Wayside School Gets A Little Stranger is a 1995 children's book

Children's literature

Children's literature is for readers and listeners up to about age twelve; it is often defined in four different ways: books written by children, books written for children, books chosen by children, or books chosen for children. It is often illustrated. The term is used in senses which sometimes...

 by American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 author Louis Sachar

Louis Sachar

Louis Sachar is an American author of children's books who is best known for the Sideways Stories From Wayside School book series and the 1998 novel Holes, for which Sachar won a National Book Award and the Newbery Medal...

, and the third book in his Sideways Stories From Wayside School

Sideways Stories From Wayside School

The Sideways Stories From Wayside School series is a popular series of 3 books by Louis Sachar. Sideways Stories From Wayside School, Wayside School is Falling Down and Wayside School Gets A Little Stranger are the three novel-length books...

 series.

Plot

1. Explanation: The cows that entered the school in Wayside School is Falling Down
   Wayside School is Falling Down
   Wayside School is Falling Down is an 1989 children's novel by American author Louis Sachar, and the second book in his Sideways Stories From Wayside School series. Like its predecessor, it contains 30 chapters, although some chapters are interconnected in a more narrative form rather than as...
   
    finally left the school after 243 days. So the children all returned to the school.
2. A Message From The Principal: Mr. Kidswatter says a nice speech on the PA system, but he forgets to turn it off, and expresses irritation about having to return from his extended vacation in the tropics.
3. Poetry: The students all come up with poems about a specific color.
4. Doctor Pickle: The chapter introduces Pickell (aka Dr. Pickle), a psychiatrist who uses a pickle-like stone to hypnotize people and use aversion therapy
   Aversion therapy
   Aversion therapy is a form of psychological treatment in which the patient is exposed to a stimulus while simultaneously being subjected to some form of discomfort...
   
    to break people's bad habits. Ususlly, he also adds a command to do an unusual thing when a particular person says a key word, such as when he helps a woman quit smoking by making her think her cigarettes feel and taste like worms, and then making her slap her husband's face when he says the word "potato." He is ultimately banned from practicing psychiatry and becomes a counselor at an elementary school...
5. A Story with a Disappointing Ending: Paul is sent to visit the new school counselor (Dr. Pickell/Pickle) when he couldn't control his urge to pull Leslie's pigtails. Dr. Pickell/Pickle makes Paul think Leslie's pigtails are rattlesnakes, and also commands him to attempt to eat Leslie's ears (which will, to Paul, appear to turn into candy) when she says the word "pencil" in his presence. Leslie breaks her pencil, and borrows one from a classmate.
6. Pet Day: All the students bring their pets to school. The pets have unusual names; one pet is an orange named Fido. Similar to Who's on First by Abbot and Costello.
7. A Bad Word: After Mr. Kidswatter spills his coffee while opening a door he declares the word "door" a bad word and requires everybody to call it "goozack" from that point forward. Todd shows up late to school, and, having not heard the announcement, says the word "door," thus earning him his name on the board.
8. Santa Claus: It's almost Christmas, but Kathy is the only one in the class who doesn't believe in Santa Claus.
9. Something Different About Mrs. Jewls: Mrs. Jewls leaves the school when she announces that she will be having a baby soon, leaving Mr. Gorf to substitute for her.
10. Mr. Gorf: Mr. Gorf arrives to class.
11. Voices: At first Mr. Gorf seems like a nice teacher, but then he reveals that he is the son of the infamous Mrs. Gorf. Mr. Gorf has the ability to take away one's voice by snorting it up a third nostril in his nose. He can then mimic it perfectly just by touching his nose. With this talent, he begins to call the students' parents and say spiteful things to them.
12. Nose: He continues removing the students' voices until Miss. Mush, the cafeteria cook, destroys Mr. Gorf's malevolent ability by smashing a pepper pie in his face, making him sneeze repeatedly until he literally sneezes his nose off, causing the voices to return to their rightful owners (although it takes a few minutes for the voices and people to line up correctly, due to the number of voices taken). Miss Mush says that she heard Kathy say, "Have a nice day" in the previous chapter, and decides that either Kathy had started to be nice, or Mr. Gorf could steal people's voices. She took the action that she did, banking on Kathy's unlikeliness to start being nice. It is revealed at the end of the chapter that the voice used by Mr. Gorf at first belonged to a Scottish man, who lost his voice 20 years previously; with Mr. Gorf's loss of his nose, he is able to speak again.
13. The New Teacher: The second of the substitutes, Miss Drazil, arrives. She appears nice, although it is suggested that she has a dark and malevolent side to her.
14. A Light Bulb, a Pencil Sharpener, a Coffeepot, and a Sack of Potatoes: The students use the four eponymous objects to conduct an experiment with gravity. The four objects hit the ground at nearly the same time. The coffeepot was borrowed from Mr. Kidswatter's office, and has not been seen since the experiment. In a continuation of Paul's meeting with Dr. Pickell/Pickle, Leslie notes that the classroom will need a new pencil sharpener, upon which Paul licks her ear.
15. An Elephant in Wayside School: All is well with Miss Drazil and the students until an old feud between her and Louis re-emerges. When Louis is around his old enemy (who forces him to do a homework assignment he missed 12 years previously and shave his moustache, and also puts the trash can on his head when he insults her), he changes -- going from an easy-going, mustachioed fellow to a stern, clean-shaven humbug.
16. Mr. Poop: With Miss Drazil watching him, Louis changes from being fun to being a boring, strict yard teacher. He refuses to let the kids play with the balls because they are filthy and not properly inflated, and later refuses to let the kids onto the playground because the blacktop is gray and needs to be painted black. A fed-up Joy throws his handbook into the paint can.
17. Why the Class Must Get Rid of Mrs. Drazil: The title is paradox
    Paradox
    Similar to Circular reasoning, A paradox is a seemingly true statement or group of statements that lead to a contradiction or a situation which seems to defy logic or intuition...
    
