Wayside School Was Accidentally Built Sideways

~Wayside School~
Books 1-3
Written by Louis Sachar
Illustrated by Adam McCauley
Amazon ~ Powell's

There'd been a terrible mistake. Wayside School was supposed to be built with thirty classrooms all next to each other in a row. Instead, they built the classrooms one on top of the other ... thirty stories tall! (The builder said he was very sorry.)

That may be why all kinds of funny things happen at Wayside School ... especially on the thirtieth floor. You'll meet Mrs. Gorf, the meanest teacher of all, terrible Todd, who always gets sent home early, and John who can read only upside down - along with all the other kids in the crazy mixed-up school that came out sideways. Miss Mush is dishing out her famous Mushroom Surprise in the Wayside School cafeteria. Ron says it tastes like hot dogs and grape jelly. Clean your plate and you’ll turn green in time for class picture day. Wear your craziest outfit and you’ll fit right in between Maurecia in her striped bikini and Calvin, who’s wearing his birthday tattoo. In Mrs. Drazil's class, they're throwing a coffeepot, a sack of potatoes, a pencil sharpener, and a light bulb out the window to see which hits the ground first. But you'll never guess the truth about Sammy, the new kid ... or what's inside for Wayside School on Halloween!

I guess it's story time. I picked up Wayside School books back when I was in elementary school. I started with (what was unbeknownst to me) the second book, Wayside School is Falling Down, and absolutely loved it. I eventually picked up the other two books later, probably when my sibling was the appropriate age (we're 5 years apart), but otherwise have had no reason to think of them otherwise. Every so often the author would come up - you probably recognize him most for Holes - but the Wayside books never really got as much limelight.

Then a 4th book was released and I had to pick these up again. So that's why I'm here. I had to revisit this series, reacquaint myself with its characters to see what this sudden reappearance had in store...

First off there was Sideways Stories from Wayside School. Like I said, way back when I didn't read this one first - in fact, I might have read it last - so it didn't carry nearly as much nostalgia for me as I might have liked.

It has 30 chapters mostly focusing on the 2 teachers and 27 students in the classroom on the 30th floor, with a final chapter for the groundskeeper, Louis. Mainly the stories are vignettes, not sharing any sort of timeline or inter-connectivity until the end when a bunch come back as references. There was a nice innocence surrounding it all, especially some lines that I don't think you could pass off today...like how a girl supposedly likes when you pull her pigtails really, really hard.

There was one chapter that did trigger my tearducts, though. Kathy hates everything and likes proving people wrong, even if she has to go out of her way to do so. When she gets a cat, her teacher tells her that it'll love her and stay with her as long as she loves it and lets it wander when it wants, etc. But she doesn't believe her teacher, so keeps it locked in her closet all the time and forgets about it and forgets to feed it, so when it finally gets the chance it runs away (YAY!). So she resolves, "The next time I get a cat, I’ll kill him. Then he’ll never run away." [Location 923] (OMG NOOOO!!!) Obviously she is not meant to be a character we like or agree with, but man, that was dark. (Quarantine is not being kind.)

Ultimately the book ends with a kind of recap of all the silliness and strangeness the characters have shared, and maybe the moral that being strange or silly isn't a bad thing? It's disjointed enough that only a couple things really carry over through chapters, so there isn't any overarching story. It's just fun and silly and something little kids can enjoy reading on their own or together with parents.

Secondly, there's Wayside School is Falling Down which, as I said, was my first experience with Wayside and its colorful cast of characters. And I'm surprised to say, I remembered a lot from this book. There were a couple songs/poems that I still remember singing to myself (or having my mom sing to me?) from way, way back in the day.

This one felt much more connected than the first book. Seemingly throw-away references made in the first book made reappearances here, like room/floor 19 with Mrs. Zarves, or the strange MiB dudes that showed up and disappeared that one Saturday morning. Characters actually seemed to evolve a little over the course of the book, instead of just having their chapter and moving on. Sure, the chapters were still mostly vignettes, but the little connections here and there across chapters were greatly appreciated.

My biggest concern with the book was a particular chapter involving Mrs. Jewls that...I don't think would pass as easily today. It involves a student telling her he loves her, and her saying it back... Look, I know it's not uncommon in the growing process - it's been in multiple shows and books and such - but I don't think that was the best way to handle it, even if she does have a good message about love buried in there. There was also a chapter about bringing a hobo in for show and tell, which I don't think has aged well (though that may just be an adult reading vs a child).

Still, on the whole I did enjoy Falling Down more than its predecessor. I thought the wit and humor were better than before, especially with the clever chapters 19 and 17, which is supposed to be read backwards (by paragraph, not by sentence). There's more depth to the characters, which is aided greatly by their increased connectivity between chapters. It feels like the kids actually interact instead of having their one spotlight time (chapter) and stepping back. It's hard to say whether it's just nostalgia talking, but I'd almost recommend this one more than the first, if reading Sideways Stories didn't help with upcoming stories in the third...

And that third book is none other than Wayside School Gets A Little Stranger. If Falling Down started the connecting process, then Little Stranger throws everything in a blender cause there's an overarching story now! With villains and everything! It all starts when Mrs. Jewls goes on maternity leave and the kids on the 30th floor get new teachers, and then those teachers begin throwing everything out of alignment - and the school was already teetering as it was!

We once again get call-backs to Mrs. Zarves and the MiB (this time in the same chapter!), but most chapters focus on all the crazy happenings with the floor 30 kids and their crazy teachers, most of whom get multiple chapters for their storylines to stretch across. My personal favorite was Miss Nogard (her name being dragon spelled backwards regrettably never comes into play) who is both sympathetic and evil, and fascinating because of it.

Really, the teachers kinda steal the show this time. Sure, the kids have to deal with them to some extent, but there aren't nearly as many chapters focusing on the kids as there are the teachers. And with multiple chapters dedicated to those teachers, there's little room left for any kids to shine.

And that, I feel, is the main drawback of the series. If you asked me to name all the kids, I'd probably only come up with 10, maybe 15. And even then, I probably couldn't tell you much about some of them. In three short books, there just wasn't enough time. I believe there was a short-lived cartoon series about Wayside that may have fleshed-out some of those kids more, but I still don't know that you'd get 27+ different fully developed characters without a lot more time put into them.

The stories were great; a lot of them memorable and hilarious to boot. But without spending multiple chapters on these characters, as the teachers were allowed to get, there's not quite enough there to keep me loving these characters. The school is great, the school is wacky, and what happens there is what I'll remember far longer than the kids who I've been sharing my time with.

And I guess that's what I'm looking forward to in the long-awaited (TWENTY-FIVE YEARS?!) book 4: Wayside School Beneath the Cloud of Doom. Hopefully those mysterious reoccurring characters/instances will have some sort of resolution? I'll find out soon...