Nevanna (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
nevanna) wrote2025-09-02 11:31 pm
nevanna) wrote2025-09-02 11:31 pm
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Tuesday Top Five: "It has been said that these stories are strange and silly."
Louis Sachar’s Wayside School books – which chronicle the surreal adventures of students at an elementary school that was constructed “sideways” by accident – are childhood favorites that I will still happily recommend to the young people who visit my library. Here are some of my favorite stories across the first three books (I haven’t read the fourth and most recent one).
1. ”Jenny” (Sideways Stories from Wayside School)
The first book in the series is also the most episodic: each chapter introduces a character (usually a student) and tells a mostly self-contained story, although some of them set up character dynamics or bits of continuity that the subsequent books revisit.
Jenny’s chapter in Sideways Stories, in which she shows up late on what she thinks will be a normal school day to find the building empty, contains the best of both worlds. The strange and eerie setup builds to a perfect punch line; the whole thing could be a comedy sketch or one-act play. The story also introduces one of my favorite pieces of never-explained Wayside lore: the three mysterious gentlemen who seem to have some understanding and command of the school’s absurd reality. They recur in the next two books, but never overstay their welcome.
2. “A Bad Case of the Sillies” / “A Wonderful Teacher” / “Forever Is Never” (Wayside School Is Falling Down)
There is no nineteenth story at Wayside School. Miss Zarves teaches on the nineteenth story, but there is no Miss Zarves. So how did Allison end up in her class?
This three-chapter storyline takes place in a nightmarish purgatory in which students are given mind-numbing busywork in a classroom that they can never leave. The horror works, the message about thinking for oneself works, and although the whole thing ends with what could be an “it was all a dream” reveal, later chapters suggest that the truth is a little bit stranger and more complicated than even the characters can grasp.
3. “Eric, Eric, and Eric” (Wayside School Is Falling Down)
The principal, Mr. Kidswatter, summons three of Mrs. Jewls’s students – all named Eric – to his office, where he asks them a series of seemingly nonsensical questions.
Like Jenny’s spotlight chapter in the first book, this story plays with tone and atmosphere – in this case, the terror of being interrogated by an authority figure without the slightest idea of how to defend oneself or even understand the situation – before hilariously contextualizing everything in the final line. The third Eric’s answers to the principal’s questions are also pretty funny in their own right.
4. “Doctor Pickle” / “A Story with a Disappointing Ending” (Wayside School Gets A Little Stranger)
In one of my early Throwback Thursday entries, I talked about how the Dr. Pickle chapters – and pretty much everything that focused on Paul’s compulsion to pull Leslie’s pigtails – has a lot of problematic subtext when one looks at it through adult eyes… and why it was inescapably formative for me nonetheless. Little Stranger introduces three substitute teachers with questionable or downright sinister agendas (we’ll get to one of them shortly), but by the end of the book, none of them are a threat to the kids anymore. Presumably, however, Dr. Pickle is still working as the Wayside School guidance counselor and hypnotizing students without any regard for their consent or the bodily autonomy of those around them.
5. “Guilty” (Wayside School Gets A Little Stranger)
The third and last of the substitutes that take over Mrs. Jewls’s classroom when she leaves to have a baby, Wendy Nogard has the ability to hear people’s thoughts, which she uses to cause bitterness and heartache wherever she goes. When she first meets her new students, she immediately starts playing to the anxieties that she sees inside each of their minds and making them hate themselves; in this particular chapter, she uses one girl’s relatively minor transgression to skillfully turn everyone in the classroom against her, and ultimately each other. As a depiction of an outwardly pleasant but viciously manipulative antagonist, this storyline is as quietly frightening as any ghost or dark basement infested with dead rats, and a testament to how well Sachar understands what makes children tick.
Have you read the Wayside School books? Which moments did you find particularly memorable?
1. ”Jenny” (Sideways Stories from Wayside School)
The first book in the series is also the most episodic: each chapter introduces a character (usually a student) and tells a mostly self-contained story, although some of them set up character dynamics or bits of continuity that the subsequent books revisit.
Jenny’s chapter in Sideways Stories, in which she shows up late on what she thinks will be a normal school day to find the building empty, contains the best of both worlds. The strange and eerie setup builds to a perfect punch line; the whole thing could be a comedy sketch or one-act play. The story also introduces one of my favorite pieces of never-explained Wayside lore: the three mysterious gentlemen who seem to have some understanding and command of the school’s absurd reality. They recur in the next two books, but never overstay their welcome.
2. “A Bad Case of the Sillies” / “A Wonderful Teacher” / “Forever Is Never” (Wayside School Is Falling Down)
There is no nineteenth story at Wayside School. Miss Zarves teaches on the nineteenth story, but there is no Miss Zarves. So how did Allison end up in her class?
This three-chapter storyline takes place in a nightmarish purgatory in which students are given mind-numbing busywork in a classroom that they can never leave. The horror works, the message about thinking for oneself works, and although the whole thing ends with what could be an “it was all a dream” reveal, later chapters suggest that the truth is a little bit stranger and more complicated than even the characters can grasp.
3. “Eric, Eric, and Eric” (Wayside School Is Falling Down)
The principal, Mr. Kidswatter, summons three of Mrs. Jewls’s students – all named Eric – to his office, where he asks them a series of seemingly nonsensical questions.
Like Jenny’s spotlight chapter in the first book, this story plays with tone and atmosphere – in this case, the terror of being interrogated by an authority figure without the slightest idea of how to defend oneself or even understand the situation – before hilariously contextualizing everything in the final line. The third Eric’s answers to the principal’s questions are also pretty funny in their own right.
4. “Doctor Pickle” / “A Story with a Disappointing Ending” (Wayside School Gets A Little Stranger)
In one of my early Throwback Thursday entries, I talked about how the Dr. Pickle chapters – and pretty much everything that focused on Paul’s compulsion to pull Leslie’s pigtails – has a lot of problematic subtext when one looks at it through adult eyes… and why it was inescapably formative for me nonetheless. Little Stranger introduces three substitute teachers with questionable or downright sinister agendas (we’ll get to one of them shortly), but by the end of the book, none of them are a threat to the kids anymore. Presumably, however, Dr. Pickle is still working as the Wayside School guidance counselor and hypnotizing students without any regard for their consent or the bodily autonomy of those around them.
5. “Guilty” (Wayside School Gets A Little Stranger)
The third and last of the substitutes that take over Mrs. Jewls’s classroom when she leaves to have a baby, Wendy Nogard has the ability to hear people’s thoughts, which she uses to cause bitterness and heartache wherever she goes. When she first meets her new students, she immediately starts playing to the anxieties that she sees inside each of their minds and making them hate themselves; in this particular chapter, she uses one girl’s relatively minor transgression to skillfully turn everyone in the classroom against her, and ultimately each other. As a depiction of an outwardly pleasant but viciously manipulative antagonist, this storyline is as quietly frightening as any ghost or dark basement infested with dead rats, and a testament to how well Sachar understands what makes children tick.
Have you read the Wayside School books? Which moments did you find particularly memorable?
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