Louis è nato ad East Meadow nello stato di New York il 20 marzo del 1954 ed è uno scrittore statunitense di libri per ragazzi, noto principalmente per la serie Sideways Stories from Wayside School e per il pluripremiato romanzo Holes (1998). 

 Ha iniziato gli studi presso l'Antioch College in Ohio ma la morte del padre lo costrinse  a spostarsi in California per essere vicino alla madre e in quel periodo si mantenne facendo il venditore porta a porta.

 Si è laureato in economia all'Università della California di  Berkeley ed in quel periodo ha fatto l'insegnate volontario presso la Hillside Elementary School esperienza questa, che avrebbe ispirato i suoi futuri scritti.

 Si è poi laureato in legge nel 1980 presso lo Hastings College di San Francisco ed ha esercitato fin quando il successo travolgente del suo primo lavoro non gli ha permesso di dedicarsi interamente allo scrivere.

 Si è sposato nel 1985 con Carla una insegnate elementare ed ha una figlia di nome Sherre nata due anni più tardi.

Oggi vive ad Austin con la famiglia e dedica molta parte del suo tempo libero al Bridge girando spesso il Paese per partecipare ai Tornei regionali organizzati dalla ACBL.

Gran protagonista è il bridge giocato dal ricco e vecchio zio Lester ne "Il Voltacarte" romanzo nel quale il protagonista, un inveterato cacciatore di dote, sempre più affascinato dai risvolti del gioco si trova a interrogarsi sul significato della vita.

  Sachar tells himself

I was born in East Meadow, New York on March 20, 1954 and lived there until third grade. My dad worked on the 78th floor of the Empire State Building, and maybe that somehow inspired Wayside School, who knows? When I was nine years old, we moved to Tustin California. At that time, there were orange groves all around, and the local kids would often divide up into teams and have orange fights. The "ammo" hung from the trees, although the best ones were the gushy, rotten ones on the ground. Now most of the orange trees are gone, replaced with fast food restaurants, and big box stores.

I enjoyed school and was a good student, but it wasn't until high school that I really became an avid reader. J.D. Salinger and Kurt Vonnegut were the authors who first inspired me. Some of my other favorite authors include E.L. Doctorow, Margaret Atwood, E.B White, Richard Price and Kazuo Ishiguro.

After high school, I attended Antioch College in Ohio. My father died during my first semester, and I returned to California to be near my mother. During that time, I had a short but surprisingly successful career as a Fuller Brush man. For those of you too young to know what that is, I went door-to-door selling cleaning products.

I returned to college, this time to the University of California at Berkeley where I majored in Economics. On campus one day, I saw the unlikely sight of an elementary school girl handing out flyers. I took one from her. It said: "Help. We need teachers aides at our school. Earn three units of credit." I thought it over and decided it was a pretty good deal. College credits, no homework, no term papers, no tests, all I had to do was help out in a second/third grade class at Hillside Elementary School.

Besides helping out in a classroom, I also became the Noontime Supervisor, or "Louis the Yard Teacher" as I was known to the kids. It became my favorite college class, and a life changing experience.

When I graduated 1n 1976 I decided to try to write a children's book, which eventually became Sideways Stories From Wayside School. All the kids at Wayside School were based on the kids I knew at Hillside.

It took me about nine months to write the book. I wrote in the evenings. In the daytime I had a job at a sweater warehouse in Connecticut. After about a year, I was fired (my enthusiasm for sweaters was insufficient), and I decided to go to law school. Sideways Stories from Wayside School was accepted by a publisher during my first week at Hastings College of the Law in San Francisco.

I finished law school, graduating in 1980, passed the bar exam (which was required to practice law) and then did part-time legal work as I continued to write children's books. It wasn't until 1989 that my books began selling well enough that I was finally able to stop practicing law and devote myself fully to writing.

My wife Carla was a counselor at an elementary school when I first met her. She was the inspiration for the counselor in There's a Boy in the Girl's Bathroom. We were married in 1985. Our daughter, Sherre, was born in 1987. We live in Austin, Texas along with our dog, Watson.

I write every morning, usually for no more than two hours a day. I never talk about a book until it is finished. I spent two years on my latest novel, and nobody, not even Carla or Sherre knew anything about it until it was finished. Then they were the first to read it.

That book is called Small Steps, and will be published in January 2006.

In my spare time, I like to play bridge. You can often find me at the bridge club in Austin, or at a bridge tournament somewhere around the country.