    ical to the entire plot. Mrs. Drazil acts very nice to the class and the reason isn't revealed until the end: despite her niceness to the class (including baking the best cookies the class ever tasted), the children loved Louis' old personality; consequently, Miss Drazil must be removed from the picture because she forced him to shave his moustache.
18. The Blue Notebook: The students abscond with Mrs. Drazil's blue notebook, intent on reading it. In so doing, they realize that in order to get rid of Miss Drazil, they must find Jane Smith, a former student whom Mrs. Drazil dislikes more than Louis. Jane Smith left Mrs. Drazil a nasty note stating that she didn't do her homework (as found in the notebook, it was the 12th time in a row); also, she (at the time the note was written) was moving, and wasn't going to tell Mrs. Drazil where. She closes her note by telling Mrs. Drazil to "rub a monkey's tummy with [her] head."
19. Time Out: In every Wayside book, the 19th chapter is always portrayed as the 19th floor. In this installment, Miss Zarves has a cow in her class, presumably left over from the events in the previous book (It is mentioned in the first chapter that Louis had cleared the school of cows, but kept hearing an untraceable "moo.") The cow continually distracts Miss Zarves to the point where she can no longer teach. She goes to Principal Kidswatter to complain, but he doesn't see or hear her. She finally storms out of the school, intending to quit, but the three men with the attaché cases stop her and tell her she is a good teacher and that the school needs her. Miss Zarves returns to the school feeling validated.
20. Elevators: Elevators get installed to the school, but one can only go up and one can only go down. They work perfectly once, and then never again.
21. Open Wide: Jason has a dentist appointment with Dr. Payne, but his appointment is interrupted by a phone call from an irate mother who refuses to pay for her son's tooth extraction because the wrong tooth was pulled, and it is also suggested that a lawsuit may ensue. It is suggested that Dr. Payne is really Jane Smith when she tells her to tell her lawyer to "rub a monkey's tummy with her head." This suggestion is confirmed when Jason looks at Dr. Payne's dental certificates.
22. Jane Smith: Jason tells Deedee, a classmate of his, about that, and they, quite intentionally, make Miss Drazil aware of Jane Smith's whereabouts, occupation, and name change. Later, Miss Drazil decides to pay a visit to Jane Smith's home; breaking into the house, intent on forcing Jane to do her missed homework. Jane escapes in a motorboat, but not without breaking her ankle when she jumps onto the concrete below; Mrs. Drazil pursues her in a rowboat. As far the novel has it, the two are neither seen nor heard from again. (It is stated in this chapter that Jane performs unnecessary dental procedures to make additional money; she drills 25 teeth, at $60 each, to make $1,500, but not all of the teeth had cavities.)
23. Ears: This chapter talks about Ms. Wendy Nogard, who has an ear on the top of her head that can hear other people's thoughts. After her boyfriend Xavier ditched her upon discovery of her third ear, she became bitter and hateful, intentionally hurting every man she dated by listening to their thoughts, and saying things accordingly. (It is mentioned that Xavier, who had been shy, got over his shyness and began dating other women, but broke all of their hearts, because of an unrealized love for Ms. Nogard.) She especially hated children because they were so happy, and became a substitute for Mrs. Jewls at Wayside School.
24. Glum And Blah: Ms. Nogard arrives to the class, and makes everybody miserable by listening to their thoughts using her third ear and saying the exact things that they don't want to hear.
25. Guilty: After Ms. Nogard hears Maurecia's thoughts that she accidentally ripped a page in the dictionary, she purposely tries to make her feel guilty. Upon Maurecia's confession, Ms. Nogard makes her read the torn page to the class, then announces that there will be a quiz afterward, as the page is now unusable and must now be memorized. Maurecia believes that one of her classmates told on her.
26. Never Laugh At A Shoelace: Mac forgets to bring something for show and tell, but the moment he realizes this, Ms. Nogard calls on him. He thus uses his shoelace. He invents a story about an African man named Howard Speed, who was the fastest man in the world, and lived before shoelaces were invented. His shoes thus kept falling off when he ran, and he developed blisters, which often bled and had pus in them. Howard couldn't use Velcro
    Velcro
    Velcro is the brand name of the first commercially marketed fabric hook-and-loop fastener, invented in 1948 by the Swiss electrical engineer George de Mestral...
    
