wonder book review parents

Reading Ladies

Wonder [book review].

October 27, 2017

***This post contains Amazon affiliate links.

Heart, Heroes, and Humor…

You were probably an ordinary kid.

Did you ever experience a terrifying first day in a new school?

Consider Auggie. He feels ordinary inside but no one else sees him as ordinary. As he expresses:

“Kids don’t scream and run away if you’re ordinary….they don’t stare.”

This is the advice 10-year-old August Pullman receives from his parents on the first day of school:

“There are always going to be jerks in the world, Auggie,” she said, looking at me. “But I really believe, and Daddy really believes, that there are more good people on this earth than bad people, and the good people watch out for each other and take care of each other.”

Because the movie Wonde r releases in theaters on November 17, 2017, it seems timely to read or reread and review.

Movie Trailer here.

Wonder by R. J. Palacio

Genre/categories: Middle grade through adult contemporary fiction, growing up, difficult discussions, family life, friendship, compassion, character traits

On the inside, ten-year-old August Pullman feels very ordinary. But as he says, ordinary kids don’t make other kids run away screaming and they don’t get stared at wherever they go. Auggie was born with a rare genetic abnormality that affected the formation of his face. Because of extensive surgeries and an attempt to protect him from cruelties of the outside world, Auggie’s parents have homeschooled him. The reader meets 5th grade Auggie as he’s being enrolled in a traditional school for the first time. Will he be accepted? Will he find friends? Will he find a hostile or friendly environment? How will adults in his life support him? The story is told from six perspectives (August, Via–his older sister, Summer–a friendly caring peer, Jack–a student leader who struggles in his role as a friend, Miranda–his sister’s best friend and a close family friend, and Justin–Miranda’s boyfriend) plus a bonus chapter from Julian’s point of view (Auggie’s nemesis).

Amazon (October) Rating: (an amazing) 4.9 Stars

My Thoughts:

If you plan to see the movie, don’t miss out on reading the book first! It’s an easy, engaging, thoughtful, inspirational, and meaningful read with valuable discussion possibilities for the entire family. Wonder on DVD .

As we venture to school with Auggie, we feel his daily apprehension and celebrate his courage and determination. Even though he thinks of himself on the inside as an ordinary kid, we know he doesn’t look ordinary and his severe facial abnormality could cause him to be the object of unkind actions by his peers and to experience bullying.

Throughout Wonder , the narrative changes perspectives with each chapter. This helps us get a 360 degree understanding of Auggie’s world and also allows us to see the nice circle of people who care for him and support him. In addition, it allows the reader to understand that everyone battles something. Because this is written for a children’s audience, it does have a happy ending where ‘good” people are rewarded and the “bad” get their punishment. I like that there is an epilogue (extra chapter) in the current version of the book that follows Auggie’s nemesis Julian and we see how Julian changes and grows in empathy and compassion

Wonder takes a dramatic turn when Auggie overhears his friend Jack’s derogatory remarks about him; he is discouraged and devastated, and everything changes as he has to fight to rebuild what he’s lost. Through these authentic middle-grade voices, we learn about true friendship, risk, and the importance of kindness.

I especially admire Auggies’s English teacher who each month presents the idea of precepts to live by and encourages students to write their own…an example of a precept he presents is “When given the choice between being right or kind, choose kind.” In an attempt to establish the habit of writing precepts as a lifelong practice, he encourages students to email their precepts to him in the years after graduation. Auggie’s 5th-grade precept is “Everyone in the world should get a standing ovation once in their lives because we all overcometh the world.”

The following is a sampling of the types of quotes you will find from the adults in the story:

“Kinder than necessary,” he repeated. “What a marvelous line, isn’t it? Kinder than is necessary. Because it’s not enough to be kind. One should be kinder than needed. Why I love that line, that concept is that it reminds me that we carry with us, as human beings, not just the capacity to be kind, but the very choice of kindness. And what does that mean? How is that measured? You can’t use a yardstick. It’s like I was saying just before: it’s not like measuring how much you’ve grown in a year. It’s not exactly quantifiable, is it? How do we know we’ve been kind? What is being kind, anyway?” “….If every single person in this room made it a rule that wherever you are, whenever you can, you will try to act a little kinder than is necessary–the world really would be a better place. And if you do this, if you act just a little kinder than is necessary, someone else, somewhere, someday, may recognize in you, in every single one of you, the face of God.” “It’s not just the nature of kindness, but the nature of one’s kindness. The power of one’s friendship. The test of one’s character. The strength of one’s courage–”

Don’t miss out on this inspirational story filled with heart, heroes, and humor and which inspired the Kindness Movement . I expect that Wonder will become a beloved classic in upper-grade classrooms and in family libraries. Highly recommended for every reader who believes in the power of teaching through a story and for every family who is in the process of building empathy, compassion, and kindness. Wonder would make a great parent/child buddy read. I believe good literature and timeless themes can be enjoyed by all ages!

“Courage. Kindness. Friendship. Character. These are the qualities that define us as human beings, propel us, on occasion, to greatness.”

My rating: 4.5 stars (rounded to 5)

Wonder Information Here.

There is an additional book, Auggie & Me . It’s not a sequel, rather a companion read and an extension of Auggie’s world with three additional points of view.

More Information about Auggie & Me Here.

The Kindness Movement and Sign the Pledge Here.

The author interviews kids about kindness here.

Wonder Movie Trailer here.

Wonder on DVD .

Meet the Author, R. J. Palacio

R. J. Palacio was born and raised in New York City. She attended the High School of Art and Design and the Parsons School of Design, where she majored in illustration with the hopes of someday following in the footsteps of her favorite childhood author-illustrators, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Maurice Sendak, and the D’Aulaires. She was a graphic designer and art director for many years before writing Wonder. We’re All Wonders, which is based conceptually on the themes of her novel, represents the fulfillment of her dream to write and illustrate her own picture book. R.J. is also the author of Auggie & Me: Three Wonder Stories and 365 Days of Wonder: Mr. Browne’s Book of Precepts. She lives in Brooklyn, where she is surrounded by magical water towers, with her husband, their two sons, and their two dogs, Bear and Beau. Learn more about her at rjpalacio.com or on Twitter at @RJPalacio.

I’m curious if you’ve read Wonder !

Do you have children that have read it? I’d love to hear your (or their) reflection.

Do you plan to see the movie ?

How do you feel about teaching character traits such as empathy and kindness through literature?

What are you reading this week?

Happy Reading Bookworms!

“Ah, how good it is to be among people who are reading.” ~Rainer Maria Rilke

“I love the world of words, where life and literature connect.” ~Denise J Hughes

“Reading good books ruins you for enjoying bad ones.” ~Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society

“I read because books are a form of transportation, of teaching, and of connection! Books take us to places we’ve never been, they teach us about our world, and they help us to understand human experience.” ~Madeleine Riley, Top Shelf Text

In my last post, I indicated that I would read and review If the Creek Don’t Rise . I did read it; however, I decided that Wonder would be the primary focus of my review this week so that I can encourage you to read it before the movie releases. Here’s my brief review of If the Creek Don’t Rise .

If The Creek Don’t Rise by Leah Weiss

Genre/categories: Historical Fiction, Small Town, Rural, Appalachia, Hillbilly Culture

Young Sadie Blue lives in the North Carolina mountain town of Baines Creek and suffers abuse at the hands of her drunken husband, Roy Tupkin. When a new teacher comes to town, Sadie begins to think of finding her voice and of a life that doesn’t include Roy.

Amazon Rating: 4.5 Stars

Harsh and hard realities of life in this remote Appalachian community make If the Creek Don’t Rise a gritty and sobering read. Young Sadie Blue is pregnant, abused, mistreated, and struggling to find her voice. Only a few chapters are from Sadie’s POV. The story is told from multiple viewpoints giving readers a good perspective of her life and the hillbilly community. Some characters offer hope and healing while others are despicable. Sadie does find her voice in a way that surprised me (but maybe it shouldn’t have given her situation and the hillbilly culture). As a teacher, I hoped to learn more about the new teacher’s contribution to the youth of the community….I’m always looking for hope and redemption in a story….but after the teacher’s strong introduction, she fades into the background of the story. This is also disappointing because she is important to Sadie. Overall, I enjoyed the read and the excellent writing; however, it’s not a read that everyone would enjoy. It’s gritty and a bit dark but certainly an impressive debut novel. I would encourage you to read additional reviews.

