Wayside School is Falling Down

Louis Sachar is best known for his hugely popular novel Holes, which won both the Newbery Award and the National Book Award. However, his first book was the 1978 short story cycle Sideways Stories from Wayside School. This book began a series known as the Wayside School books, and Wayside School Is Falling Down is the second book in the six-book series. Overall, the Wayside School series is comprised of four short-story-cycle books that focus on the strange occurrences at Wayside School, along with two additional books that embed absurd math and logic puzzles into narratives about the school and its students. Sachar first began the series after taking a college class in which he worked at Hillside Elementary School in Berkeley, California. The Wayside character of Louis the Yard Teacher, who functions as the series’ in-universe author, is labeled with the same name that the children at Hillside School called Sachar. Additionally, most of the students in the books are named after children whom Sachar met at Hillside, and the name of the Wayside teacher, Mrs. Jewls, is a nod to the real-life Hillside teacher, Mrs. Jukes. The Wayside School series also inspired a television special called Wayside: The Movie and a series called Wayside that aired for two years.

In the first book in the series, Sideways Stories from Wayside School, the unusual architecture of Wayside School is explained; the school was intended to be a one-story school with 30 side-by-side classrooms, but it was accidentally constructed sideways. Now, it is a 30-story school with one classroom on each floor. In this school, magical events are taken for granted. For example, Mrs. Gorf has the power to turn students into apples. Like most of the books in the series, Sideways Stories from Wayside School tells separate stories about various students in Mrs. Jewls’s class on the 30th floor. This structure was inspired by Dameon Runyon’s book, In Our Town.

Sideways Stories from Wayside School also establishes several running jokes that recur in the other books in the series. For instance, the book alleges that the school building does not have a 19th floor because the builders forgot to include one. Throughout the books, characters make jokes about the supposedly non-existent 19th floor and its teacher, Miss Zarves. The series gradually reveals that Miss Zarves's class of invisible students includes characters such as Ray Gunn, who is the possibly real and possibly imaginary younger brother of Bebe Gunn. Another running joke builds on the fact that Todd is a well-behaved and thoughtful student whom Mrs. Jewls unfairly suspects of being a trouble-maker. The frequency with which Todd is put on Mrs. Jewls’s discipline list for no good reason and then sent home early demonstrates the absurdity of life at Wayside School; this running joke is meant to intensify the hilarity of the narrative as the unfairness accumulates throughout the series. Sideways Stories from Wayside School ends with the words “Everybody booed,” establishing a rhyme pattern that Sachar follows in Wayside School Is Falling Down and the other books in the series; for example, Wayside School Is Falling Down ends with the words “Everybody mooed.”