Wayside School Is Falling Down

Name: Wayside School Is Falling Down
Author: Louis Sachar
ISBN: 9780380731503

by Louis Sachar

Ages 7–10 Reading age 8 Short chapters Set in school funnystrange

More stories from the thirtieth floor: a cow in the classroom, a lost sock, and a substitute teacher nobody survives.

A story about children, funny and strange in tone. We would put it with children of 7–10, and at a reading age of about 8 for reading alone.

Nothing flagged

We have not flagged any content in this one that a parent would usually want warning about.

Part of a series

This is book 2 of the Wayside School series, so there is more to read if it goes down well — which is worth a great deal with a reluctant reader.

Our take on this book

Wayside School was built sideways by mistake — thirty storeys high, one classroom per floor — and on the thirtieth floor the stories keep coming: a cow that gets loose in the classroom, a lost sock with a mind of its own, a substitute teacher no child survives intact. Louis Sachar, long before Holes, wrote these as a set of very short, very silly interlinked tales whose surreal logic and deadpan delivery are pitched exactly at the way children's humour works. Each chapter is self-contained and barely a few pages, which makes it wonderful for a child who wants to read a whole something in one sitting, and forgiving for a reluctant one. There is nothing to frighten anyone; the strangeness is purely comic. For a seven- to ten-year-old it is a gateway to Sachar's cleverness in its most accessible, laugh-out-loud form, and a brilliant bridge into chapter books.