Wayside School

Wayside School was, I believe, my introduction to absurdist writing, and Sachar was a master at it in the realm of kiddie-fic. Imagine a school built sideways: instead of being 30 classrooms in a single-story campus, it’s a thirty-story skyscraper with a classroom on each floor. That’s Wayside High, and its residents are even screwier than the school. In each of the first two books (Wayside High Under a Cloud of Doom being somewhat different), we visit each student in Mrs. Jewls’ class in turn — at least, once mean Mrs. Gorf, their original teacher, does the class a favor and gets herself eaten by the janitor, Louis. (Louis isn’t a cannibal, it’s just that Mrs. Gorf had been tricked into turning herself into an apple, and she looked so shiny and red…) Most of the kids are extremely memorable, especially Sammy who is a dead rat pretending to be a child by wearing an abundance of coats. As that description implies, this is not a normal book of school stories. There are plenty of things that are “real” — Paul’s constant temptation to pull Leslie’s pigtails, the fight for the “good” equipment at recess, that sort of thing — but even the real elements have a spin on them. The quality of a kickball, for instance, depends entirely on its color, and in one story a girl who forgets that it’s Saturday and comes to school is interviewed by mysterious G-Men who want to know why. (The G-men appear to dwell in the basement and make an appearance every book.) And then there’s Ms. Jarves on the 19th story, who — as everyone knows — doesn’t exist. This is a running joke: one student who is inexplicably invisible stumbles into the 19th story, and in another an errant kickball strikes between the 18th and 20th stories and promptly disappears. Enjoyment for the reader is doubled by Sachar have the characters be aware of the absurdity to some, like when Rondi realizes she’s being complimented on clothes she’s not wearing and starts doubling down on it — and another kid realizes she can use Mrs. Jewls’ “no dead rats in the classroom” policy to get to recess in time quickly enough to get a green ball, by pretending to be a dead rat. When I looked for a copy of these, I found an omnibus series that also included Wayside School Gets a Little Stranger. I can’t remember if I’ve read it or not, but the substitute teacher with a third ear seemed vaugely familiar. Of the three, I still enjoy Sideways Stories the best, despite Falling Down being my first exposure to the series.

Coming up: edutainment, books boys aren’t supposed to read, and more California Diaries. That’ll do the week, I think..

Quotes:

Allison stood up. “I’m not a monkey,” she said. “I’m a girl. My name is Allison. And so is everybody else.”
Mrs. Jewls was shocked. “Do you mean to tell me that every monkey in here is named Allison?”
“No,” said Jenny. “She means we are all children. My name is Jenny.”
“No,” said Mrs. Jewls. “You’re much too cute to be children.”
Jason raised his hand.
“Yes,” said Mrs. Jewls, “the chimpanzee in the red shirt.”
“My name is Jason,” said Jason, “and I’m not a chimpanzee.”
“You’re too small to be a gorilla,” said Mrs. Jewls.
“I’m a boy,” said Jason.
“You’re not a monkey?” asked Mrs. Jewls.
“No,” said Jason.
“And the rest of the class, they’re not monkeys, either?” asked Mrs.
Jewls.
“No,” said Allison. “That is what we’ve been trying to tell you.”
“Are you sure?” asked Mrs. Jewls.
“We’d know if we were monkeys, wouldn’t we?” asked Calvin.
“I don’t know,” said Mrs. Jewls. “Do monkeys know that they are monkeys?”
“I don’t know,” said Allison. “I’m not a monkey.”

“Boy, this is just great,” thought Calvin. “Just great! I’m supposed to take a note that I don’t have to a teacher who doesn’t exist, and who teaches on a story that was never built.”

Mrs. Jewls got very angry. She wrote Rondi’s name on the blackboard under the word DISCIPLINE.
“The classroom is not the place for jokes,” she said.
“But, Mrs. Jewls,” said Rondi. “I didn’t tell a joke.”
“Yes, I know,” said Mrs. Jewls, “but the funniest jokes are the ones that remain untold.”

“The computer will help us learn. It’s a lot quicker than a pencil and paper.”
“But the quicker we learn, the more work we have to do,” complained Todd

He looked around at his classmates. “Doesn’t anybody think I’m weird?”
“No, you’re not weird!” said Sharie. “I’ll tell you what’s weird. What’s weird is bringing a hobo to school for show-and-tell. I’m the one who’s weird.”
“That’s not weird!” said Bebe. “What’s weird is telling everyone you have a brother when you don’t. I’m the weirdo!”
“You call that weird?” exclaimed Stephen. “I’m weird. Who else would choke himself just to look nice?”
“That’s not weird,” said Jenny. “That’s normal. Try reading a story backward. That’s weird. I’m the weird one in this class.”
“That’s a laugh!” said Rondi. “If you’re so weird, then how come you never asked Louis to kick you in the teeth? I’m the one who’s crazy!”
“No, that’s not crazy,” said Todd. “I’ll tell you what’s crazy. What’s crazy is that we all go to school on the thirtieth floor, and the bathrooms are way down on the first!”
Everyone agreed with that, even Mrs. Jewls.
Benjamin shook his head. What a bunch of weirdos! he thought. Then he smiled. He felt proud to be in a class where nobody was strange because nobody was normal

Dana raised her hand. “I learned about exaggeration,” she said. “It was all my teacher ever talked about. We had like ten thousand tests on it and the teacher would kill you if you didn’t spell it right.”
“That’s very good, Dana!” said Mrs. Jewls. “You learned your lesson well.”
“I did?” asked Dana.

Dana walked to Mrs. Jewls’s desk. “I can’t think of anything that rhymes with pink,” she complained.
“I’m sure you’ll think of something,” said Mrs. Jewls. She winked at her.
“I can’t think,” said Dana. “My mind’s on the blink. I’m no good at poetry. I stink!”
“Just keep trying,” said Mrs. Jewls.

“How do you know?” asked Leslie, although she sounded like Paul.
“And how’d you know to smash a pepper pie in Mr. Gorf’s face
“I wasn’t exactly sure,” explained Miss Mush. “But when I came up the
first time, I heard Kathy say ‘Have a nice day.’ So, either Kathy had decide
to be nice to me, or Mr. Gorf was a mean teacher who sucked children’s
voices up his nose.” She shrugged. “I just didn’t think Kathy would be
nice.

Miss Zarves taught the class on the nineteenth story. There is no nineteenth story. And there is no Miss Zarves.
You already know all that.
But how do you explain the cow in her classroom?