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Wayside School is a series of surreal children's novels written by Louis Sachar. The series consists of six books. Four of them, Sideways Stories from Wayside School, Wayside School Is Falling Down, Wayside School Gets a Little Stranger, and Wayside School Beneath the Cloud of Doom make up the main series, while two more, Sideways Arithmetic from Wayside School and More Sideways Arithmetic from Wayside School, make up the Sideways Arithmetic spin-off series. The books inspired an animated special entitled Wayside: The Movie in 2005, and an animated series called Wayside in 2007.
Synopsis[]
The Wayside School book series takes place in the fictional setting of Wayside School, an elementary school that was accidentally built sideways. While meant to be built one story tall, with thirty classrooms all in a row, it ended up thirty stories tall, with one classroom on each floor. The books primarily focus on Mrs. Jewls's class on the thirtieth story, and each book in the main series typically tells one story about each character, though Wayside School Gets a Little Stranger has more focus on a central plot. The Sideways Arithmetic series, rather than focusing on stories, focus on math and logic puzzles with the Wayside School environment as a backdrop.
The school frequently experiences surreal circumstances, such as dead rats that live in the basement, teachers that can transform students into apples, the word "door" being declared a bad word, and a Doom Cloud ‘’hanging’’ on top of Wayside School .The style of the books make heavy usage of wordplay and the literary format, such as the names of the pets in "Pet Day" and the running gag of the nineteenth story.
Main series[]
| Title | Image | Description | Published |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sideways Stories from Wayside School | 
|
The first book in the series, which introduces the setting of Wayside School, an elementary school that was built sideways by mistake, while also introducing the various students that attend it. | January 1, 1978 |
| Wayside School Is Falling Down | 
|
The second book in the series tells new stories about each student, as well as introducing a new kid named Benjamin Nushmutt, who everyone else believes that he is named Mark Miller, and leading up to the school closing after being filled with cows. | March 22, 1989 |
|
When the school re-opens after Louis successfully removes all the cows, things continue as usual until Mrs. Jewls must take a leave for her pregnancy. As a result, the students are left to the whims of a series of wicked substitute teachers. | April 27, 1995 | |
| Wayside School Beneath the Cloud of Doom | 
|
The students and teachers must cope with the effects of a large gloomy cloud that has formed over Wayside School.[1] | March 3rd, 2020 |
Spin-offs[]
| Title | Image | Description | Published |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sideways Arithmetic from Wayside School | 
|
A new student named Sue is excited to attend Wayside School, but learns that they don't quite teach math the same way in this boggling puzzle book. | 1989 |
| More Sideways Arithmetic from Wayside School | 
|
A follow-up to the first Sideways Arithmetic book, this entry features more problems from Wayside School, all taught in the usual, unexpected fashion the school is known for. | 1994 |
Characters[]
Wayside School features a large cast of characters, primarily the students of Mrs. Jewls's class and various members of the faculty staff. Since the books have so many characters, a full list can be viewed here.
Background[]
As a high school student, Louis Sachar took a creative writing class, where he wrote a children's story called "Apple Power."[2] The story was about an evil teacher who transformed her students into apples,[3] though his teacher thought he didn't take the assignment seriously, tore it up, and eventually gave him a D in the class. Sachar, however, always thought it was a good story, and eventually repurposed it as the chapter "Mrs. Gorf" in Sideways Stories from Wayside School.
Louis Sachar went to college at the University of California in Berkeley, when he saw an elementary school child handing out flyers, requesting that people help at Hillside Elementary School for college credit. After thinking it over, Sachar thought it was a good deal, and began work at the school, helping out in the classroom, and serving a position as the Noontime Supervisor. The students called him "Louis the Yard Teacher," however, a title that is used regularly in the Wayside School books. The students seen in the books are all named after the kids Sachar worked with at Hillside,[4] the character of Mrs. Jewls is based on their teacher,[5] Mrs. Jukes, and the character of Louis is based on Sachar himself.[3] According to Louis Sachar, he described the kids in the books the same way he remembered them looking, but the illustrations don't look much like the kids he knew at the school at all.[6]
According to Louis Sachar, the events that occur in the book are all made up, and he claims his personal experiences are "kind of boring."[6] However, he has described his creative process for a few of the individual chapters in the book. In a Scholastic interview, he explains that the chapter "Calvin" initially started with simply the idea of Mrs. Jewls having Calvin take a note to another teacher. He eventually got the idea that the teacher, and the floor she teaches, wouldn't exist, thinking that while it didn't make sense, it was funny nonetheless.[6] Similarly, in an interview for Mashable, he explains that the chapter "Sammy" simply started with the idea of a new kid cloaked in raincoats, and that he had no clue what would be at the end of them. During a walk, he tried coming up with ideas, and eventually settled on a dead rat, though why he picked that, he can't recall. In the same interview, he explains the origins of the chapter "A Package for Mrs. Jewls," explaining that he was writing the chapter around the first time he got his own computer, which didn't have a hard drive and had a black-and-amber monitor. He tried to make the computer Mrs. Jewls's class gets sound as advanced as he could, though due to the unprecedented rate at which technology advanced, he admits that it ends up sounding dated, though he has expressed no interest in updating it.[5]
The first book, Sideways Stories from Wayside School, was briefly out-of-print when the small company that first published it went out of business. When working on There's a Boy in the Girl's Bathroom, he was taken out to lunch by an editor from Random House, who had invited another author named Mavis Jukes. Learning that she was the daughter of the Mrs. Jukes that taught at Hillside, he eventually referenced this in Wayside School Gets a Little Stranger, where Mrs. Jewls's daughter is named Mavis Jewls.[5]
Reception[]
The Wayside School book series has been met with largely positive reception. On Goodreads, Sideways Stories from Wayside School has been met with a score of 4.15/5, Wayside School Is Falling Down has a score of 4.17/5, Wayside School Gets a Little Stranger has a score of 4.19/5, Wayside School Beneath the Cloud of Doom has a score of 4.23/5, Sideways Arithmetic from Wayside School has a score of 3.88/5, and More Sideways Arithmetic from Wayside School has a score of 3.92/5.
An article from The Atlantic entitled "The Absurd Joys of Sideways Stories from Wayside School" recounts the first book with positivity, praising the world of Wayside School being one only interesting to the readers, with the characters in-universe experiencing it in a manner that a reader would experience their own life. They praised the simple writing style, which is easy for children to pick up, while also enjoying the various complexities and absurdities presented within the text. In an article from The New Yorker entitled "Louis Sachar, the Children's-Book Author Who Introduced Me To Style," writer Jia Tolentino praises the style and craft of the book, describing it as "little lessons in craft, structured as neatly as a Rubik's Cube."
Adaptation[]
In 2005, a movie loosely based on the book series entitled Wayside: The Movie was released on Teletoon. While certain chapters, such as "A Bad Word," "Mrs. Jewls," and "Myron" are referenced, the story is largely original, with Todd being a new kid at Wayside School and adapting to the school's oddities. The pilot led to a cartoon two years later in 2007 entitled Wayside, which lasted for twenty-six episode pairs and two seasons. The series was met with mixed-to-positive reception, with some praising its off-beat humor, though often it was compared negatively to the book series upon which it was based. Louis Sachar reportedly did not approve of this show.
References[]
- ↑ https://books.google.com/books/about/Wayside_School_Beneath_the_Cloud_of_Doom.html?id=YBb6xgEACAAJ
- ↑ Sideways Stories from Wayside School, "About the author" section in the first edition.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 Louis Sachar's website, FAQ
- ↑ Louis Sachar's website, About
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 Mashable interview
- ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 Scholastic interview