Wayside School Gets a Little Stranger

Wayside School Gets a Little Stranger by Louis Sachar

This a bunch of short stories that tie together the experiences at Wayside School. The school is bizarre and many strange things just happen without people being concerned. The school has ben built up instead of across, requiring kids to use stairs to get to classes. Elevators are finally installed, but to limit conflict, one will only be used for going up and the other only for going down. These elevators are thus used once, and never again. There is a substitute that is really nice, only somebody reports that she was cruel a long time back and is still after old homework. A teacher also goes after a cruel dentist for old homework and chases her out of town. There are plenty of other bizarre and humorous tales in the book.

Sideways Stories from Wayside School

Sideways Stories from Wayside School by Louis Sachar

Wayside school was accidentally built "sideways", with 30 classrooms on 30 different floors. The stories in this book center on the classroom on the 30th floor. It is in the "just a little bit beyond normal" vein. In one story teacher turns kids she doesn't like into apples. However, they manage to get her to turn them back to kids and when she tries to turn them into apples again, they hold up a mirror. She becomes an apple. Later another school worker comes in and eats the apple. In another story, a kid races up and down from the 30th story to serve as the go-between for a simple conversation. There is a kid that comes in with a smelly rain coat. They make him take it off to see another, and keep doing that until they find it is just a dead rat - and dead rats are always sneaking into the classroom. In one, kids stereotype other kids by their names, even if the behaviour. There is plenty of "fun" in this book, but it does get a bit over the top.

Wayside School Is Falling Down

Wayside School Is Falling Down by Louis Sachar, illustrated by Joel Schick

Wayside school is a little bit different. The building is a high rise, with rooms up on the 20th story, but no 19th story. Only there is a 19th story, but once people go there, they never leave. (Though they may spend time memorizing the dictionary or writing all numbers from 1 to a million in alphabetical order.)

The book starts with a school worker pretending to be a teacher to take delivery of a fragile box. He climbs up all the stairs to deliver to the teacher. The teacher has him hold it while she conducts a spelling be to see who can help him. He struggles with it, but eventually the teacher looks. She determines it is a computer. She then uses it for the lesson on gravity - by dropping it out the window.

There is a boy who gets known by the wrong name, but never bothers to correct people. There is a sub who gets everyone to learn by playing along with their teasing (which came off the boy trying to come clean with his name, and everyone copying him.) There are plenty of other weird things that happen. There are bits and pieces of plot, but most is just enough glue to hold together random humorous stories.