Author: R. J. Palacio
Enjoyment Rating: ****
This book would be rated: PG
Source: Library Copy
Books I've read this year: 121
Last year, when we were waiting for Rose, I read all of the books I could about kids with cleft lip and palate. There were quite a few boring non-fiction books, a few truly awful memoirs (shudder), and other than Precious Bane, no fiction that I could find. In Wonder, fifth-grader August Pullman has a facial deformity (including a cleft lip and palate). His parents have home schooled him, but now that he's old enough to go to middle school, the family has decided that he will attend a school nearby.
While this story could easily be sappy or depressing (and honestly, I did find the last few chapters a little sappy), what interested me about Wonder was not Auggie's story itself, but how Palacio makes him just one of a whole cast of characters. We hear from his sister, her sister's friends, the kids who bully him and the kids who learn to become his friends despite what he looks like. Annie's class was reading the book at school at the same time I was reading it at home and I think it was a great story for both of us. I know that Rose and Eli's disabilities, although evident, are as serious as Auggie's, but this book helps me see the kinds of ways that kids may react to them as they get older.
1 comment:
I finished this a few days ago...I had issues with age/grade level -- the kids are 5th graders, but their maturity levels/dialog seemed a lot older -- like 7 or 8th grade. And the whole graduation scene at the end was a bit much.
But overall...a powerful book.
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