Sideways Stories from Wayside School

 Around Christmas time I was searching for Christmas gifts and I was surprised to see that Louis Sachar had released another book in the Wayside School series. I bought it for my son Sagan as a gift and was very excited to give it to him for Christmas. He wasn't really interested. Seriously??? Guh... To be fair despite the fact the he is an excellent reader, he prefers graphic novels.

So on to Plan B. I started reading it out loud. Ha.,.he fell for it, and was HOOKED! His little brother even came in to listen to the stories. And that's how we got started on the Wayside School Beneath the Cloud of Doom.

After we finished, I downloaded Sideways Stories onto my Kindle. We started reading that one together. It was amazing how much joy it brought me to share these silly stories with my kids. And somehow out of depths of memories I thought were long gone, I pulled out the "I got one sock! Lookin' for the other One sock! Lookin' for its brother. When I find that sock I'll tell you what I'll do, I'll put it on my foot, and I'll stick it in my shoe." rhyme out of nowhere. And a few pages later, there it was, and my children looked at me with wild bewilderment. We laughed.

My husband tried to get in on the action, reading a few chapters aloud. He mispronounced Miss Zarves and the boys weren't having it.

Anyway, after that we moved on to Wayside School is Falling Down. We laughed so hard at times. The sideways glances we'd give each other when Louis Sachar would drop one of his subtle hints before the big absurdity. 

One of my favorite things was while riding bikes home from school, my youngest son looked over at me. He said, "Mama, what's an attaché case?" I loved this more than I'd like to admit. He needed to know what that man was carrying. 

Sad to say we wrapped up Wayside School Gets a Little Stranger last night. Our adventures with the kids in Mrs. Jewls' class have come to a close, for now. I sure hope we get to revisit these characters again one day.

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