Hello and welcome to worst bestsellers, where we read about America's least accessible school so you don't have to.

I'm Renata.

And I'm Kate.

And for this episode, we read Sideways Stories from Wayside School by Lewis Sacker.

Joining us to discuss this iconic saga of alternative education is Amy Stern, assistant agent at the Sheldon Fogelman Agency, with many feelings on Kate and Renata-flavored ice creams.

Hi, Amy. Hello. Good to be here.

Thanks for joining us. Thanks for putting that upsetting image into my mind at this time.

I am very excited to have Amy here because she is my favorite person to listen to talk,

listen to while she talks about kids books.

So this has having Amy do an episode with us has been like on my short list of things to propose for a long time. And I'm very happy the stars aligned for us to ask her to do this one.

Yes, absolutely. Amy has a lot of excellent opinions. I'm happy that you'll get to hear some of them.

I'm just glad that you guys are willing to have me and have me for something that I actually love.

Like, you guys do such a good job with books that are not as great but I'm like when

you mentioned this one I was like but it's perfect I don't have any that much to

criticize with this it's perfect but then as I was rereading it I was like wait I have

thoughts yeah and and so that is a good reminder for us to introduce that this is

part of our flashback

summer series where we revisit some childhood favorites.

And unlike our normal picks for worst bestsellers, mostly we're not going into this

hoping to talk about them being bad or, you know, comically, terribly done. We mostly just want to

indulge in some fun nostalgia and, you know, maybe find some things that are weirder now

or that we didn't fully appreciate when we read them as kids. But we're mostly, mostly looking

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