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Wayside School Beneath the Cloud of Doom

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Wayside School Beneath the Cloud of Doom
By Louis Sachar
New York, NY: Harper, 2020. Fiction.

Like many readers, I grew up with the Wayside School books. As an elementary school student, I loved the wacky stories from this completely bizzaro school -- built 30 classrooms tall instead of 30 classrooms long. This latest entry in the series, published forty years after the first, picks up with the student's of Mrs. Jewls's class on the 30th floor of Wayside School. As the students prepare for their upcoming Ultimate Test, collect toenail clippings to see what a million looks like, and do things like read the longest book in the world - they are faced with an unprecedented danger. A Cloud of Doom has suddenly appeared above Wayside School.

I met this book with nervous anticipation - anxious to see whether it would live up to its predecessors and still be funny. In a time where the whole world feels like it is under a looming Cloud of Doom, I was so relieved to find that yes, indeed, Wayside School is still funny. And even more than that, this book was the exact relief I needed right now - a reminder that Louis Sachar writes books to make you laugh-out-loud but also make you think:

"'Someday the Cloud of Doom will be gone,' said Mrs. Jewls. 'And the world will be a much better place, even better than before the cloud. Colors will be more colorful. Music will be more musical. Even Miss Mush's food will taste good. The bigger the storm, the brighter the rainbow.'"

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