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Wayside School: Difference between revisions
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The story focuses on Mrs. Jewls' class, each of the children in which has his or her own quirks and bizarrities. The students had an evil teacher named Mrs. Gorf who turned them into apples with magic spells. The principal's name is Mr. Kidswatter. Then there's the group of [[The Men in Black|Men in Black]] living in the basement. And the time the building got filled with cows.
There are three books in the main series. The first, ''Sideways Stories from Wayside School'', introduced the characters and devoted a chapter to a story revolving around each one. The second, ''Wayside School Is Falling Down'', introduced a new student to the mix but otherwise followed the same structure. The third, ''Wayside School Gets a Little Stranger'', largely abandoned the formula to present what was more or less a continuous story: Mrs. Jewls goes on maternity leave and the students must cope with a variety of substitutes in her absence.
There were also two ''Sideways Arithmetic'' books, which involve mathematical [[Moon Logic Puzzle|Moon Logic Puzzles]], including letter-substitution arithmetic. Mrs. Jewls' word math is even mentioned in the main series.
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In 2007, the books were picked up by Teletoon and made into an Animated Series, which has its own page [[Wayside|here]].
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{{franchisetropes}}
* [[Aesop Amnesia]]: In Sideways Stories from Wayside School, Joy steals Dameon's lunch because she forgot hers and his looked delicious. She felt so guilty afterwards that she couldn't eat those foods again for a year. In Wayside School is Falling Down, she steals her best friend Maurecia's lunch for no apparent reason.
* [[Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking]]: Leslie decides her toes are useless and offers to sell them to Louis. He looks at them and decides he isn't interested. He then offers to buy her pigtails instead, much to her alarm. "Cut my hair? Are you ''crazy''?"
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** Joe, who can't count but can always get the correct answer to counting problems in ''Sideways Stories''. His strange mathematical methods also show up in later books.
** Stephen, who not only dresses (in-universe) oddly, but believes that the more a necktie chokes him, the more important he looks. Oh, and he has green hair.
* [[Comically Missing the Point]]:
** Mr. Kidswatter interrupts a music class in Mrs. Jewls' room by saying the teachers have started complaining about the kids' noisy session, because they can't hear. After he leaves, {{spoiler|Mrs. Jewls tells the kids to play even louder so that the teachers who couldn't hear their music before can hear them}}.
** When Todd brings in his baby brother on pet day, Mrs. Jewls says a human is not a pet. Todd simply replies that his brother doesn't bite.
* [[Continuity Nod]]:
** In ''Sideways Stories'', Myron saves the life of Dana's dog, Pugsy. Thus, when the class bring their pets to class in the "Pet Day" chapter of ''Gets a Little Stranger'', Dana's pet is left out of the [[Who's on First?]] gimmick employed throughout the chapter since her pet had already been acknowledged in the previous book.
** One of the problems in ''More Sideways Stories From Wayside School'' gets deemed the hardest question in the whole book before Mrs. Jewls asks it. However, it gets skipped over after the students trick Mrs. Jewls into cancelling the pop quiz containing the problem. The number of the question treated like this? Nineteen.
* [[Cool School]]: The titular school is basically a thirty-story building, that was built sideways thanks to the [[Hand Wave|apologetic]] builder. Also, there's [[Missing Floor|"no" Nineteenth Floor]], and to top it all off, [[Weirdness Magnet| the students, teachers, and school board are just as weird]].
* [[Darker and Edgier]]: ''Gets a Little Stranger'' is noticeably darker than the rest of the series.
* [[Depraved Dentist]]: Jane Payne, nee Smith. She even pulls out teeth that don't need to be pulled out, because then her patients pay more.
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* [[Heavy Sleeper]]: Sharie. Not only is she hardly ever seen awake, but she sleeps in a winter coat with hood, regardless of season. She's also able to stay asleep while falling thirty stories out of a window.
* [[Hot Teacher]]: Mrs. Jewls, according to Damion.
* [[Hypno Fool]]: Psychiatrist/School counselor Dr. Pickle<ref>His last name is actually spelt, "Pickell", but he got this nickname in reference to his hypnosis charm, which resembles a pickle.</ref> loves to play pranks on his customers. For example, he hypnotized a woman to quit smoking, but added the suggestion that she slap her husband whenever he said "potato". Later there's a [[Brick Joke]] where one of his pranks bears fruit after the reader has stopped looking for it.
* [[Ironic Nickname]]: The three Erics each have one. "Fatso" is the skinniest, "Butterfingers" the most athletic, and "Crabapple" the sweetest-tempered, because the other two have those qualities and the students assume they do too.
* [[Ironic Nursery Rhyme]]: The titular poem of ''Wayside School is Falling Down'' describes a scenario in which the school falls down and all the kids hit the ground and die. Kathy likes reciting this because if she and the other students died, they wouldn't have to go to school anymore.
