Sideways Stories From Wayside School

 Sideways Stories From Wayside School by Louis Sachar (author of the famous book Holes). The story starts off with these words: "Wayside School was accidentally built sideways"; apparently there was supposed to be 1 story with 30 classrooms, but instead the architects messed up and built 30 stories with 1 classroom per story. The book only gets more confusing from here. 

The story revolves around the 30th story classroom on wayside school, and the 29 students in them, which is especially weird. There were originally 30 kids in the class, which was originally taught by Mrs. Gorf, who could turn students into apples. Eventually, the whole class is turned into apples, but one of the students manages to trick Mrs. Gorf to a mirror, leading to her turning herself into an apple. Louis the yard teacher then accidentally eats her, thinking she was an apple, leading to all the kids being restored. 

Wayside school is a strange school. Although it has 30 stories, the 19th story doesn't exist, even though it does exist, with a strange teacher and a full set of strange students. But it doesn't exist. As well as this, there is the basement of Wayside school, where the dead rats live. Nobody likes dead rats, and these dead rats go around and terrorize teachers. There was one chapter, where there was a new kid in Mrs. Jewels class, on the 30th story, his name was Sammy. He was wearing a coat, so Mrs. Jewels told him to take it off. He took off his coat, but there was another one on, so Mrs. Jewels told him to remove that one too. This continued until after taking off his last coat, he was a dead rat. 

Wayside School is full of mysteries, some of which are very amusing. My favorite example is in one of the sequels to Wayside School (which are just as entertaining as the original). A new kid arrives at Mrs. Jewels class (this time he's not a dead rat)! His name is Benjamin Nushmutt. Benjamin thinks of himself as a loser, and also dislikes his name, and wants to start off new. He introduces himself as Mark Miller.

Meanwhile on the 19th story (which doesn't exist), a new kid introduces himself. His name is Mark Miller, but he doesn't like his name. He introduces himself as Benjamin. Benjamin Nushmutt.

In conclusion, the Sideways Stories from Wayside School is an extremely entrancing and funny book that I would recommend to pretty much anyone. Thank you for reading! -Alex Caesar