Sachar, Louis. Wayside School Gets a Little Stranger. Illustrated by Joel Schick. Morrow Junior Books, 1995. Tr. $15.99 ISBN 978-0-688-13694-9
Reading level: 3.3
Interest level: Grades 3-6
Genres: Humor, fantasy, satire
Subjects: School, teachers, substitutes, supernatural abilities, students
Recommend this book to: Fans of humor, particularly weird humor.
What’s it about? The students of Wayside School are used to strangeness. But when their teacher Mrs. Jewls goes on maternity leave, a succession of strange substitutes make their lives a little more surreal.
Want to find out more? Read the review!
This wacky story about the children and teachers of Wayside School is dead-pan, surreal comedy. The 30 children in Room 30 (on the 30th floor) notice something different about their beloved teacher Mrs. Jewls, who announces that she is expecting a baby and will go on maternity leave. A stream of strange substitute teachers follows her absence, including Mr. Gorf, who has three nostrils and can take a person’s voice away by wiggling them, and later a teacher with three ears who can hear everyone’s thoughts.
The book is comprised of 30 brief chapters rich in word-play and zany comedy. The humor might remind adult readers of Monty Python sketches. Many situations are ludicrous, but the children and adults at Wayside School are used to a universe that just doesn't make sense. After all, they go to school in a thirty story building with no elevator and no nineteenth story. And a former teacher turned them all into apples.
Fans of the previous books will be delighted by this title, but even readers that missed the first installments of this series will appreciate this book--and then run to the library to grab everything else in the series. Hand this book to fans of Roald Dahl and Dan Gutman’s My Weird School. This book can easily be appreciated by adult fans of the absurd as well as children, who usually enjoy the absurd.
Other titles in the series:
Sideways Stories from Wayside School (1978)
Wayside School is Falling Down (1989)
Sideways Arithmetic From Wayside School (1989--considered a spin-off)
More Sideways Arithmetic From Wayside School (1994--considered a spin-off)
Wayside School Gets a Little Stranger (1995)
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