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.