My Rating: 4 Stars

If the Creek Don’t Rise Information Here.

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[…] Full Review and Amazon Information Here. […]

[…] Full Review Here Amazon Information Here Movie Trailer Here […]

[…] Wonder by R.J. Palacio Genre: Fiction (Categories: physical differences, kindness, compassion, acceptance) My Rating: 5 Stars Wonder has been positively reviewed by parents, teachers, and children, it inspired the national “Choose Kind” campaign, and many of you have seen the movie. However, if you haven’t read the book, I think it’s a must read experience for everyone! This easy to read, engaging, and thought-provoking read paves the way for grand discussions and builds compassion and empathy…..I believe that the best teaching occurs within the context of a story. My full review here. […]

[…] Wonder falls into the category of “A Must Read For Everyone.” The themes of kindness, compassion, and acceptance are universal. (review) […]

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[…] Wonder falls into the category of “A Must Read For Everyone.” The themes of kindness, compassion, and acceptance are universal. (my review) […]

[…] Wonder by R.J. Palacio […]

[…] Continue reading my review of Wonder to see what I loved…. […]

[…] by Starlight by Sharon Draper (racism, prejudice), Refugee (12+) by Alan Gratz (refugee crisis), Wonder by R.J. Palacio (physical differences), Inside Out and Back Again by Thanhha Lai (scroll down page for review) […]

[…] Wonder by R.J. Palacio (compassion, acceptance, kindness) My review of Wonder here. […]

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Book Review

R.J. Palacio
Coming-of-Age , Contemporary , Drama

Readability Age Range

Alfred A. Knopf, an imprint of Random House Children's Books, a division of Random House Inc.
School Library Journal, Top 100 Children's Novels, 2012; Booklist Editors' Choice: Books for Youth, 2012

Year Published

Wonder by R.J. Palacio has been reviewed by Focus on the Family’s marriage and parenting magazine .

Plot Summary

Like hundreds of other students in Manhattan, August Pullman is starting fifth grade. But August is no ordinary 10-year-old. He’s had 27 surgeries since birth, all on his face. August was born with a severe craniofacial abnormality. Despite his many surgeries, he doesn’t — and will never — look normal. Children (and sometimes adults) who catch a glimpse of his face either stare or turn away quickly in shock and horror. This year will be August’s first at a mainstream school. His mom thinks the experience will be good for him, but his dad disagrees. He says that sending August to school is like leading a lamb to the slaughter. August isn’t sure what that means.

Before school begins, August’s mom takes him to his new school, Beecher Prep, to meet the principal and get a tour from three of his new classmates — Jack, Julian and Charlotte. Jack and Charlotte are nice, but Julian asks August if he was burned in a fire. When school begins, Jack sits beside August in every class, and the two boys quickly become good friends. August also makes friends with a girl named Summer, the only student in the whole school brave enough to sit with him at lunch. And while only Julian is deliberately mean, August still has to cope with hundreds of secret stares and watch his peers elbow each other and whisper about him from behind cupped hands.

When August has a birthday party, he invites everyone in his class, but only six of them come. He also learns that nobody wants to touch him, and if someone does accidentally brush up against him, they run away quickly to wash their hands. Even the parents get involved — Julian’s mom photoshops August out of the class photo and distributes copies to other parents.

Fortunately, one of August’s favorite holidays, Halloween, is approaching. He plans to dress up like a Star Wars character, but at the last minute, he changes his mind and wears another costume instead — the Bleeding Scream. When he arrives at school, no one knows it’s him under his mask, and he overhears Jack telling Julian that he only hangs out with August because the principal asked him to, and that if he looked like August, he would kill himself. August feels nauseous after hearing this and goes home sick. He tells Summer and his sister, Via, what happened but swears them to secrecy and refuses to talk to Jack for more than a month.

Meanwhile, Via is having troubles of her own. Via has always felt defined by August, and she was looking forward to attending a new high school where people would call her by her real name, Olivia, and where no one knew her family — except for her two best friends, Miranda and Ella. But on the first day of school, Via realizes that her “friends” have created a new image for themselves over the summer — one that doesn’t include her. They ditch Via as soon as possible to pursue their quest for high school popularity. Because Miranda has always acted like a big sister to August, this creates tension between Via and August, especially when Miranda calls August to say hello but refuses to hang out with Via at school.

When Via learns about what Jack said about August, she consoles August and talks him into trick-or-treating with her.

Summer is also paying the price for being August’s friend. One of the popular girls invites Summer to a Halloween party — but when she arrives, everyone wants to quiz her about why she hangs out with August. They tell her that if she didn’t hang out with him, she would be popular, too — and Julian might even ask her to be his girlfriend. Summer leaves the party early but stays friends with August. When Jack asks her why August won’t talk to him, she gives him a hint: “Bleeding Scream.”

It’s true that the principal asked Jack to befriend August at the beginning of the school year. At first, he was reluctant to agree. But after getting to know August personally, Jack realizes that August is the best friend he would have chosen for himself anyway. So when August stops hanging out with him, he wonders why. Although Jack enjoys his increased popularity, he doesn’t really like Julian and his crowd. He doesn’t fit in because their families are much wealthier than his, and his grades drop without August there to help him. In science class, the teacher assigns a project for the upcoming science fair, and Jack imagines his face screaming on the inside. Suddenly, he remembers Summer’s hint (Bleeding Scream) and realizes that August is mad at him because of what he said on Halloween. After class, Julian calls August a freak. Jack punches Julian in the mouth and knocks out a tooth.

Since there are just a few days before the Christmas holidays, Jack is suspended until January. A flurry of emails are sent, and Julian’s parents express their concern that perhaps August shouldn’t have been admitted to Beecher Prep and that it was too much pressure to expect Jack and Julian to befriend August back in September. Mr. Tushman, the principal, and Jack’s parents disagree with Julian’s parents. Jack re-friends August on Facebook, and he apologizes for what he said on Halloween. After asking if Jack really punched Julian, August accepts his apology, and the two boys become better friends than ever.

In January, Charlotte tells Jack that the entire fifth-grade male population is at war. It’s Jack and August versus Julian and his two sidekicks, Miles and Henry. Most of the boys are on Julian’s side, but there are a handful of neutral boys. Jack learns for the first time what it’s like for people to treat him as if he doesn’t exist. Julian puts mean notes in Jack’s and August’s lockers, and they respond by putting fake love notes in his locker.

At August’s house working on their science project, Jack and August meet Via’s new boyfriend, Justin. They think his fiddle case looks like it might hold a machine gun, and they think it’s funny that he plays in a Louisiana-style band when he’s from Brooklyn. On his way home, Justin sees Julian and his friends making fun of Jack. Jack tells Justin about the war. After Jack leaves, Justin holds his fiddle case menacingly and tells Julian not to mess with Jack or he and his friends will be sorry.

The tricks Julian plays on Jack become meaner, and fifth-graders start becoming tired of the war. Even Amos, one of Julian’s friends, stops Julian from emptying his pencil shavings into Jack’s backpack. When Julian spreads a rumor that Jack has hired a hit man to get him, people start laughing at Julian behind his back. By springtime, only Miles and Henry are on Julian’s side, and more of his classmates are being nice to Jack and August. They don’t even tease August about the hearing aids he has started to wear.

But at home, Via and August are fighting because Via didn’t want to tell August about the school play Justin and Miranda are starring in. (Via is Miranda’s understudy.) When August finds out, Via wants to invite him, but her parents are trying to respect her feelings by not inviting him. Then their dog, Daisy, must be euthanized because she is old and sick. A few days later, Via brings home three tickets to the play, and nothing more is said.