    , as Velcro trees only grow in Australia (as Mac claims; Velcro is actually a man-made product based on burdock
    Burdock
    Burdock is any of a group of biennial thistles in the genus Arctium, family Asteraceae. Native to the Old World, several species have been widely introduced worldwide....
    
     burs, and thus Velcro doesn't grow in Australia or anywhere else). Howard attempted to keep his shoes on by nailing his feet into his shoes, and then by gluing his feet into his shoes (with the drawback that he would peel off a layer of skin whenever he would take his shoes off, such as to take a bath). Mac further claims that Thomas Edison
    Thomas Edison
    Thomas Alva Edison was an American inventor and businessman. He developed many devices that greatly influenced life around the world, including the phonograph, the motion picture camera, and a long-lasting, practical electric light bulb. In addition, he created the world’s first industrial...
    
     invented the shoelace, thus ending Howard's troubles with his shoes; however, with shoelaces being a new invention (at that time), Howard wasn't used to them, and when it appeared he was going to win a race, his shoelaces came undone, and he tripped and broke his nose, lost some teeth and got two black eyes.
27. Way-Up-High Ball: The Erics play a game of way-up-high ball, where they throw a ball to bounce on the school wall, and get points equal to the number of stories the ball reaches. The person who catches the ball also scores the same number of points; thus, the thrower can score double points by catching his or her own throw. A player who breaks a window is also credited with double points. It is suggested, but not explicitly stated, that a thrower who does not hit the wall does not score (such an event is termed a "glopper"). Finally, Louis attempts a throw; the ball never comes back down, as it hits somewhere between the 18th and 20th stories, and there is no 19th story.
28. Flowers For A Very Special Person: Louis brings in flowers, intending them for Ms. Nogard, but ultimately gives them to Mr. Kidswatter instead. Under his breath, he calls Mr. Kidswatter a "maggot-infested string bean," and when asked to repeat what he said, says "magnificent human being," instead.
29. Stupid: After Ms. Nogard hears Ron's thoughts of not completing his homework, for every question they take up, she purposefully ask Ron for the answer to make him feel bad. She also always calls on people who got questions wrong, and assigns them three pages of homework, plus redoing the previous homework.
30. The Little Stranger: Mrs. Jewls came back with her baby. Everyone except Wendy loses their anger and plays with the baby. When Wendy hears the baby's thoughts, her anger disappears. She falls in love with Louis and shows everyone her third ear. Louis doesn't care, and still loves Wendy, who knows that his love is genuine without reading his thoughts.

