Wayside School is a series of three chapter books written by Louis Sachar, consisting of: Sideways Stories from Wayside School (1978), Wayside School is Falling Down (1989), and Wayside School Gets A Little Stranger (1995). The books tell the stories of a school built 30 floors high, with one classroom per floor, but no 19th floor. Each book contains 30 chapters.

In 1989, Sachar released two spinoff books of mathematics and puzzles interspread with stories: Sideways Arithmetic from Wayside School and More Sideways Arithmetic from Wayside School. In 2005, a television special loosely based on the books titled Wayside: The Movie aired, and was followed-up in 2007 by a Wayside animated series.

Background

While a student at University of California, Berkeley, author Louis Sachar began working at an elementary school to earn college credit. Sachar later recalled,

Sachar graduated from UC Berkeley in 1976 with a degree in Economics, and began working on Sideways Stories From Wayside School, a children's book set at an elementary school with supernatural elements. Although the book's students were named after children from Hillside and there is a presumably autobiographical character named "Louis the Yard Teacher," Sachar has said that he draws very little from personal experience, explaining that "....my personal experiences are kind of boring. I have to make up what I put in my books."