Wayside School is Falling Down

The story collection contains many ironic reversals that provide one of the main sources of humor. Sometimes the reversals are linguistic in nature, as when Sachar uses antanaclasis to switch the meaning of a repeated word. He also names characters with qualities that challenge society’s expectations—as with the whimsical name of the principal, “Mr. Kidswatter.” Often these reversals take the form of behavior that contradicts a character’s own stated beliefs or desires. For instance, after Louis asserts that cleaning up the play yard is not his responsibility in “A Package for Mrs. Jewls,” he immediately begins cleaning up the play yard. In “Bebe’s Baby Brother,” after Kathy protests the fact that she is not allowed to pass out papers, she vehemently refuses Mrs. Jewls’s offer to let her do just that. Another type of reversal is offered through exposition that explicitly contradicts a characters’ beliefs, as when Louis goes to extraordinary lengths to deliver the package to Mrs. Jewls himself in Chapter 1 because he “[knows] how much they [hate] to be interrupted when they [are] working” (2). However, when he arrives at the classroom door, all the children compete to be the one to get up and open the door, since “[t]hey [love] to be interrupted when they [are] working” (5).