Sideways Stories From Wayside School Themes

Sideways Stories From Wayside School Themes

Foolishness and Folly

If there's one rule at Wayside School, it's that silliness is the order of the day. Although the kids take school seriously, their school doesn't always take them seriously, so as Sideways Stories...

Friendship

Nothing can be simpler—or more complicated—than alliances between elementary school kids. In Sideways Stories, Louis Sachar seems to intuitively understand how these friendships work. Some kids...

Appearances

In Sideways Stories from Wayside School, characters are always described using one or two stand-out features—like missing teeth, a big round face, or in Stephen's case, green hair. In this book a...

Choices

One thing the students on the thirtieth floor are constantly learning is how to make good choices. When is it okay to talk in class, and when should you listen? Is it ever okay to pull your classma...

The Supernatural

It wouldn't be Wayside without weirdness, and one way this weirdness shows up is through supernatural events. Sometimes these are subtle—like furniture that can laugh—but sometimes we get full-...

Education

It's kind of hard to write a book set in an elementary school without having education as a main theme, so this theme's pretty obvious in this respect. But what's not obvious is that there's also a...

Versions of Reality

The Wayside School universe is a school where many things look normal—except very often they're not. Sideways Stories seems to exist in a parallel universe, and only yard teacher Louis knows that...

Wisdom and Knowledge

The delicious irony of Sideways Stories: despite the ridiculous setting and the wacky, nonsensical situations, Sachar still manages to weave wisdom and truth into these pages. Sometimes it's a less...