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Keep it weird wayside11/19/2023 The only conceit to more modern ideas comes from the Ultimate Test, a standardized testing-type exam that all of Mrs. The time is still a vague undefined late 70s(?) ish time when cell phones and after school extracurriculars are the stuff of science fiction. Everyone’s in a bad mood because of a Cloud of Doom that makes them grumpy? You don’t even need to stretch very hard to make that one fit.Įveryone is back for this class reunion, with nary a modern convention in sight. So while it might be a bit mean, at the end of the day I liked this book slightly less than I did the prior two installments because I come to Wayside to be confronted with the extremes of human behavior in a funny light. I’ll say this: Sachar’s Cloud of Doom was conceived and written much before the real life Cloud of Doom that hung over all our heads this past thousand years. After all, there are terrible schools with only one floor–like your school. These books made you feel like school was a place that could be a little weird without being wrong. Jewls might not be the most, uh, competent of teachers (her lesson plans are…all over the place, to put it mildly) but she clearly cares about her students and encourages them in all their quirky little ways. I imagine what the good doctor might think if confronted with Wayside School, and I have come to the conclusion that she would lean in and make the best of it. I actually get a strong vibe of Magic School Bus and Ms (now Dr!) Frizzle when I read these books. There is a cow in Miss Zarves’ classroom, though there is no 19th story and there is no Miss Zarves. He’s still convinced that he can hear a stray moo every so often. Jewl accidentally rang her cowbell and summoned them during a storm, because as you know cows do not like going down stairs. It took poor Louis-who-is-actually-Sachar 243 days to rid the 30 stories of Wayside School of the cows that had shown up after Mrs. On second thought, I think this is my second favorite set of stories from Wayside School. A decent chunk of the humor involves ruminations on the nature of kids and how they do things that drive adults nuts, but somehow kids always seem to be in on the joke. It’s definitely a very kid brand of humor, although it’s not particular gross out or juvenile. I cannot even fathom the pitch to the editor for this series of books. There is no Miss Zarves, because there is no 19th story.Īllison might end up in Miss Zarves’ class, but there is no Miss Zarves, and Calvin definitely delivered the note to her because there was no note and no Miss Zarves. There is no 19th story, because when Wayside school was build the builder went straight from 18 to 20. This book (and/or the next one) definitely marks the highlight of this series for me, namely because we are introduced to Miss Zarves, the teacher on the 19th floor, in a way that doesn’t ruin the mystique and hilarity of the story. While re-reading these books I did find some of the nostalgic magic missing from this first entry, and I think the books do pick up and get better with each (original) entry. Gorf, the worst teacher floor 30 has ever had–appears only in the very beginning of this book (without much introduction) and yet casts a very very long shadow. One of the most memorable characters–Mrs. Sachar also rewarded you as a reader for remembering little details from previous chapters (or even previous books). Concepts like satire, pastiche, reductio ad absurdum would have meant nothing to me when I was first reading this book, but by the end of these books I definitely knew what they were. To try and be more succinct with why I liked it so much: this might have been one of the first books I read with a real fourth-wall-breaking style? Something about how Sachar-as/through-Louis talks directly to you, the reader, makes you feel like you’re reading something very clever and grown up. Holes might be his most famous work, but it never grabbed me the way the stories of Wayside School (build, by accident, with 30 classrooms stacked on top of one another instead of side by side) did. Sachar is, of course, an award winning writer many times over. I have fond memories of these books and their particular brand of absurdism. In advance of reading the new(!) fourth installment in this delightful series, I thought I’d re-read the original three in rapid succession. Old Series: the newest installment in this series comes 25 years(!) after the last, and 44(!!!) years since the firstĪ mild content warning for some old school “humor” around kids being fat which didn’t age the best but is also not used in a bullying way
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