When Miranda sees that Via’s family is in attendance at the play, she pretends to be ill so Via can play her role instead. Miranda’s parents aren’t there to see her — they divorced the summer before Miranda started high school. When she went away to camp that summer, she pretended that August was her little brother instead of Via’s. The lie made her popular, and she began hanging out with the cool crowd who smoked and sneaked through the woods at night to hang out with boys. When Miranda got back home, she felt embarrassed about her lie and didn’t want Via to find out, so she started hanging out with Ella instead. After the play, Miranda sees August get lost in the crowd, and she brings him back to his parents. She and Via make up and become friends again.

At the end of the year, the entire fifth grade goes on a three-day nature retreat. At first, August is nervous about being away from home overnight, but when he learns that Julian opted out of the trip because he thought it was dorky, August is overjoyed. He has the time of his life until the second night of the trip, when the fifth-grade students watch an outdoor movie on the fairgrounds with students from several other schools. Midway through The Sound of Music, Jack and August have to use the restroom. Instead of waiting in the long lineup for the toilets, they go quietly in the woods, as do Amos, Miles and Henry.

On their way back to the movie, they run into a group of seventh-grade students from another school, who immediately start making fun of August. They push Jack to the ground and yank August’s hoodie so he falls flat on his back. Amos, Miles and Henry stand up for Jack and August, pushing the seventh-graders out of the way so Jack and August can escape into the cornfields that surround the fairgrounds. August’s sweatshirt is torn and his elbow is bleeding. When he realizes that his hearing aids are gone, August can’t help but cry. But instead of making fun of him, the other boys pat him on the back and Amos lets him cry on his shoulder. August finally realizes what his dad meant when he talked about leading a lamb to the slaughter.

The boys walk back to camp together surrounding August like a guard, and news of their encounter spreads quickly among the fifth-graders. Suddenly everyone is concerned about August, even students he didn’t know well. When the fifth-graders return home, August tells his mom about his misadventures. Then his dad and Via arrive home together, carrying a big, white box and tell August to open it. Inside is a little, black puppy looking up at him.

When August returns to school, the war is over. Because Julian missed the nature retreat, he is no longer as popular as before, and Miles and Henry become Amos’ best friends, instead of Julian’s. No one ignores August or Jack anymore, and August gets used to knuckle-punching jocks in the hallway and being called “little dude” by students he barely knows.

At the end-of-year graduation ceremony, August wins an award for being an exemplary student, not just academically but personally as well. Everyone cheers for him, and August finally feels like an ordinary kid — even though he knows no one else sees him that way. At the reception, his picture is taken with his friends and classmates, and nobody minds who is touching whom. When they walk home for cake and ice cream, August thanks his mom for making him go to school. She thanks him for being him — and tells him that he is a wonder.

Christian Beliefs

August reads Christian authors, namely Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings and C.S. Lewis’ The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe . Excerpts of both appear in the book. Jack’s baby sitter, after seeing August, tells Jack to thank the Lord for his blessings. As part of his graduation speech, Mr. Tushman tells the fifth-grade students that if they are kinder than necessary, people will see in them the face of God — then broadens his statement to include any representation of divine goodness. August believes that his grandmother is in heaven.

Other Belief Systems

Summer believes in reincarnation. Miranda tells Justin that the universe wasn’t kind to August, but Justin believes that the universe takes care of its most fragile creatures. The fifth-graders do a project on ancient Egypt, which includes several of the Egyptian gods. August’s father is Jewish. Two students play Dungeons & Dragons at recess.

Authority Roles

Though August’s parents may argue about whether August is ready to attend school or if Via is old enough to ride the subway alone, they are ultimately united by their love for their children and their desire to see them develop as courageous and compassionate human beings. They share special nicknames and bedtime rituals, and while they remain closely involved in their children’s lives — attending school functions, listening carefully to their children talk about their days and working through problems and challenges together — they also encourage August and Via to spread their wings. August claims the bulk of his parents’ time, but when Via is upset, August’s mom drops everything to make her feel better. Before her grandmother’s death, Via also enjoys a special relationship with her grandmother.

The principal and teachers at Beecher Prep are kind and respectful to August and encourage their students to behave likewise, even calling students out on more subtle forms of social bullying, although they can’t catch everything. This positive school atmosphere is fostered by Mr. Tushman, the principal, who defends his choice to admit August when challenged by Julian’s parents. While firm, he is also fair, and he encourages the development of good character in all of his charges.

Profanity & Violence

Rough language and euphemisms include geez, heck, freak and shut up . There are also several misuses of God’s name.

At one point, Jack says he’d rather kill himself than look like Auggie, and Julian consistently puts down Auggie for his looks. He compares Auggie to a burn victim and leaves notes that tell Auggie how much people hate him. All of Julian’s notes are mean, and Julian is a bully to Jack and to Auggie. At one point, he gets the whole class to keep from touching Auggie in any way and later all the boys in the class to stay away from Jack.

August and Jack have a brief scuffle with several seventh-grade students before Amos, Henry and Miles come to their rescue. August’s sweatshirt is torn and bloodied, and he requires mild first-aid treatment.

Sexual Content

Jack tells August (on separate occasions) that Via and Summer are hot. Students as young as fifth grade are in dating relationships — although Summer’s mom thinks they’re too young to date. Via characterizes her and her friends’ physical development as not huge or flat. She has decided not to have children because they will carry the same gene that caused August’s abnormality. Miranda wears a tube top and sneaks through the woods at night to meet boys. Her parents divorced because her father was unfaithful.

Discussion Topics

Get free discussion questions for this book and others, at FocusOnTheFamily.com/discuss-books .

Additional Comments

Lying: Characters tell lies to get themselves out of sticky situations. August lets Jack copy his homework and then tells the teacher that they did it together. Via takes the subway without permission instead of getting a ride home with Miranda, then tells her mother she was late because she and Miranda stopped for pizza.

Smoking: At camp, Miranda smokes cigarettes.

Internet Use: Although they’re both under the minimum age of 13, Jack and August have Facebook accounts.

Crude Humor: Mr. Tushman’s name inspires several family jokes including several jocular remembrances of one of August’s parents’ old college professors, Miss Butt.

You can request a review of a title you can’t find at [email protected] .

Book reviews cover the content, themes and worldviews of fiction books, not their literary merit, and equip parents to decide whether a book is appropriate for their children. The inclusion of a book’s review does not constitute an endorsement by Focus on the Family.

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Reviews of Wonder by R.J. Palacio

by R.J. Palacio

Critics' Opinion:

Readers' Opinion:

Young Adults
Mid-Atlantic, USA
New York State
Contemporary
Parenting & Families
Coming of Age
Physical & Mental Differences
Top Books of 2012

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About this Book

Book summary.

Wonder is a spare, warm, uplifting story that will have readers laughing one minute and wiping away tears the next.

Winner of the BookBrowse 2012 Best Book for Younger Readers Award

I won't describe what I look like. Whatever you're thinking, it's probably worse. August (Auggie) Pullman was born with a facial deformity that prevented him from going to a mainstream school - until now. He's about to start 5th grade at Beecher Prep, and if you've ever been the new kid then you know how hard that can be. The thing is Auggie's just an ordinary kid, with an extraordinary face. But can he convince his new classmates that he's just like them, despite appearances? R. J. Palacio has written a spare, warm, uplifting story that will have readers laughing one minute and wiping away tears the next. With wonderfully realistic family interactions (flawed, but loving), lively school scenes, and short chapters, Wonder is accessible to readers of all levels. Ages 8+

Ordinary I know I'm not an ordinary ten-year-old kid. I mean, sure, I do ordinary things. I eat ice cream. I ride my bike. I play ball. I have an XBox. Stuff like that makes me ordinary. I guess. And I feel ordinary. Inside. But I know ordinary kids don't make other ordinary kids run away screaming in playgrounds. I know ordinary kids don't get stared at wherever they go. If I found a magic lamp and I could have one wish, I would wish that I had a normal face that no one ever noticed at all. I would wish that I could walk down the street without people seeing me and then doing that look-away thing. Here's what I think: the only reason I'm not ordinary is that no one else sees me that way. But I'm kind of used to how I look by now. I know how to pretend I don't see the faces people make. We've all gotten pretty good at that sort of thing: me, Mom and Dad, Via. Actually, I take that back: Via's not so good at it. She can get really annoyed when people do something rude. Like, ...

