Wayside School is very weird, so if it gets “a little stranger" for the third book, that's nothing new. Until I realized that one of the many euphemisms for "pregnant" is "expecting a 'little stranger'," and Mrs. Jewls has a baby in this book. The school got a Little Stranger.
This is pretty much confirmed, since the last chapter is titled "The Little Stranger".
The day when Mrs. Jewls sends herself home early is the only day when Todd doesn't get sent home early, until later on.
"A Package For Mrs. Jewls" begins with Louis cleaning up a mess someone made on the playground with pencils and papers. After Mrs. Jewls demonstrates gravity with the computer, she tells Louis that it made a more effective teaching tool than pencils and paper did. This very subtly suggests that she made the mess on the playground.
When I first read the book as a kid, I wondered why Mrs. Jewls, unlike the mean teachers, didn't appear to have any superpowers. Later, I realized that in fact, she does. In one chapter she brings in ice cream that, despite tasting like nothing to Maurecia, tastes to everyone else like what they like the most, because they like Maurecia. Only someone with a superpower could pull that off.
Even though Allison forgot what her "Eureka!" Moment was at the end of the penultimate chapter of "Falling Down", this troper was able to piece it together. Miss Zarves's class houses elements from every fictitious story ever told in Wayside.
In "Wayside School Gets a Little Stranger", Mrs. Jewls is eating "bologna-o’s" (Oreos with bologna in place of the cream filling). At first this might just seem like typical random/silly/weird Wayside School stuff, but it’s probably a case of Wacky Cravings because in the same chapter where she is eating them, it’s revealed that she is pregnant.
Tons of it, mostly for laughs. For example, if it was supposed to be one story high, why did they build stairs?
Could edge into Fridge Brilliance as well. They started building and then the builder realized there were no stairs. This should have been a chance to realize his mistake, but instead he just figured the architect was an idiot and added stairs on his own.
Also, the two elevators in the third book (which could only be used once each, thanks to Kidswatter's brilliant idea of installing one that only goes up and one that only goes down). What would have happened had somebody pushed the button for the nineteenth story? Or the basement?
Presumably there was no button for the nineteenth story because it doesn't exist, and the basement stairs were used rarely enough that they didn't need it to go there. Or maybe the school implodes.
The same thing that happens to anything that ends up on the 19th floor- it disappears and everybody forgets it was ever there.
In Sideways Arithmetic from Wayside School they mentioned in the chapter 'numbers' add apples and oranges, and Sue finally breaks, shouting that it equals "fruit." lots standardised standardised tests have a 'say how are these two things are in common' question in there. (many times appearing in 'math' but have seen them appear in the 'Reading section' in one or two of them, or even having a dedicated section to this style thing.) this could be a joke about standardised tests.
In the math book, it's stated that Miss Mush can cook extraordinarily well. However, the more people that she cooks for, the worse it tastes. She cooks for the entire school, therefore it tastes awful. Only one person in the entire series ever dares eat her food. So... why doesn't she cook for fewer people so the food will actually be edible? That way, she wouldn't be wasting several dozen pounds of food on a daily basis.
This is actually a bit of Fridge Brilliance, if Miss Mush cooked a little bit of good food, everyone would hear that it was good and they'd want her to make more but once she made enough for everyone who now wants it, it no longer tastes good.
i.e., the law of supply and demand! Brilliant!
This is also the exact point of the problems in that chapter of the math book: the reader is challenged to find the optimum amount of servings for Miss Mush to cook so that nothing goes to waste and everyone who wants some gets some.
In the second book, Allison has this when she wonders since there's no 19th floor, wouldn't her classroom really just be on the 29th floor?
And for her Fridge Logic, she is "rewarded" with being stuck on the 19th floor.
The first math book reveals that there are over 4000 students in the school, which means each story (not all of which are even classrooms) has to hold more than a hundred people. Also, when the school temporarily closes due to a cow infestation and the students are relocated, "no two students were sent to the same school." One has to wonder how far some students has to travel, if they were sent to over 4000 different schools.
Clearly the nineteenth floor is really crowded.
Or the math books aren't even canon. Knowing Wayside, though, they might as well be...
some big cities are a big enough to have this happen with 6000 students (definitely if we are including both private and public in the mid 1980s before many school shut down.)
The one we're all dying to ask. How in the nineteenth story can a rat which is not alive walk, talk and disguise itself as a student? Even by Wayside School standards, thus doesn't make any sense at all.
In the very first chapter of the first book, we get the line "Mrs. Gorf didn't like children, but she loved apples". What exactly might she have been planning to do with the transformed students?
Deedee finds Mrs. Gorf hanging upside-down in front of her on the monkey bars. When she tells her classmates and Louis, they decide to find out whether or not she imagined Mrs. Gorf reappearing by staying with her at the monkey bars. She doesn't return. However, Deedee happens to pass a large set of footprints after getting off of the monkey bars...
We never learn anything about Sharie's home life. What if the reason she sleeps in class is because she isn't safe at home, and Sleep Learning is Mrs. Jewls' way to excuse it?
Based on the video she made in "Cabbage, My Boy" in the cartoon (here, at around 3:42), her home life is AWESOME, and all the stuff she does is just tiring her out.
, at around 3:42), her home life is AWESOME, and all the stuff she does is just tiring her out.