Louis Sachar is an American children's and young-adult fiction author. His books have received honors such as the National Book Award, the New York Times Book Review Notable Children's Book of the Year, the New York Times Outstanding Book of the Year, and the Publishers Weekly Best Book of the Year.
Sachar grew up in New York and California, and attended the University of California, Berkeley. After earning a degree in economics, he worked as a salesman and then as a teacher's aide—an experience that provided material for his first published book, Sideways Stories from Wayside School. Sachar then went to law school and practiced as a lawyer until 1989, when he dedicated himself to writing.
Sachar has written in several genres, including mystery and comedy. Aside from Sideways Stories from Wayside School, Sachar is best known for the 1998 young-adult novel Holes, set in a correctional boot camp in Texas where youth offenders are ordered to dig holes all day. Lauded for its exploration of racism, homelessness, illiteracy, and youth criminalization, the book won the 1998 National Book Award for Young People's Literature and the 1999 Newbery Medal. Sachar wrote a screen adaptation for Holes, which Walt Disney Pictures released in 2003 to commercial and critical acclaim.
Louis Sachar now lives with his wife Carla and their dogs Lucky and Tippy in Austin, Texas.
Louis Sachar's Fuzzy Mud is a 2015 novel about a fifth-grade girl who discovers a mysterious rash-causing substance in the forest and unwittingly saves the world from a pandemic.
On a Tuesday in November, protagonist Tamaya Dhilwaddi is ready to...
Holes is Louis Sachar's fifth novel, and probably his most loved. The novel took Sachar a year and a half to write, and was published in 1998. Holes combined huge popular appeal with critical success, as Holes won or was nominated for almost...
After college, author Louis Sachar said that he was only interested in ever writing one book for children. That book became Sideways Stories from Wayside School. After the tremendous critical, popular, and financial success of Sideways Stories...
Louis Sachar’s Small Steps is a young adult sequel to Holes, and it follows the storyline of Theodore “Armpit” Johnson after he returns home from Camp Green Lake Juvenile Detention and Correctional Facility. Small Steps was published on January...
Set in the eponymous Wayside School, which was accidentally built sideways, Wayside School Beneath the Cloud of Doom is a short story cycle novel (a collection of short stories which are designed to be read together) that is the fourth novel in...
Wayside School Gets a Little Stranger is a short story cycle novel (a novel comprised of thirty separate stories which are designed to be read together rather than apart) which is the third book in the eponymous Wayside School series. It tells the...
Written by esteemed children's author Louis Sachar, Wayside School is Falling Down is the second book in the critically acclaimed, bestselling series Wayside School series. Like its predecessor, Wayside School is Falling Down is a short story...
