Louis Sachar's 1995 children's book Wayside School Gets a Little Stranger is one of those books bearing a perfectly appropriate title. Wayside School started out pretty strange with its introduction in 1978 as a school mistakenly built vertically rather than horizontally. The result is tall, thin skyscraper in which each story is occupied one single classroom. The kids and teachers have always been just a little less than normal, but in this third entry in the Wayside series, both teachers and students truly do get a little stranger.
For starters, the adventures begin exactly two hundred and forty-three days after the previous book ended. That in itself is strange enough because the previous book was published six years earlier. Chronologically speaking, however, the ending of the last book in which Wayside School was shut down and its students sent to other school is reconciled by the opening of this book in which all the cows which had taken over the school are finally removed. With Wayside reopened for the business of educating students, things immediately get even a little stranger than being taken over by a herd of cows.
As the title hints, the strangeness is the point. The opening chapter finds all the students returning to Wayside after having been scattered across the city to substitute schools. When a kid named Todd returns to the school upon reopening, he literally kisses the building because he is so glad to be back. That's because "Out of all the schools, Todd had been sent to the very worst one. It was awful!...your school." This is the equivalent of breaking the fourth wall in a movie as the author directly addresses every student reading this book by suggesting that they each go to the worst school of all.
This unusual narrative device for a children's book is key to understanding the strangeness which takes place in Wayside in this edition of its recorded adventures because before it is over, Wayside has itself become worse. A psychiatrist named Dr. Pickell becomes known, of course, as Dr. Pickle and successfully practices hypnotism upon the students. In a fit of pique, Principal Kidswatter mandates that "goozack" be used in place of "door" after he declares use of that word to be forbidden. The suspiciously nice substitute replacing the beloved Mrs. Jewls when she becomes pregnant, Mr. Gorf, turns out to be the son of the teacher whom Mrs. Jewls replaced at the beginning of the Wayside series. Gorf's mother turned into an apple and was accidentally eaten while her son faces his own bizarre end as his plan for revenge goes wildly awry. One of the strangest events which takes place in this book is how the students organize to get another substitute, Mrs. Drazil, replaced even though she is nice and fair to the students. The red line she crosses is forcing the beloved Professional Playground Supervisor of Wayside—Louis—to shave off his mustache.
One can fairly argue whether or not things really do get stranger in this installment of the series. After all, strange things do happen in the first two books. What makes this volume different is that the strangeness of the adventures really is the whole point. Things don't just get strange in this narrative. They also get darker. The very first line of the final chapter asserts that "Wayside School was no fun anymore." The inherent suggestion is that strangeness is better when it is fun. When things get so strange that they are no longer fun, it is just not the same thing. Wayside School in this book is not the same. Mrs. Jewls is gone for most of the story. A series of substitute teachers come and go. Louis' familiar mustache disappears. It is only when Mrs. Jewls returns that things get back to normal. Mrs. Jewls is not alone. She has brought a little stranger to the classroom: her four-day old child. The arrival of that little stranger seems to change everything in the last chapter, bringing Wayside back to its fun strangeness.
