{"id":37444,"date":"2024-04-26T21:14:56","date_gmt":"2024-04-27T01:14:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/?p=37444"},"modified":"2024-04-26T21:14:56","modified_gmt":"2024-04-27T01:14:56","slug":"review-of-wayside-school-beneath-the-cloud-of-doom-by-louis-sachar","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/?p=37444","title":{"rendered":"Review of Wayside School Beneath the Cloud of Doom, by Louis Sachar"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Wayside School Beneath the Cloud of Doom<\/em><\/p>\n

by Louis Sachar
\nillustrated by Tim Heitz<\/p>\n

Harper, 2020. 182 pages.
\nReview written March 21, 2020, from a library book<\/p>\n

This book is high class silliness. It\u2019s been 40 years since Louis Sachar wrote a book about Wayside School. Side note: It\u2019s interesting to me that they list three Wayside School books in the front and Louis Sachar acknowledges three in the Intro, but my absolute favorite, and, okay, probably the only one I was really interested in enough to read, is not mentioned — Sideways Arithmetic from Wayside School.<\/em> That one\u2019s essentially a puzzle book, but still, it\u2019s my favorite! Must it be completely forgotten?<\/p>\n

My kids loved the Wayside School<\/em> books back in the day. Now they are 32 and 25 years old. To be honest, I enjoyed hearing my kids tell me about them, and bought them copies, but aside from Sideways Arithmetic<\/em>, I was never interested enough to read an entire book. Until now. (And to be fair, then I wasn\u2019t yet a children\u2019s librarian.)<\/p>\n

This is not a book for people who look for logical consistencies or think about actual consequences of proposed magical happenings. It isn\u2019t a book for people who will point out that you couldn\u2019t possibly collect a million toenail and fingernail clippings in a few months. That describes me, so I\u2019m simply not the true audience for these books. However, I managed to suspend disbelief long enough to enjoy this and have fun. The stuff that happens is silly, but it\u2019s silly in a light-hearted and clever way.<\/p>\n

We\u2019re back in Mrs. Jewls\u2019 class on the thirtieth floor. Wayside School is still built sideways, with one room on each floor. I don\u2019t know if any of the students have reappeared from earlier books or if we\u2019ve got a new crop. I\u2019m pretty sure that order doesn\u2019t matter in this series. In this book, a Cloud of Doom settles over the school and disrupts things.<\/p>\n

But along the way, you have things like a cure for Oppositosis, hoarding paper clips, a face that gets \u201cstuck like that,\u201d and a kid trying to read the longest book ever. I do like the way sillinesses from one chapter come back in others.<\/p>\n

My favorite part, though, is the description of the librarian:<\/p>\n

Mrs. Surlaw smiled when she heard that. The only thing she loved more than books were children who loved books. She may have seemed severe on the outside, but inside, her heart was soft as a pillow.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I\u2019m excited that a new generation of kids is going to discover Wayside School. These books explore what might happen if your school were a very silly and strange place. And what kid can resist thinking about that?<\/p>\n

harpercollinschildrens.com<\/a><\/p>\n

Buy from Amazon.com<\/a><\/p>\n

Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.<\/p>\n

Source: This review is based on a library book from Fairfax County Public Library.<\/p>\n

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but the views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.<\/p>\n

What did you think of this book?<\/p>\n

*Note* To try to catch up on posting reviews, I\u2019m posting the oldest reviews I\u2019ve written on my blog without making a page on my main website. They\u2019re still good books.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Wayside School Beneath the Cloud of Doom by Louis Sachar illustrated by Tim Heitz Harper, 2020. 182 pages. Review written March 21, 2020, from a library book This book is high class silliness. It\u2019s been 40 years since Louis Sachar wrote a book about Wayside School. Side note: It\u2019s interesting to me that they list […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-37444","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-childrens-fiction-review","category-fantasy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37444","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=37444"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37444\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":43670,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37444\/revisions\/43670"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=37444"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=37444"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=37444"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}