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BookBrowse Awards 2012

Media Reviews

Reader reviews, bookbrowse review.

Wonder rings its bell, and the note that reverberates in the air slips effortlessly into the reader's body. It hangs there, and the reader can't help but be changed. It is a meditation of a novel. A story that asks the reader to feel her way into kindness, empathy, and openness. And without a doubt, the reader, upon experiencing it, responds with a deep, resounding yes . Wonder is recommended for middle grade and young adult readers. It is a perfect book to open up discussions between students or book club members... continued

Full Review (602 words) This review is available to non-members for a limited time. For full access, become a member today .

(Reviewed by Tamara Ellis Smith ).

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Beyond the Book

R.j. palacio's inspiration for wonder.

Whatever you're thinking, it's probably worse. This is Auggie's statement on page one of Wonder about the appearance of his face. R.J. Palacio (whose real name is Raquel Jaramillo... Palacio is her mother's last name) makes a very conscious choice not to explore Auggie's disfigurement head-on, and I think it's a good one. Instead, she allows the reader to create her own images and then, very slowly and from a slanted sort of angle, Palacio gives details. Because at the heart of issue is, well, Auggie's heart, and that is all that matters. I don't want to dishonor Palacio's choice, but I will give you a bit of information about Auggie's condition. He has something called Mandibulofacial Dysostosis , which is more typically known as ...

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Wonder by R. J. Palacio - Review

Wonder, by R.J. Palacio is a riveting story about a nine year-old boy, called August, with a facial deformity and how this affects the people who live around him. I would recommend this book for ages ten plus - as my mum now wants to read it too!

The main character in this tale is August, but it is from the point of view of many different relatives, friends and enemies. These include: Via, August's sister; Summer, his friend and Justin, Via's boyfriend. It was very interesting to learn how August's face affected so many people around him, and how people sometimes treated him for something that wasn't even his fault.

The story is set when August starts school. Inevitably, he was teased and treated badly, but the book also talks about how he overcomes this and makes friends who don't judge him on his how he looks. Although the story does not really have a singular main adventure, there are a few key events such as when he goes on a camp with his school and other schools or when his sister starts high school and has friendship issues to do with her brother.

One of the reasons I enjoyed this book so much was because I can relate to Via and her issues with friends (I don't have a brother with facial deformities though). I also loved the way that you could see things from different points of view in the book.

I have nothing negative to say about this book. There are some very sad and upsetting moments that made me cry. I do not believe this is negative, it just makes the story even more lifelike, after all, in real life, sad things do happen.

Overall, I would rate this book ten out of ten and thoroughly recommend it to anyone! It was a pleasure to read and I couldn't put it down.

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Wonder by R. J. Palacio: Book Review By Jess Lahey and Her Son, Ben

Wonder is a transformative book. Our reviewers, Jess Lahey, author of the forthcoming The Gift of Failure and a frequent contributor to the New York Times and The Atlantic , and her son, Ben, a sophomore at St. Johnsbury Academy in Vermont, tell us why it is a must read.

Previous review: Book Review For Teens: John Green Looking for Alaska

TEEN REVIEW | Ben Lahey

August Pullman, the main character of Wonder by R. J. Palacio, is only 10 years old, but his story engages readers of any age. August was born with a severe facial deformity that leaves him unable to attend school, until the fifth grade, when his family decides it’s time for him to try to give up homeschooling .

Wonder tells the story of August’s first year of school through his own eyes, as well as the eyes of four other characters. The narrators range from fifth graders to high schoolers, with different points of view that flesh out not only their individual personalities, but also how August touches the lives of those around him. Even though the story is told from different perspectives, it’s never confusing; August always remains the book’s focus and is never overshadowed by their insights and observations.

Palacio uses few details to describe August’s deformity, but those that he does use are shocking. With only our imagination to complete the picture, we are left with a shocking image in our minds. August himself says, “I won’t describe what I look like. Whatever you’re thinking, it’s probably worse.”

The characters don’t deal with August’s deformity easily. Even months after first meeting him, August’s classmates are still not used to his face. The class becomes split between August’s friends and the kids who still bully him. Every character is written convincingly, and the sides they take earn either our empathy or judgment.

And Palacio doesn’t shy away from showing how parent-teacher politics play into this “war,” as August calls it. It’s easy to hate the parents and their kids who are so uncomfortable with August that they want him removed from the school. It’s equally as easy to love those kids who befriend August.

Wonder’s emotional moments work because the reader is so fully attached to the characters. Palacio makes every moment of August’s life seem real. Even the hardships that most of us will never have to face. Wonder comes close to making us understand what the life of someone with a deformity such as August’s would be like, and that is no small feat.

ADULT REVIEW | Jess Lahey

Despite his first-sentence assertion, “I know I’m not an ordinary 10-year-old kid,” August Pullman is just that. He’s a gloriously, spectacularly, and reassuringly ordinary 10-year-old kid. Sure, this central character in the coming-of-age novel, Wonder by R. J. Palacio, may not look like most kids his age, but he sure sounds a lot like them. And this is the genius of Palacio’s storytelling.

I’ve never been a fan of shifting perspectives, mainly because the narrative style feels like a cop-out, as if the author does not possess the storytelling chops to deliver the story’s nuances through a single narrator. This is August’s story, after all, and August is the only person who understands what it’s like to face the big, bad world when all the world sees is his disfigured face. The story is rightly his to tell, from his unique perspective, in his distinctive voice.

How wrong I was.

Tweens and adolescents tend to believe that they are the sole arbiters of the truth. Palacio demonstrates this by using five characters—August, Jack, Summer, Via, and Justin—to narrate their own version of August Pullman’s fifth grade year.

While Wonder is August’s story, Via, August’s sister points out that his gravitational pull influences everyone. “August is the Sun. Me and Mom and Dad are planets orbiting the Sun. The rest of our family and friends are asteroids and comets floating around the planets orbiting the Sun.” August may be at the center of this book’s universe, but he’s certainly not alone. As I progressed through the orbiting accounts of August’s year, I began to understand that Palacio’s use of multiple perspectives does not separate the experiences of these children. It unites them.

To paraphrase Beecher Prep Middle School Director, Mr. Tushman, the attraction of August’s heart, and the people he carries up and holds in orbit around it, are the stars of this story. When the story came to an end, and I fully appreciated what had, at first glance, been invisible to me. I was happy to have been drawn in to Palacio’s expansive vision.

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Book Review—He’s Not Lazy: Empowering Boys to Believe in Themselves

'Wonder' Book Review

R.J. Palacio's Novel of Bullying and Acceptance

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"Wonder," R.J. Palacio's debut novel, was written for children 8 to 12 years old, but its message defies genres . Published in 2012, its anti-bullying, pro-acceptance message will resonate with teenagers and even adults as well.

Some books are action-packed, compelling the reader to turn the page to find out what happens next. Other books are compelling because they invite readers to engage with characters who are real, who come alive off the page, and who pull the reader into their story. "Wonder" is the latter kind of book. In fact, very little "action" happens within its pages, and yet readers will find themselves deeply affected by the story.

August Pullman (Auggie to his friends) is not an ordinary 10-year-old boy. He feels like one and has the interests of one, but his face is not ordinary at all. In fact, it's the type of face that scares kids and makes people stare. Auggie is pretty good natured about it all. This is the way he is, after all, and while he doesn’t like that people stare, there’s not much he can do about it.

Because his face has required many reconstructive surgeries, Auggie has been homeschooled . But there are no more surgeries to be done for a while, and now August’s parents think it’s time that he goes to mainstream school, beginning with fifth grade in the fall. The idea of this terrifies Auggie; he knows how people react to seeing him, and he wonders if he will be able to fit in at school at all.

