The students of Grade 4S first met Myron in a chapter of The Sideways Stories of Wayside School, a book written by Louis Sachar. This is a rather silly book about a school that was accidentally built thirty stories high with only one classroom on each story. (The builder said he was very sorry.)
Wayside is not your average school. One teacher turns naughty students into apples. Another mistakes an entire class for a room full of monkeys. Yet another teacher doesn’t even exist. Try to explain that! And it’s not just the teachers. The students in Wayside School are just as strange. There is the boy who only reads upside down, the girl who tries to sell her toes, and three boys with the same name, (Eric, Eric, and Eric.)
In Myron’s story, he is chosen as class president. This is a very important job at Wayside School, as he is responsible for turning on the lights at the beginning of the school day, and turning them off at the end. Luckily, Myron has been turning lights on and off for practically his whole life, and is a natural.
Myron makes it through his first day as class president with no troubles, but something happens on the way home from school that forces Myron to show what being class president is really all about, and he comes to the rescue of Dana, a girl in his class.
Unfortunately, this also means that Myron is late to school the next day, which results in chaos when the lights aren’t turned on. Myron was the greatest class president in the history of Wayside School, but gets replaced for failing to turn the lights on.
In Grade 5, we were looking at the characteristics of a hero as part of our Unit of Inquiry. We imagined what might have happened if Myron had arrived at school on time that fateful day. If you would like to read The Adventures Of Myron: Class President, you can download it onto your iPad, iPhone, or iPod touch. You need to have iBooks installed.