Essay Questions

Each of the chapters is titled after a character in the story. What is unique about Chapter 1?

The book features thirty chapters, one each for the number of floors that comprise the Wayside School building. (Except for the nineteenth floor which doesn’t exist, of course.) As readers work their way through the book, they are immediately introduced to the character that will be the focus of that chapter. These students and teachers will eventually come to be familiar enough that they no longer need introducing as they pop up again in each of the subsequent series in the novel. Interestingly, however, the very first chapter introduces a teacher named Mrs. Gorf who is instantly described as “the meanest teacher” in the school. She will not survive to make it to the sequel. In fact, Mrs. Gorf does not even survive into second chapter where she is replaced by Mrs. Jewls.

Strange things occur daily at the school, but how does the story of new Sammy qualify as one of the strangest ever?

Sammy arrives on a rainy day when the classroom becomes especially smelly thanks to the wetness of the multiple raincoats. But the dank small is made even worse by the truly bizarre appearance of a new student named Sammy who is completely covered by his raincoat to the point that it is impossible to determine what he looks like at all. Mrs. Jewls sets to the task of revealing the new student by removing the raincoat for its absence to reveal another raincoat beneath it. And so it begins: the effort to remove the raincoats that disguising the physical appearance of the new kid. One after another after another a series of raincoats are removed and with each removal Sammy becomes a little smaller in stature. Eventually the final raincoat is removed to reveal is nothing but a dead rat.

What’s the deal with Nancy?

Chapter 28 is devoted to a student named Nancy who is described as having big hands and big feet. Nancy also finds the name to be unusually abhorrent. Of course, there is a perfectly reasonable explanation for this abhorrence within the social construct of school: Nancy is a boy. Nancy has just one real friend, a girl from another class. Neither Nancy nor his friend know the other’s name, referring to each other simply as “Hey, you” more often than not. As it turns out, however, Nancy’s friend shares Nancy’s problem: her name is Mac. A decision between Nancy and Mac to trade names results in a brief frenzy of other students doing likewise before it is decided that things worked best as they were. But Nancy and Mac still refer to each other as “Hey, you.”