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* [[Least Rhymable Word]]: Allison has to write a poem using the word "purple" for one assignment. After going through the alphabet multiple times, she decides to rhyme it with "burp'll," as in, "I bet a burp'll stop that baby from crying."
* [[Lethal Chef]]: Miss Mush, the school lunch lady, who at one point picks up a ''severed nose'' and decides it would go well with spaghetti sauce.
** However, the math book stated that she's a [[Supreme Chef]]... provided she cooks for a small number of people. The larger the number, the worse it is.
** Granted, it's not the food itself that's bad (Ron is able to eat it and says it's not bad) but it does cause some very weird effects.
* [[Literary Agent Hypothesis]]: Louis is stated to be the author and narrator of the books, yet is always referred to in the third person. In the first chapter, he explains that the stories you're about to read have been called strange and silly, but that's okay — when he told stories about your school to the kids at Wayside, they thought you were strange and silly, too.
** [[Real Life Writes the Plot]]: Louis Sachar revealed in some interviews that he really did work as a yard teacher before becoming an author, and that [[Tuckerization|he named Mrs. Jewls' students after some kids who attended that school.]]
* [[Loads and Loads of Characters]]: 30 students, plus various recurring teachers and staff.
* [[Logic Bomb]]: In the second-to-last chapter of ''Sideways Arithmetic'', Mrs. Jewls overhears Joy mock Myron and Stephen for doing more poorly than she did on some True/False quizzes. In response, Mrs. Jewls gives Myron and Stephen some insanely easy quizzes to rebuild their confidence, and punishes Joy with a quiz that proves impossible to answer. ("1. Statement 2 is true. 2. Statement 1 is false.")
* [[Louis Cypher]]: It's implied that Mrs. Zarves may be this.
* [[Love Makes You Crazy]]: Jason's crush on Allison, which likely has a hand in his aforementioned [[Chew Toy]] status.
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* [[Not-So-Imaginary Friend]]: Ray Gun, maybe. Said to be imaginary in Bebe's chapter, but he's a student of Ms. Zarve's class.
* [[Odd Friendship]]: Joy, a dishonest theif and [[Karma Houdini]] who is usually responsible for [[Butt Monkey|Todd]] [[Selective Enforcement|getting sent home early every day]], and Maurecia, a forthright girl so [[Incorruptible Pure Pureness|sweet]] [[It Makes Sense in Context|she is everyone's favorite ice cream flavor]], are best friends.
* [[One
* [[One Steve Limit]]: The three Erics' premise plays around with this.
* [[Only Sane Man]]: Allison, to an extent. She's at least the only one to realize some of the weirder implications of the stories' universe, such as the fact that if there is no nineteenth floor, then their classroom is really only on the twenty-ninth floor. Of course, given the [[Mind Screw]] nature of the universe, the moment she realizes this, everyone in Mrs. Jewls' class forgets about her and she ends up in Ms. Zarve's class.
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* [[Reasonable Authority Figure]]: Louis.
* [[Reptiles Are Abhorrent]]: Judging by the names of the substitute teachers in ''Gets a Little Stranger''...
* [[Running Gag]]: Todd getting sent home on the Kindergarten bus ''every day''. Paul loving to pull Leslie's Pigtails.
** All three books mention potatoes at least once.
* [[Sadist Teacher]]: Mrs. {{spoiler|and Mr.}} Gorf. Wendy Nogard also counts.
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* [[Teacher-Student Romance]]: Dameon is known for being in love with Mrs. Jewls, something that concerns him at the same time since she is married. But after he confesses, Mrs. Jewls assures him that [[Crowning Moment of Heartwarming|if she gives her love to someone, she will have more than she started with]].
** It is also implied that Deedee has feelings for Louis the yard teacher.
* [[The Last of These Is Not Like the Others]]: The three Erics each have one thing in common with two of the other Erics which the last does not. So no matter which order you list them in, this trope simultaneously applies to ''all three of them'': Eric Bacon's the one that isn't fat, Fry is the one that's actually a good athlete, and Ovens is the one that isn't a [[Jerkass]] all the time.
** [[Double Subverted]] in that the other kids assume that all three Erics are fat, poor athletes, and generally [[Jerkass|jerks]] - even though the narrator explicitly points out otherwise.
* [[Theme Naming]]: The three Erics' last names are Bacon, Ovens, and Fry.
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* [[Title Drop]]: "Wayside School is falling down" becomes part of a song the children sing, as well as the last chapter of the second book.
* [[Trademark Favorite Food]]: Maurecia loves ice cream.
* [[Tribute to Fido]]: ''Sideways Stories From Wayside School'' has an in-universe example: a boy named Nancy, who dislikes his name, trades names with a girl named Mac, who disliked hers because she had been named after a dog.
* [[The Unfavorite]]: Bebe claims she is this in her family to her younger brother, who, with his presence on the nineteenth story, [[Mind Screw|may or may not have existed]].
* [[Unhappy Medium]]: Before she started using her mind reading power to make everyone as miserable as she could, Wendy Nogard found most people's thoughts to be "boring."
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