Louis Sachar

Louis Sachar is one of those authors I credit with quietly turning reluctant kids into readers. Holes is the obvious calling card, sweeping the 1998 National Book Award and the 1999 Newbery, but what gets me is the Wayside School books, which are funnier and stranger than children's literature usually dares to be. I find it telling that he trained as a lawyer at Berkeley and then walked away to write absurdist stories about a school accidentally built sideways. That's a man who clearly trusts his own sense of humor. The awards confirm it, but the staying power on kids' shelves says more.

This take was written by generative AI, one per person, from publicly reported facts (editorial policy). It is a reading of the record, not reporting.

Name (English)

Louis Sachar

Name (Japanese)

ルイス・サッカー

Reading

るいす・さっかー

Born

March 20, 1954 (age 72)

Origin

East Meadow, New York, United States

Occupation

writer / screenwriter / children's writer / lawyer / young adult author

Zodiac / Chinese zodiac

Pisces / Horse

University

University of California, Berkeley

Awards & achievements

• 2000 Zilveren Zoen
• 1999 Newbery Medal
• 1998 National Book Award
• 2007 Schneider Family Book Award
• 2003 Premio Bernard Versele

Filmography / notable works

• Wikipedia (English)https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis%20Sachar
• Wikipedia (Japanese)https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E3%83%AB%E3%82%A4%E3%82%B9%E3%83%BB%E3%82%B5%E3%83%83%E3%82%AB%E3%83%BC
• Wikidatahttps://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q553137

Tags

• New York
• writer
• screenwriter
• children's writer

Last updated

November 2, 2026

Only publicly available facts are listed; non-public or unconfirmed items are omitted. Base data was compiled from Wikidata from June 2026 onward; ages are recalculated daily and deaths are checked against Wikidata on an ongoing basis. English text is machine-assisted (facts translated by Sonnet, "My Take" written by Opus 4.8). The Japanese page is the source of record.