Wayside School #1: Sideways Stories From Wayside School

Meet the delightfully eccentric and unusually gifted pupils of Wayside School in this instalment of the brilliantly quirky Wayside School series – from Louis Sachar, author of the bestselling novel Holes

As recommended on Radio 4 Kids Book Club, August 2024

There has been a terrible mistake. Instead of having thirty classrooms side by side, Wayside School is thirty storeys high! (The builder said he was sorry.) Perhaps that''s why all sorts of strange and unusual things keep happening – especially in Mrs Jewls''s classroom on the very top floor.

There''s the terrifying Mrs Gorf, who gets an unusually fruity comeuppance; Terrible Todd, who always gets sent home early; and Mauricia, who has a strange ice-cream addiction. Meanwhile, John can only read upside down, and Leslie is determined to sell her own toes.