In the Night Kitchen by Maurice Sendak, 1970.
This is a very surreal children’s picture book about a strange dream that a boy has one night.
One night, a boy name Mickey is trying to sleep when he hears a strange thumping sound. He yells for the person making it to be quiet, and he suddenly finds himself falling out of bed.
He continues falling through the floors of his house and loses his pajamas. (Mickey is naked for most of the book, and at times, you can see his private parts in the pictures. The rest of the time, he is covered in batter. This is a very strange book.)
Mickey falls into a bowl of batter in the Night Kitchen, and the cooks mix him into the batter and try to bake him into a cake. However, Mickey climbs out of the oven and into some bread dough, which he shapes into an airplane.
The cooks cry out for milk for the cake they want to bake, so Mickey grabs their measuring cup and flies off in his bread dough airplane to find some.
He dives into a giant bottle of milk, losing the batter that was covering him. Mickey gets a cup of milk and pours it into the batter. The cooks are happy and bake their cake.
Then, Mickey slides down the side of the bottle and ends up in his own bed and in his pajamas again.
Apparently, the whole thing was a dream, but it’s a very odd dream. I didn’t like Mickey being naked in the pictures because I don’t see any particular reason why he should be. This would still be an odd, surreal dream even if he was wearing his pajamas through the whole adventure. It’s not terrible, but I did find that part a little unsettling and unnecessary. The rhymes in the text of the story were cute. I think it would sound nice read aloud.
The book is available to borrow for free online through Internet Archive (multiple copies).
Wayside School Gets a Little Stranger by Louis Sachar, 1995.
Meanwhile, the principal declares that “door” is a very bad word and that everyone should say “goozack” instead. Mrs. Jewls tells the children to write poems about colors, but some colors rhyme better than others. Kathy tries to convince everyone that Santa doesn’t exist. Miss Zarves (who also doesn’t exist), laments about how difficult teaching really is.
Wayside School is Falling Down by Louis Sachar, 1989.
Socks figure into many of the stories, with a special jingle invented by Mac, who used to be named Nancy until he traded names with a girl. It’s fortunate that Mac invented the jingle because Allison uses it to free herself from the non-existent 19th story. Myron chooses freedom over safety, emancipating himself from the school’s rules. Bebe invents a younger brother, and things turn around for Leslie when her pigtails pull Paul. Rondi fears that she’s no longer cute now that her front teeth have grown in. Joy learns the best thing about the toy dog that Todd brought to school, and Ron actually tries the school lunch.
Each of the books contains thirty stories, like the school (ha, ha!). It would take awhile to describe them all, but there are stories about each of the kids in Mrs. Jewls’s class. Mrs. Jewls took over the class on the 30th floor after Mrs. Gorf accidentally turned herself into an apple. She used to turn her students into apples when they made her mad, but most forms of revenge backfire eventually. Mrs. Gorf ends up turning herself into an apple when one of her students holds up a mirror, and then, Louis the yard teacher eats her.
Mrs. Gorf does make one more reappearance on the Friday before Halloween. Mrs. Jewls and the children argue that she can’t haunt the school if it’s not Halloween, but when Halloween falls on a weekend, schools have to have their Halloween party on the Friday before. Stephen’s just happy that the ghost of Mrs. Gorf justifies his costume.
Jestress's Forgotten Books and Stories 