Product Description
Titles include Wayside School Gets a Little Stranger, Wayside School Is Falling Down and Sideway Stories From Wayside School.
About the Author
When Louis Sachar was going to school, his teachers always pronounced his name wrong. Now that he has become a popular author of children’s books, teachers all over the country are pronouncing his name wrong. It should be pronounced "Sacker," like someone who tackles quarterbacks or someone who stuffs potatoes into sacks.
Mr. Sachar received a B.A. in economics from the University of California at Berkeley. His first book, Sideways Stories from Wayside School, was accepted for publication during his first year of law school. After receiving his law degree, he spent six years asking himself whether he wanted to be an author or a lawyer before deciding to write for children full-time. His books include Wayside School Gets a Little Stranger, There’s a Boy in the Girls’ Bathroom, Wayside School is Falling Down, Dogs Don’t Tell Jokes, and the Marvin Redpost series.
Louis Sachar lives in Austin, Texas, with his wife and their daughter, Sherre. In His Own Words...
"One thing I would like to know from my favorite authors is who their favorite authors are. So I will begin there. My favorite authors (not necessarily in order) are: E. L. Doctorow; J. D. Salinger; Kurt Vonnegut; Dostoyevski; Tolstoy; Flannery O'Connor; Kinky Friedman; Rex Stout; E. B. White; William Saroyan; John Steinbeck; Dr. Seuss. These are mostly adult authors, which is only fitting, since I am mostly an adult."
"I was born in East Meadow, New York. My father worked on the seventy-eighth floor of the Empire State Building, which I thought was pretty cool. We moved to Tustin, California, when I was nine, not too far from Disneyland."
"I wrote my first children's story as part of a creative writing assignment in high school. That story was called "Apple Power" and was about a mean teacher named Mrs. Gorf who turned her students into apples. My teacher didn't think that I had taken the assignment seriously and suggested I write something else."
"During my last year of college at the University of California at Berkeley, I worked part-time at a nearby elementary school -- Hillside School. I got college credit for being a teacher's aide, and I was paid two dollars an hour to watch over the kids on the playground. My official title was Noontime Supervisor, but the kids called me Louis the yard teacher."
"After graduating from college I wrote Sideways Stories from Wayside School. The kids in the book are named after the kids I knew at Hillside, and, of course, Louis the yard teacher is in there, too."
"I went to law school in San Francisco a year later, and the book was published during my second year. When I graduated in 1980, I had to make the difficult choice between writing and practicing law. I knew I could make a good living practicing law, but I chose to write because it was what I liked to do."
"I met Carla in 1981 while visiting a school in Texas. She was the school counselor and became the inspiration behind the character (also a counselor named Carla) in There's a Boy in the Girls' Bathroom. When I wrote the book, I didn't know I'd END up marrying her."
"We were married in 1985, and our daughter, Sherre, was horn in 1987. In 1990 we moved from San Francisco to Austin, Texas. We have a dog named Lucky. In my spare time I like to play duplicate bridge."
by Louis Sachar
by Louis Sachar
by Louis Sachar
DVD ~ Artist Not Provided
by Jeff Kinney
