premises, and I do enjoy absurdism more than if this were a not-entirely-successful and completely prosaic book. He can write—his Holes is terrific, if you haven't tried it yet—but this is not his best work.

(Note: 5 stars = amazing, wonderful, 4 = very good book, 3 = decent read, 2 = disappointing, 1 = awful, just awful. I'm fairly good at picking for myself so end up with a lot of 4s). I feel a lot of readers automatically render any book they enjoy 5, but I grade on a curve! show less