Sideways Stories from Wayside School

This book is FANTASTIC. It is made up of 30 chapters, each about a teacher or kid in the classroom on the 30th floor of Wayside School, a school that was built, by accident, on its side (thirty classrooms, straight up). The chapter on Joe, the kid who cannot count but who somehow always gets the right answer is alone worth the read. The classroom is filled with dead rats who show up in kids' clothing, evil teachers who turn kids into apples, kids who trade names and kids who want to sell their toes. It is bizarre and creepy and hilarious and makes no sense. Perfect humor for early elementary kids.

I read this with my kids. I have read parts of it before but I don't think I have read the whole book previously. My kids are 4 and 5 (very nearly 6). They understood much of it, but not all. They liked it more than I did. I was a bit disturbed by some of the threads of the story. I remembered it as kind of wacky. But it was more odd than wacky. I am going to have to do some more work trying to find the books that I really like for my kids. They are just not quite old enough for many of the books I really want to read them. And many of the books that are their target are similar to this, screwball. And I am not a screwball reader.