Mr. Gorf

Mr. Gorf was the son of Mrs. Gorf, who tormented the students in Sideways Stories From Wayside School

Sideways Stories From Wayside School

The Sideways Stories From Wayside School series is a popular series of 3 books by Louis Sachar. Sideways Stories From Wayside School, Wayside School is Falling Down and Wayside School Gets A Little Stranger are the three novel-length books...

, and she herself got turned into an apple and eaten. He was born in Kathmandu, Nepal. He was never married. He had three nostrils in his nose -- the middle one had the power to suck out voices out of people and make them his own. He then lost his own voice, along with the others, when he sneezed them all out, ultimately literally sneezing his own nose off. In fact, the voice he used when he first appeared was stolen from a Scotsman

Scotland

Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...

 20 years previously, and his real voice sounds like a French

France

The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

 donkey

Donkey

The donkey or ass, Equus africanus asinus, is a domesticated member of the Equidae or horse family. The wild ancestor of the donkey is the African Wild Ass, E...

 with a sore throat. Even the Scotsman's voice is returned when Mr. Gorf loses his nose.He was so upset about them taking his mother away that he used the children's voices to call their mothers and tell them that they hate them.

Mrs. Drazil

Mrs. Drazil was 66 years old, and weighed 124lbs. She kept a blue journal of all the bad students she had since she started teaching decades ago.

Ms. Wendy Nogard

Wendy has an ear on top of her head that can hear thoughts. When she was dumped by her boyfriend Xavier, she began to make everyone's life miserable. However, after meeting Louis the yard teacher,she fell in love with him.

Characters

(in order of appearance)

• Louis, the yard teacher
  Teacher
  A teacher or schoolteacher is a person who provides education for pupils and students . The role of teacher is often formal and ongoing, carried out at a school or other place of formal education. In many countries, a person who wishes to become a teacher must first obtain specified professional...
  
  
• Sharie
• John
• Joe
• Calvin
• Bebe
• The Three Erics
• Kathy
• Myron
• Dameon
• Allison
• Terrence
• Todd
• Jason
• D.J.
• Mrs. Jewls
• Mac
• Rondi
• Dana
• Mr. Kidswatter
• Joy
• Dr. Pickle
  Pickled cucumber
  A pickled cucumber is a cucumber that has been pickled in a brine, vinegar, or other solution and left to ferment for a period of time, by either immersing the cucumbers in an acidic solution or through souring by lacto-fermentation.-Gherkin:A gherkin is not only...
  
  
• Unknown woman
  Woman
  A woman , pl: women is a female human. The term woman is usually reserved for an adult, with the term girl being the usual term for a female child or adolescent...
  
  
• Paul
• Leslie
• Jenny
• Stephen
• Children's pets
• Ralphie, Todd's little brother
• Deedee
• Ron
• Benjamin
• Calvin
• Maurecia
• Mrs. Day, the secretary
  Secretary
  A secretary, or administrative assistant, is a person whose work consists of supporting management, including executives, using a variety of project management, communication & organizational skills. These functions may be entirely carried out to assist one other employee or may be for the benefit...
  
  
• Mr. Gorf
• Miss Mush, the cafeteria
  Cafeteria
  A cafeteria is a type of food service location in which there is little or no waiting staff table service, whether a restaurant or within an institution such as a large office building or school; a school dining location is also referred to as a dining hall or canteen...
  
   lady
• Mrs. Drazil
• Miss Zarves
• Unnamed cow
• Virginia
• Ray
• Nick
• Dr. Payne (Jane Smith)
• Jane Smith's husband: Sham Payne
• Wendy Nogard
• Xavier
• Mavis, Mrs. Jewls's baby
• Sammy, at the end