Friday, August 27, 2010

Highschool* (for High school*)

The kids in Louis Sachar's fiction book series about Wayside School (beginning with Sideways Stories from Wayside School) are students in a particularly high school.

Wayside school is built sideways, in a way: it's 30 stories high, with one classroom per story. There is, however, no 19th story--much like real life buildings without a 13th floor. One student wonders, if there's no 19th floor, why isn't the school 29 stories tall?

Are you confused yet? Not as confused as our typists seem to be: highschool is in fact a high probability typo on the Ballard list, appearing over 50 times in Ohiolink and 1200 times in Worldcat!

(Book cover image from Amazon.com)

Leanne Olson

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