He bravely gives it a go, but finds that it’s much like he expected. Many of the children laugh at him behind his back, and someone has started a game called the Plague, in which people “catch” a “disease” if they touch Auggie. One boy, Julian, leads the bullying attacks. He’s the sort of kid whom adults find charming, but in reality, he is quite mean to anyone not in his circle of friends.

Auggie does make two close friends: Summer, a girl who actually likes Auggie for who he is, and Jack. Jack started out as Auggie’s “assigned” friend, and when Auggie finds this out, he and Jack have a falling out. However, they patch things up at Christmas, after Jack gets suspended for hitting Julian for badmouthing Auggie.

This leads to a “war," with the popular boys against Auggie and Jack. While nothing more than mean words, in the form of notes in the lockers, fly between the two camps, the tension between them lasts until the spring. Then there's a confrontation between a group of older boys from a different school and Auggie and Jack at a sleep-away camp. They are hopelessly outnumbered until a group of boys who were formerly against Auggie and Jack help defend them from the bullies.

In the end, Auggie has a successful year at school, and even makes the Honor Roll. In addition, the school gives him an award for courage, which he doesn't understand, musing, “If they want to give me a medal for being me, I’ll take it.” (p. 306) He sees himself as ordinary, and in the face of everything else, he really is just that: an ordinary kid.

It‘s the straightforward, non-sentimental manner in which Palacio approaches her topic that makes this such an excellent book. Auggie might have an extraordinary face, but he's a regular kid, and that makes him relatable, in spite of his challenges. Palacio also shifts her point of view, telling the story through the eyes of characters other than Auggie. This allows the reader to get to know characters like Auggie's sister, Via, who talks about the way her brother takes over the family’s life. However, some of the other viewpoints—especially of Via’s friends—feel somewhat unnecessary and bog down the middle of the book.

The power of the book likes in how Palacio creates such a normal, relatable character from a boy living with such an extraordinary physical affliction. Even though "Wonder" is recommended for children ages 8 through 12, the book's themes of identity, bullying, and acceptance make it interesting reading for a wide audience as well.

About R.J. Palacio

An art director by profession, R. J. Palacio first thought of the idea for "Wonder" when she and her children were on vacation. While there, they saw a young girl who had a condition similar to Auggie’s. Her children reacted badly, which got Palacio thinking about the girl and what she goes through on a daily basis. Palacio also thought about how she could have better taught her children to respond to situations like this.

The book inspired Random House to start an anti-bullying campaign, called Choose Kind , with a site where people can share their experiences and sign a pledge to stamp out bullying. There you can also download an excellent Educator Guide for Wonder to use at home, or with a community grouop.

Companion Book

"Auggie & Me: Three Wonder Stories ," also by R. J. Palacio, is a 320-page collection of three stories, each told from the point of view of one of three characters from "Wonder": the bully Julian, Auggie’s oldest friend, Christopher, and his new friend, Charlotte. The stories take place prior to Auggie’s attending school and during his first year there.

This book is neither a prequel nor a sequel to "Wonder"—in fact, Palacio has made it clear that she does not plan to ever write either. Instead, this book is meant as a companion for those who have already read "Wonder" and want to extend the experience by learning more about Auggie's impact on the people around him.

R.J. Palacio's "Wonder" — Book Club Discussion Questions
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Wonder, by R.J. Palacio | Book Review

Book Review of Wonder The Children’s Book Review

Written by R.J. Palacio

Ages 10+ | 320 Pages

Publisher: Knopf Books for Young Readers | ISBN-13: 978037586902

What to Expect: Disabilities, Self-Esteem, and Kindness

Kindness is an outstanding trait we all possess, so long as we choose to access it. It is an essential aspect of being human.

In the captivating, award-winning New York Times bestselling novel Wonder by R.J. Palacio, the theme of exhibiting kindness is explored in an inspiring way. The story revolves around a 10-year-old boy named August Pullman living with rare facial deformities. Auggie, as he is affectionately called, yearns to be accepted for who he is and not judged based on his looks. Due to having had 27 surgeries, both big and small, and lots of illness, August (Auggie), up until now, has been home-schooled.

Through Palacio’s vivid writing, readers journey through Auggie’s first year in school and see through the eyes of fifth-grade classmates and his sister, guiding us through valuable insights into the process of accepting someone different from us. Wonder is a heartwarming tale of bravery, love, and kindness. It is a call to action for us to strive towards our best selves and to choose kindness in every situation. This powerful and inspiring book has been a global phenomenon, with Auggie’s story inspiring a growing movement of compassion and empathy toward others.

Reading Wonder will undoubtedly help you embrace its message and become a part of this growing movement.

Buy the Book

About the author.

We’re All Wonders , which is based conceptually on the themes of her novel, represents the fulfillment of her dream to write and illustrate her own picture book. R.J. is also the author of Auggie & Me: Three Wonder Stories and 365 Days of Wonder: Mr. Browne’s Book of Precepts . She lives in Brooklyn, where she is surrounded by magical water towers, with her husband, their two sons, and their two dogs, Bear and Beau.

Learn more about her at https://wonderthebook.com/about or on Twitter at @RJPalacio .

What to Read Next if You Love Wonder

Auggie & Me: Three Wonder Stories, by R. J. Palacio
365 Days of Wonder: Mr. Browne’s Book of Precepts, R. J. Palacio
Out of My Mind , by Sharon Draper

Bianca Schulze reviewed Wonder . Discover more books like Wonder by reading our reviews and articles tagged with disabilities , self-esteem , kindness , and family .

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Bianca Schulze is the founder of The Children’s Book Review. She is a reader, reviewer, mother and children’s book lover. She also has a decade’s worth of experience working with children in the great outdoors. Combined with her love of books and experience as a children’s specialist bookseller, the goal is to share her passion for children’s literature to grow readers. Born and raised in Sydney, Australia, she now lives with her husband and three children near Boulder, Colorado.

R. J. Palacio

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As August begins school, he comes into contact for the first time with professional teachers and with parents other than his own and those of his long-term childhood friends. Through August's observations of these adults, the novel interrogates both how adolescents view adult presences in their lives, as well as what role adults should play in the lives of their children and students. Ultimately, Wonder proposes that parents and teachers have a great deal of responsibility to guide children through life, while also suggesting that they have an enormous amount of power to affect how and how easily their children grow up.

August's vacillation between childishness and teenage angst certainly doesn't happen without anxiety or difficulty, but it's important to recognize that the support shown to him by his parents allows him to experiment with growing up or acting childish with relatively few consequences. In short, if August is feeling lonely and desires cuddles or affirmation from either parent, they're always there to give that to him—and they're similarly ready and willing to give him space and more adult treatment, as when Mom agrees to buy him a plain duffel bag to replace his "childish" Star Wars one for the camping trip. Other children, however, don't have nearly this degree of parental involvement or support. Most of August and Via's friends note feeling happier, safer, or more at home in the presence of August's mom and dad than they do with their own parents. This in turn corresponds with those characters not having such a safe space in their own homes in which to experiment with their emotions or their desires. This is particularly true in the case of Miranda , whose parents are in the middle of a nasty divorce. She even takes the opportunity at summer camp to pretend that August is her brother and to talk about August and Via's parents as though they're her own. She does this so that she can begin to invent the kind of care and support that she doesn't have in her actual life, reinforcing clearly that, even as adolescents naturally draw away from their parents, they overwhelmingly still need a stable, guiding, adult force in their lives.

While August's parents are written as being representative of good, supportive, and protective parents, Wonder also briefly explores the consequences of having "bad" parents, most notably in the case of Julian . Though August never meets Julian's parents, one chapter consisting of parents' emails with Mr. Tushman exposes Julian's parents to be narrow-minded, self-important people: they insist that it's "too much to ask" to expect students at Beecher Prep to have to be in class with August, and they make the case that August shouldn't even be allowed to attend Beecher Prep, as "it's not an inclusion school." This demonstrates a shocking and horrific fear of difference, which then shows up in how Julian treats August. Julian is rude, cruel, and does whatever he can to make August feel unwelcome—behaviors the novel suggests he learned from his parents. Further, because Julian never seems to improve in this regard even as he attends school with teachers who are overwhelmingly kind and welcoming to August, it also indicates that teachers have comparatively less power to influence their students' core values, and even less power when those core values are espoused by their students' parents.

