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From Louis Sachar, the creator of Wayside School and Holes.

Despised by his peers and dismissed as an uneducatable menace by his teachers, troublesome fifth grader Bradley Chalkers is content to spend his time at school alone - until a new transfer student and a empathetic school counselor turn his world upside down...


Tropes in this book include:

  • The All-Concealing "I": Midway through writing a book report, Bradley realizes that, since the whole thing was in first-person, he never actually learned the viewpoint character's name, or even their gender.
  • The Bully: Bradley at first appears to be a classic case, with lines like, "Give me a dollar or I'll spit on you." As the reader soon learns, he is a lonely social misfit who's alienated even from his family.
  • Book Ends: The book begins with Bradley giving an sarcastic smile that might have been a frown to his fifth grade class, and ends with Bradley giving a sarcastic frown that might have been a smile to his animal collection.
  • But Now I Must Go: Carla, the school counselor. Having helped Bradley come out of his shell and make friends, Carla is fired and has to leave the school.
  • Companion Cube: Bradley imagines his animal figurine collection to be alive, and his friends.
  • Consummate Liar: Bradley. Thanks to Carla, he loses his gift for lying about halfway through the story.
  • Dramatically Missing the Point: At one point, Carla tells two students, Jeff and Colleen, that Zen monks will respond in kind to anyone who says "Hello" to them. Colleen misinterprets this obvious lesson in manners and goes home to tell her parents that she wants to convert from Catholicism to become a Zen monk. Her parents promptly complain to the board that Carla is teaching religion. The example falls under this trope, as opposed to Comically Missing the Point, because this is one of the factors that gets Carla fired.
  • Deceptively Silly Title: The title references two short scenes that have nothing much to do with the plot, which is about a depressed, lonely, and troubled boy coming out of his shell.
  • Fired Teacher: Variant in that it's not a teacher but the school's new guidance counselor who gets fired after the parents get up in arms about having one at all, and especially over the advice she's been giving the kids - among other things, one of them claims she's "teaching religion" just by mentioning zen monks to a couple of students. Furthermore, Carla is hired as a teacher at a different school.
  • Friendless Background: Prior to meeting Carla, Bradley has no human friends. He bullies his classmates at school and talks to his animals at home.
  • Heel–Face Turn: The whole story is about Bradley gradually becoming a better person. He stops being a bully and starts making some friends.
  • Hollywood Law:
    • Probably In-Universe as well. No, Carla is not teaching religion by telling Jeff and Colleen that Zen monks will automatically respond in kind to anyone who greets them.
    • In defending herself to the board, Carla cites patient confidentiality to justify keeping confidences, which is brushed aside with the reply that one doesn't need to keep promises made to children. Actually, Carla does. Although the book was written prior to HIPAA, even then, breach of patient confidentiality could get you sued and cost you your license. (And none of the confidential statements in this story fall under the exceptions.)
  • I'll Be Your Best Friend: Played with. Bradley is a troubled kid who behaves so badly that nobody in his school can tolerate him. Jeff, a new kid, tries to make friends with him, only to have Bradley threaten to spit on him if he doesn't give him a dollar. Jeff gives him a dollar. The next day, Bradley approaches Jeff and tells him he will give him a dollar if Jeff will be his friend. Jeff agrees, and Bradley gives him the same dollar he took from him the previous day.
  • Inferiority Superiority Complex: Bradley bullies the other kids because he figures that if they hate him, it will sting less if he never liked them in the first place. This creates a Vicious Cycle: as evidenced by the friends he later makes, few people hate Bradley unless peer pressure's involved, but because he fears that they will, he bullies them, and then they truly hate him, reinforcing his fear and making him an even bigger bully.
    He understood it when the other kids were mean to him. It didn't bother him. He simply hated them. As long as he hated them, it didn't matter what they thought of him.
  • Interspecies Romance: Bradley imagines this between two of his animals, Ronnie the rabbit and Bartholomew the bear.
  • Kiddie Kid: Bradley: He's in fifth grade and still talks to his animal collection. Justified, as the author is showing that, behind Bradley's bullying exterior, he is a social misfit. It is a sign of Character Development that when he starts to make real friends, he gives away one of his animals.
  • Kitsch Collection: Bradley owns a collection of small animal figurines, which he talks to as though they are alive. They're given a lengthy introduction, and several parts of the story are made up of the adventures he acts out through them.
  • Mad Libs Catchphrase: Bradley's is "Call [X] if you don't believe me."
  • Moral Guardians: A group of loudmouthed "Christian Mothers for Decency" petition the school board to get rid of Carla because she was supposedly corrupting the schoolchildren. They succeed.
  • No Social Skills: This is one of Bradley's many problems. His hostility stems from him not really knowing how to make friends.
  • Quicksand Sucks: Used in one of Bradley's play sessions. Ronnie falls into a bog and is roundly told by the other animals that they hate her, and stand there watching her be sucked to her doom whilst begging for help after Bradley hears Carla's been fired, mirroring how he feels nobody cares that he's just lost his only friend because of office politics. He retcons this to the other animals saving Ronnie after he tells Carla goodbye, giving her Ronnie as a present..
  • Shout-Out: Carla reads to Bradley from J. D. Salinger's Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters.
  • Sour Outside, Sad Inside: Bradley. To others, he's a bully, with lines like, "Give me a dollar or I'll spit on you." As the reader comes to learn, he's a lonely social misfit, who's alienated even from his family.
  • Wondrous Ladies Room: Subverted. Bradley expects the girls' washroom to be fancier and have toilets with pink water, but after he goes inside, he realizes it's the same as the boys' washroom.
  • Wrong Bathroom Incident: As the title states, this happens briefly when Jeff accidentally goes into the women's room, only for the girls inside to scream. Bradley comments that he occasionally goes in there to get a rise out of them. At one point, he checks the inside of the ladies' room, expecting it to be pretty and fancy, only for it to look almost exactly the same as the men's room.

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