Sideways Stories from Wayside School by Louis Sachar (September 2017)
Wayside School is Falling Down by Louis Sachar (September 2017)
Wayside School Gets a Little Stranger by Louis Sachar (September 2017)
Sachar, perhaps better known for writing Holes, also wrote these collections of zany stories about a fictional school. The book starts with a description of the construction mistake that made Wayside School a sideways reality: instead of building a one-story school with thirty classrooms, the construction team built a thirty-story school with one classroom on each floor. Since the school has thirty stories, each book in the series has thirty chapters.
The first book focuses mostly on the class at the top floor. There is just about one chapter devoted to each student (except for 'The Three Erics' who, like they do with their first name, must also share a story). The sequels take a wider focus and cover more about the school. In all three of the books, each story is a little crazier than the last.
I remembered all of this before I started re-reading these books in September. What I was not prepared for was how Sachar continuously made small attempts to challenge the young readers (and widely ignored bloggers) he surely expected to read his books. For the most part, these challenges came in the form of clever wordplay. One example is the story about pet day. It read like a wildly confusing version of "Who's on First" thanks to all the students who named their dog Cat, their cat Dog, and so on.
In some other cases, he wrote stories about topics likely beyond what the typical ten-year-old thought about. The aforementioned ‘Three Erics’ story is a good example.
Each Eric, sharing a name with two classmates, is given a nickname by the rest of the class. Since two of the Erics are very unathletic, the kids assume all Erics are unathletic. Thus, the third Eric is nicknamed ‘Butterfingers’ despite regularly performing great athletic feats on the playground.
This logic is applied to the other two Erics. The second Eric is the nicest kid in the school but, because the other two Erics are mean, is nicknamed ‘Crabapple’. The third Eric is nicknamed 'Fatso'. Guess which kid was the skinniest one in the class? The 'Three Erics' story is delightful and charming and cute in the way many of these stories are, of course, but it also seemed like a well-crafted parable about discrimination for young readers to learn from about the dangers of labels, comparisons, and assumptions.
I’ve brought up this idea of ‘challenging’ young readers because it reminded me of a comment I heard on Tim Ferriss’s podcast. In an interview with Maria Sharapova, Ferriss mentioned how he was noticing a trend among parents who raised world-class performers. These parents, Ferriss thought, found ways to constantly share with their kids ideas that were just beyond their understanding. The process of these kids then accelerating their mental development to ‘catch-up’ to these ideas and taking the next step forward in their growth seemed to push them ahead of their peers who were merely making the team, passing the test, or ridiculing their local Eric.