Especially because the novel overwhelmingly portrays children as being much like their parents, Wonder paints parents as having an immense amount of influence on what kind of people their children become. In this way, the novel stands as a testament to the power of what can happen when parents and teachers model kindness, tolerance, and community, as well as a cautionary tale against modeling selfishness and superiority to the impressionable children that look up to them.

Parenting and Guidance ThemeTracker

Parenting and Guidance Quotes in Wonder

What's cool about really little kids is that they don't say stuff to try to hurt your feelings, even though sometimes they do say stuff that hurts your feelings. But they don't actually know what they're saying. Big kids, though: they know what they're saying.

Maybe no one got the Darth Sidious thing, and maybe Julian didn't mean anything at all. But in Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith , Darth Sidious's face gets burned […] His skin gets all shriveled up and his whole face just kind of melts.

I peeked at Julian and he was looking at me. Yeah, he knew what he was saying.

After you've seen someone else going through that, it feels kind of crazy to complain over not getting the toy you had asked for, or your mom missing a school play. I knew this even when I was six years old.

"I love Auggie very, very much," she said softly […] "But he has many angels looking out for him already, Via. And I want you to know that you have me looking out for you."

I wonder how many nights she's stood outside his door. And I wonder if she's ever stood outside my door like that.

"Okay, that's fair," I said. "But it's not a contest about whose days suck the most, Auggie. The point is we all have to put up with the bad days. Now, unless you want to be treated like a baby the rest of your life, or like a kid with special needs, you just have to suck it up and go."

"Jack, sometimes you don't have to mean to hurt someone to hurt someone. You understand?"

it's not even like they know they're being mean, she adds. they were just scared. i mean, let's face it, his face is a little scary, right?

he seems too small to be walking around by himself, somehow. then i think how i was that young when i was taking the subway by myself. way too young. i'm going to be an overprotective dad someday, i know it. my kids are going to know i care.

"Auggie!" Mom yelled. "That's not true!"

"Stop lying to me, Mom!" I shrieked. "Stop treating me like a baby! I'm not retarded! I know what's going on!"

So I went to my bed and put on my pajamas without anyone telling me to and put the night-light on and turned the light off and crawled into the little mountain of stuffed animals I had left on my bed earlier.

"Daddy, can you please not call me Auggie Doggie anymore?" I whispered in Dad's ear.

Dad smiled and nodded and gave me a thumbs-up.

"There are always going to be jerks in the world, Auggie," she said, looking at me. "But I really believe, and Daddy really believes, that there are more good people on this earth than bad people, and the good people watch out for each other and take care of each other. Just like Jack was there for you. And Amos. And those other kids."

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Wonder: book review (B1)

Wonder is a book about an ordinary boy called Auggie who looks very different from most boys his age.

Instructions

Do the preparation exercise first and then read the article. If you find it too easy, try the next level. If it's too difficult, try the lower level. After reading, do the exercises to check your understanding.

Preparation

What’s wonder about.

Wonder tells the story of August, a ten-year old boy who lives with his parents and sister in New York. August, or Auggie as his family call him, is an ordinary boy in many ways. He rides a bike and likes playing with his Xbox. But Auggie was born with deformities of the face and looks very different from other kids. At the start of the book, he tells us 'My name is August. I won’t describe what I look like. Whatever you’re thinking, it’s probably worse.' Auggie’s appearance shocks people. People look at him for a long time or sometimes they look away as soon as they see him.

Auggie’s had 27 operations on his face and has spent a lot of time in hospital. His mother has taught him at home, but now that he’s ten, she thinks he should go to school. At first, Auggie hates the idea of school and doesn’t want to go. He worries that other kids will look at him strangely or call him horrible names, but his parents persuade him to visit a school and meet the headteacher. After the visit, Auggie decides that, yes, he will go to school.

Like many kids, Auggie is really anxious on the first day. Because of his face, nobody wants to sit next to him and he notices other kids looking and talking about him behind their hands. Fortunately, he makes friends with Jack, a boy in his class, and Summer, a girl he chats with at lunch. But after surviving the first day, Auggie soon learns that his classmates are saying they will catch 'the plague' if they touch him. Wonder tells the story of Auggie’s first year at school and how other kids treat him. It’s a difficult year with good and bad times. But towards the end, a frightening and dramatic event at a school camp changes things completely.

Is it a good book?

Wonder is an excellent book that tells a moving and inspiring story. It’s fast-moving and gripping too. I found myself reading it on the bus even if I only had time to read a couple of pages. It appeals to all age groups and is very popular with teenagers and adults. Auggie is a very likeable central character. He’s got a good sense of humour, so the book is both funny and sad at times. It’s a fascinating story about a regular kid who’s living in a world that’s not used to people who look different.

One great thing about the book is that it’s told from the point of view of different characters. We begin with Auggie, but then the story is told by his sister, Via, and his schoolmates till we come back to Auggie at the end. This works really well as we find out what it’s like for Via to have a younger brother who takes a lot of her parents’ attention. We also learn how Jack is left out of the 'popular group' at school, just because he is Auggie’s friend.

A bestseller

Wonder is RJ Palacio’s first novel. On her website, she explains that the idea for the book came to her after seeing a girl with facial deformities on the street one day. Wonder has been a bestseller in the United States and has won several awards. Many schools are using it to start discussions about bullying, friendship and being different. A film version is being made, and many, including me, are looking forward to seeing what RJ Palacio writes next.

Robin Newton

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Review: Wonder by R.J. Palacio

I originally listened to Wonder on Audible, within months of publication, and despite the transatlantic divide, I saw myself vividly in ten-year-old August Pullman. I saw my loving middle-class family, and the sibling who felt both isolated and penned-in by the fallout of my condition. I felt my school anxiety, and the warmth of a small knot of friends, and the embarrassment of targeted bullying. I was thrilled that Auggie even had the same favourite films as I did.

And all of this was shown through the lens of disfigurement, through the eyes of a boy (in the chapters narrated by Auggie) whose eyelids were perhaps sewn at the margins just like mine, who might have my underbite. A character who would know what it’s like to put effort into speaking clearly every time you meet a new person, in case they think the movement of your lips equals your intelligence. All this, written by a woman with no direct experience of disfigurement. This was astounding to me; that someone who, in the end, could never know what it’s actually like seemed to have gotten it so “right.”

I knew the importance of owning one’s own story then, but that conviction only grew in the following years. And I would be reminded that many disabled, disfigured people don’t have the support system Auggie and I have, aren’t able to access the necessary healthcare, aren’t so safely white (or read as such). I’d discover that I’m not the comfortably cisgender boy I thought I was, the boy I thought I saw reflected in Auggie Pullman. In the time since I first read Wonder , my understanding of my disfigurement, and the world it occupies, has transformed. How will I now read and receive what was the most personally representative book of my life?

For starters, Auggie doesn’t have an underbite; in fact, he’s described as having the opposite, though his pronounced overbite does present similar difficulties with eating. Just like me, Auggie had to learn to keep his tongue inside his mouth.

On her website , author R.J. Palacio concedes that – if pushed – she would identify Auggie’s dominant anomaly as Treacher-Collins syndrome, with a cleft lip/palate, and numerous “medical mysteries” as described in the book. It’s these mysteries that rang the first small alarm bells upon re-reading; they seem only to be there to justify the title (inspired by a Natalie Merchant song ) and aren’t described in detail. The 2017 film has confirmed Auggie’s Treacher-Collins, but Palacio’s woolliness on specifying the condition has always seemed weird to me.

Auggie’s sister Via has an interest in genetics, and wants to go into the field to help future Auggies. Whether “help” means improving quality of life or totally preventing Treacher-Collins is an important distinction, one which is unfortunately left unclear. In a culture where genetic conditions are so often seen as problems to be solved by what amount to eugenicist “cures,” that clarity would be useful. But Via’s future intent remains a mystery, as do those aspects of Auggie’s condition previously described.

