Sideways stories take place in a school that was a building structure issue that made each floor a classroom. The students and the staff that fill the school have unique character traits that face various challenges within the community and how these characters overcome the challenges in their unique way while still being true to themselves. This novel promotes the various challenges and student development growth and the impact of having a strong community. ( )

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. ( )

This was one of my favorite books as a kid - I actually loved all the Wayside books! I read this one aloud to my nieces (ages 6, 8, 10) and they enjoyed it, too. This is full of truly silly stories that are just fun!

A note for parents/teachers: The children do use a few put-downs like "dumb" and "stupid." ( )

Fond memories reading this in elementary school. The short chapters, each being a self contained story, is a strength for younger readers. ( )

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 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 ( )

2017 re-read: It has definitely lost some of its charm now that I'm older but it's still quite entertaining. Louis Sachar captures really well the kind of absurd and nonsensical humour that kids love. ( )

This re-read was a fun trip down memory lane. I haven't read the original Wayside School trilogy since I was a kid. While these stories are definitely aimed at children (younger than middle grade age), they are still enjoyable to read as an adult. ( )

Mentioned in a blog post at https://booksbeyondbinaries.blog/2020/07/20/chapter-books-whats-good/ (July 20th release)

This is one of the weirdest books I've read in my whole life.
I mean that in the best way possible.
I would have loved this book as a kid.
I'm sure kids will love it.

(My personal rating is 3.7*) ( )

This book is a famous childrens book series which was first published in 1979. It's a collection of short stories, and each story is about a different child. It's a combination of speculative fiction and comedy. The stories are creative and imaginative. This is a great book to utilize for teaching story-telling.

Literature and Book Extensions for the Classroom
https://mosswoodconnections.com/activity/sideways-stories-from-wayside-school-li... ( )

Tales of a school built on top of another thirty stories high ( )

This book is about a school that has one classroom directly on top of another. Throughout this book, there are all kinds of weird and funny occurrences going on, especially on the thirteenth floor. This book is one I highly recommend because it is such a fun and entertaining book, all while including a few pieces of advice for kids. ( )

I'm definitely going to recommend this book for reluctant readers; it contains unique 30 stories that I never heard before. This is quite different from Holes (which is also a favorite of mine). At the end of each interconnected stories, I'm left contemplating about the morals that a child can learn from the book. There are only two instances that I find predictable but overall a page-turner. ( )

This book is about the different stories of wayside school and its different crazy adventures from the different students and teachers that attend this school. ( )

[Review written by my younger self]
My fifth grade teacher, Mrs. White, read this to the class. It was one of the first books I can remember completely guffawing over. ( )

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. ( )

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 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! ( )

I enjoyed reading this one to Camila. It was just as silly and fun as I remembered it from my first read of it. ( )

The concept of this school being built the wrong way is hilarious in its own way. Louis Sachar has a way of story telling that keeps both adults and children entertained. I appreciate the short chapters and the way he writes the entire book. He focuses on different characters/events in each chapter. My favorite chapter is 19. If you ever read the book, you will understand why I enjoy that chapter so much.

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“Sammy” remains one of the best stories ever written, honestly ( )

When I heard that another book in the Wayside School series was coming out, I had to reread the book that started it all. These books were my childhood! I found out that I still love this series even as an adult.

Each chapter tells a tale about each individual student, and there are three chapter dedicated to each teacher of the class on the thirtieth story of the school. Some of the time, the stories of each child/teacher don't make much sense, but that's the beauty of this book. It leaves you to ponder on what that chapter was about and come to your own conclusions. There are a couple of chapters that teach some good lessons too.

One thing I also loved were the illustrations of each character before their chapter started. They are drawn very well. It was a nice touch, and it made it easier to picture that person in the story. I think it's a great idea for kids who feel like they are too old for picture books, yet they still like some illustrations in their book.

This is such an easy and fun novel to read. It's not very long which is perfect for the intended age group. I believe kids ages 8 - 13 will definitely love these stories the most although it's a fun book for any age.

I would definitely recommend Sideways Stories from Wayside School by Louis Sachar! ( )

Listening to my son giggle as I read the wacky stories about Wayside School to him took me back to my childhood. I remember hiding under the covers with a flashlight at night well after my mom told me to get some sleep. After every assignment in class, I would sneak this book out of my little desk and try to get in another couple of pages before the teacher caught me. It was good to see that my son loved the same little kids that I had loved so many years before him. I recommend this book to any parent looking for a book to read to their child one or two chapters a night. I recommend it to the second/third grader that loves to laugh their little behind off. I think that it should be a fixture in every library and school book fair around the country. The stories are short yet full of quirks that the reader just can't help but smile about weeks after finishing the stories. This is a good imagination building book also. I used it to help my son come up with silly stories about his school, teachers, and friends. I even had him draw pictures for his stories and can see how an elementary school teacher could use the Wayside books to teach many different subjects. This was definitely worth the dig in the local library's large stack of old books! ( )

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 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. ( )