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.

From top to bottom, Wayside is packed with quirky and hilarious characters who are all brought to life in this new edition with delightful illustrations by Aleksei Bitskoff throughout. This is an unmissable, irrepressible story of mixed-up mayhem from Louis Sachar, the bestselling author of Holes.

Louis Sachar is the author of the international bestseller and award-winning Holes, which was made into a film in 2003. All of Louis's books for children have been published in the UK by Bloomsbury. These also include Small Steps, Stanley Yelnats' Survival Guide to Camp Green Lake, Dogs Don't Tell Jokes, There's a Boy in the Girls' Bathroom, Someday Angeline, and the Marvin Redpost series and Wayside School books. Louis Sachar lives in Austin, Texas, with his wife, daughter and two dogs.

Aleksei Bitskoff was born in Estonia and graduated with a master's in Illustration from Camberwell College of Arts, London, in 2010. His influences include Russian illustrators and animators, as well as Tove Jansson and the Moomintrolls. Aleksei lives in London with his wife and their two children.