Besides August’s condition, Wonder is a very beige, cisheteronormative, upper-middle-class and surprisingly abled book. Throughout, August is defined as “not disabled.” He may look different – horrifically so to some – but as the book keeps insisting, deep down he has the same abilities as his family and friends. When a concerned mother writes to the director of Beecher Prep’s middle school, questioning Auggie’s fast-tracked admittance, the director shuts down her talk of the boy’s “special needs.” This moment is admittedly framed by good intentions, with Beecher’s director defending Auggie’s place at the school against a busybody, but when the disabilities of Auggie’s disfigurement are downplayed through the book, it certainly rubbed me a little wrong.

This seems like a missed opportunity, especially as August is the only visible disfigured/disabled character in the book – which, to me, is sad. Auggie has only abled, “normal” people around him; nobody alike to share experiences with, no mentor (or peer) with whom to explore what it means to be disfigured, or to discuss whether disfigurement is a disability. (I believe it is, per the social model .) Via’s boyfriend confides in the reader about his own nervous tics, but he doesn’t describe their origin, nor does he share any real page-time with August.

There are some issues beyond this as well. To borrow and bastardise Via’s solar system metaphor, they gravitate around the good intentions of the author. It’s necessary here to restate that R.J. Palacio doesn’t have direct experience with disfigurement; as far as anyone has been made aware through interviews, no one in her immediate family or peer group is disfigured. Rather, Palacio reports that the impetus to write Wonder came from an incident in which her young son reacted poorly to seeing a disfigured child. After removing her children from the situation immediately, Palacio retrospectively wished that she could have instead utilised the moment to teach –

[Hello, it’s those alarm bells again]

– perhaps engaging with the disfigured child. The spectre of the unpaid educational labour disabled people are expected to provide to abled allies rears its head.

And the question of how allies treat the marginalized is present throughout the most problematic narrative thread in Wonder . Since August’s birth, Via has dealt with the fallout of his needs, and become independent while Auggie is forever fussed over. At the same time, she puzzles over another kind of independence, from her estranged best friend Miranda, who herself has been almost another sister to Auggie. When Miranda’s point-of-view chapters arrive, Auggie’s true place between her and Via becomes apparent.

Around new friends at summer camp, Miranda talks about August as if he were her own brother in order to garner sympathy and the resultant social capital. Meanwhile, Via rejects the definition of “sister of a kid with a birth defect” that Miranda so readily exploits.

All comes to a head when Via and Miranda’s school puts on a play. When cast as Miranda’s understudy, Via refuses to tell her parents, in a bid to keep August away from the one part of her life he doesn’t impact. After a change of heart and circumstances, the Pullman parents and Auggie do end up attending the play. When she sees this, Miranda makes the last-minute decision to feign illness, allowing Via the opportunity to take the limelight, thus engineering Via’s reconciliation with her brother. Honourable, though not necessarily intentional. And what if August had known the full extent of how both Miranda and Via used and viewed him? I think he’d be well within his rights to feel significantly hurt, and to not forgive as easily as he does throughout the rest of the book.

Because, however hurt Auggie may be by someone, he almost always seems willing to shrug it off. More than once, a character who has done Auggie wrong will assume forgiveness, perhaps after a traumatic event has brought them back together, or laughter has thawed the ice. And each time, Auggie is quick to agree and move on. Perhaps the authorial justification is that Auggie doesn’t like dwelling on things. That’s fair enough, but it does telegraph something of a lack of agency.

Once noticed, this lack of agency is a glaring issue. Stuff happens to Auggie; we see him make choices to be more independent, when circumstances call for it, but his most significant fulfilment of agency is to shut out a friend. (This is also the one time when he doesn’t immediately forgive.) Active, positive actions aren’t Auggie’s to take. Plenty happens to him that is positive – he makes friends, he earns respect, he experiences a “seismic shift” in his social standing following a climactic incident at camp – but it is rarely his decision or intended action which causes it.

There are things that make me sad about Wonder. I wish these opportunities had been recognised and utilized. Auggie’s lack of real agency. The fact that Via and Miranda never truly examine their own actions, and how they treat their brother/“brother.” The marginalised identities which could have enriched the story, but instead will have to wait for the next kidlit book about disfigurement – and when will that be?

There are also things I find suspect or distasteful, such as the book’s meta-campaign “Choose Kind,” inspired by the monthly precepts (inspirational phrases) Auggie’s English teacher hands out. There’s anger in Wonder , mostly borne of pre-teen moodiness, but what does the edict “when given the choice between being right and being kind, choose kind” do, except stifle the valid and necessary anger of oppressed people?

It’s not as if R.J. Palacio is utterly unaware of power dynamics; she chose not to give bully Julian a narrative section in Wonder to avoid “[giving]a bully a platform” (although she would later go on to write a short story from Julian’s perspective). She has also said that she most relates to the character of Charlotte, “a good girl, but she’s not quite brave enough to act on her good instincts.” (Both of these insights come from the very informative FAQ page on Palacio’s Wonder website.)

I think what makes me saddest is the fact that Palacio didn’t have direct knowledge to draw from, due to the lack of a significant disfigured person in her life.

Moving beyond the disfigurement representation, it’s important to note that the Pullmans are a (likely) white, reasonably well-off family, living in “a brick townhouse in North River Heights, the hippie-stroller capital of upper- upper Manhattan.” Outside the text, Palacio does concede that Auggie’s father probably “[works]long hours to try and pay for all the medical bills not covered by insurance,” but the fact that no such bills are agonised over within Wonder suggests a fairly easy life. Beecher Prep, by its nature, is attended mostly by students like the Pullmans, whose parents can afford the tuition fees. August has a friend who is probably one of the few exceptions, but it’s never explicitly clear.

And this world seems unconcerned, at best, with race. There are several students with names that suggest they’re kids of colour, but none of their identities are touched upon. More promising are the nods to Isabel Pullman’s Brazilian heritage – August is clearly named after her father, Agosto, and her parents’ travels are described – but hopes that it’s a mixed-race family are dashed when August visits the home of his friend Summer. On seeing a photo of her late father (whose ethnicity is left unclear), Summer confirms her own mixed heritage, and there’s certainly no sense of kinship from Auggie.

For a book published so recently, set in New York City, it is also sad – and somewhat surprising – that there are no nods to LGBTQIA identities. The one (upsetting) exception is a character’s use of “your boyfriend” as a pejorative against an antagonist late in the story.

For all the neglected intersections of identity mourned above, Wonder remains an engaging, enjoyable book. R.J. Palacio’s ten-year-old voices are consistently believable, as are those of her slightly older narrators. The journey of the narrative is satisfying; every major character learns something important about themselves and the world they inhabit.

I still love Wonder , about as much as I did when I first read it. I just want it to be better, so I can evangelise it everywhere, like I used to. Because despite its flaws, Wonder is an engaging, heart-rending story about disfigurement, and the world needs those books.

Perhaps when/if I do see Wonder the film, I’ll write more about it, but for now, you can easily find Twitter threads I’ve made on the subject. More importantly, I want to link to a couple of pieces by others with facial disfigurements/visible differences. First, from American writer Ariel Henley, this article on how the film exploits facial difference , and an Atlantic review of the film , also from Ariel. Finally, I want to share this exhaustive master-post from Australian writer Carly Findlay which covers pretty much every angle of concern about the film.

Thank you for reading these pieces and mine, and I hope that you’ll remember to prioritise and support voices of disfigurement/visible difference, when our lives and livelihoods get thrust into the spotlight.

About Author

Mike Moody is a 27-year-old Disfigured trans woman living in the UK. She makes music and writes when executive function and inspiration (in that order) allow, and takes semi-regular trips to Florida to be with her girlfriend, where she is too hot in the summer and just right in the winter. Mike tweets @guysmiley22 , probably a little too much for her mental health.

26 Comments

Thank you so much, Mike.

Thank you Mike for a thoughtful review of this beautiful and yet challenging title. The thing that struck me in reading it was how easily August’s classmates understood him. In the past I taught a fairly wide variety of students in special education in the US. A few of them had facial disfigurements as part of other medical conditions and I taught a student who was recovering from severe burns over much of his body. What I found the disfigured students struggled with the most was being understood in conversation by their peers. Because they didn’t always produce the anticipated facial expression to accompany their speech their peers tended to misread their intentions, their tone, their mood. This was particularly true of the child with substantial burn scars over most of his face. I’m not disfigured myself, so perhaps this was just the issue most apparent to me as a teacher. And maybe I’m off base entirely. Still I had my hesitations from the beginning because the book seemed to overlook such a central issue. I’m an indie bookseller and I do book talks for teachers all the time. I’ll be sure to point them in the direction of this review when Wonder comes up. Thank you for being so thoughtful and thorough in your critique.

HI Mike, Let me start off by saying you did a very good job at being thorough and making it easy to understand what the story was about, especially for someone like me who hasn’t read it yet. I have heard many good things about this book. Just from your critique I read that it talks about children with disabilities or disfigurements and how it is important for students to treat one another the same no matter what how someone looks or acts. They deserve the same respect as others. I think I would probably really love this book because I am currently going to school for teaching and I believe this is an issue we still have because sometimes individuals don’t truly understand why someone was born the way they were or whatever the case is but to teach that it is important to respect everyone and treat them the same as you would want to be treated. Thank you for your critique and I look forward to reading this book.

I am really impressed by your expressions. Actually, I feel the people who are deformed on their faces do not want that. Deformities can be genetic or accidental. More than that, disfigured people always need someone who can understand and can share with them. However, the way people around treat disfigured people makes them difficult to interact with. Many people will tend to misunderstand or isolate people who have deformed faces. That will create a big gap between people. I am really grateful, and I am sure I will find and read this book.

I really enjoyed your detailed review of this inspiring yet thought-provoking title, “Wonder”. In your review several thinks stuck out to me. In the before part of your review you talked about how relatable you felt to ten-year-old August Pullman. You discussed in detail how you felt the pressures of meeting new people and them thinking because your speech may be delayed that they would judge your intelligence from this. I wonder, is the pressure still high when you meet people? Has your reading of this book ‘Wonder’, gave you more confidence to mingle with others? You also talked about how the author, R.J. Palacio was a woman who never experienced disfigurement, but actually got the character right. Why do you think this is? Do you think she knew or shadowed someone to really capture the essence for the character? These are some questions that I have after reading your very insightful review. Also, you talked about how easy it was for Auggie’s friends to understand him. I feel like the author did fluff a lot of what in reality would not happen. In the real world August would not have been understood so quickly if at all by peers that were not like him. Your review has really give me lots of insight from the book perspective. Most of your questions and thoughts throughout your after part of your review, has me also pondering the same questions. I saw the movie and I am going to read the book very soon to make comparisons. I thought the movie was amazing! I didn’t realize that the character in the movie wasn’t a disfigured person in real life. Thank you Mike for your review and I hope that you change your mind about watching the movie!

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I know this was written a while back, but unfortunately R.J Palacio’s website doesn’t seem to be working now.

I think that is article was written quite well. This my first time hearing a review on this story and I think you raise some very good points. You are definitely right. The author should’ve included more information as it pertains to Auggie’s condition. However, I think that one of the reasons why they left it up in the air may have been for the readers to explore and do some personal research. Another thing that I found interesting was the idea that Auggie is from a high-middle class family. I wonder what his life would’ve been like if he were from a lower class. I know his access to schools would be much more limited and that may affect the reactions from his peers and I also think that he wouldn’t have access to the best medical resources. I have not yet read or seen Wonder but I think that it does start a conversation on the physical disfiguration known as Treacher-Collins. I think that the next best step would be to create a film that would focus on someone who actually has the condition, or like you said, cast someone in a movie that already has the condition as opposed to using prosthetics for the actors.

Mike, Your critique of this book was spot on. This book has been read by all the teenagers in my house and they all love it. They are on Auggie’s side and don’t understand why people are so cruel. They have seen many child with various disabilities and see them as no different from themselves. It’s been one of the great benefits of me working in the special education field. I try to teach my own kids and the kids in my classroom to be accepting of all people and they’re differences.

As a future teacher i found this book very interesting, especially it being targeted for middle schoolers. This book deals with something all students can relate too, whether that’s being new to a school, being bullied by classmates, or other related themes that go on in school. Overall this book portrays plenty if positive messages. It is a good book to share with students, the message is all about being kind to one another. Everyone needs someone to give them unconditional love.

I read wonder about 2 years ago! I will admit it made me cry tears of frustration and later joy. I could vividly feel and see what it was like to be each character in the story through the authors words. At the time I was working at a middle school and it was a school wife project for everyone to read the book. It was so touching and heart warming to see the other students reactions to the book. I was working with a student that has Pierre Robins syndrome and he had to wear a trach in order to breathe. I always felt protective of him when we walked in the halls or outside because I could see the stares from parents and other students and I didn’t want the student to fall under the gaze of those looks. Deep down I know I could never protect him from society and he has been living with this condition his whole life. But my nurturing soul couldn’t help it. After reading this book I could see hat more student started giving him high fives in the hall. It was just very warming. August is heroic in my eyes. I’m so glad he had the support from his family in friends each step of the way.

I read Wonder about 2 years ago while working in the school system and it was a school wide assignment to read Wonder and complete a project. All around the halls we had the saying “choose Kindness”.I will admit it made cry tears of joy and frustration. I could vividly feel and imagine what it was like for each character in the story through the authors words. At the time I was working with a young man that was born with Pierre Robins syndrome and had to wear a trach in order to breathe. I always felt protective of him when we walked in the halls or outside because I could see the stares from the parents and other student. I wanted to protect him from falling under gazes of concern or just curiosity. Deep down I knew I could never protect him from society. I think he may have coped with the looks better than me being that he’s been living with the condition his whole life. All the characters in Wonder were heroic to me. I could see how things shifted in the school after reading this book! I noticed the student I was working with kind of had a little more confidence.

Your review of this book definitely made me want to read it and learn more about August Pullman. Disabilities come in many shapes and forms and as a special education teacher, I love to read and learn more about others perspectives regarding any kind of disabilities and how if effects them personally. I see there was a movie made about this book and I’m looking forward to seeing that as well!

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I loved you review. I haven’t read the book or watched the movie, however you have made ask my self some questions about the books i am buying for my children. My children will not learn about all the wonderful people in the world if I don’t expose them to them.

Mike this was an amazing review of this reading! I definitely agree that the author should’ve included more information about the characters condition. Another thing that I found interesting was the idea that Auggie is from a high-middle class family his access to schools would be much more limited and that may affect the reactions from his classmates and I also think that he wouldn’t have access to the best medical resources which would have unfortunately made his life even more difficult but ultimately more relatable for some readers. I completely agree that they should cast someone in a movie that already has the condition as opposed to using prosthetics and for the actors.

I have not read this book; however, I would like to read about how disabilities appproached in this book. I want to be sensitive to children that may experience bullying or be outcast by their peers. I have a nephew that has no hands and no feet. His siblings are very aware of this and are quite protective. They do not hesitate to stare down a person who may be whispering and pointing at their brother. Nothing stops my nephew from learning to do whatever he wants to do academically or physically. I would hope this book would point out the importance of family support of children with abilities that may be different from other children.

Thank you for this thoughtful and very detailed book review. I am studying to become an elementary teacher and learning about children with different disabilities is very important to me. This book sounds like it would make me cry. Bullying in school by your peers is not easy to deal with, however, Wonder has many positive messages we can all relate to. I can’t wait to read the book and see the movie.

Mike, you did a great job with this review. I have read and watched the movie and I loved them both. This was actually the first book I ever read about a child with a disability. It made me realize that there aren’t many books available that show a child with a disability going through there day to day lives. I think that this book is important for kids to read because it gives them a different perspective on how to treat people. I do think that the author could have gone into more detail about the condition but overall I would say they did a great job. I also loved how they not only showed the boys life but also how his condition affected his entire family.

Thank you for the critique of the book. I really enjoyed your thorough and detailed review that would definitely help people struggling have a better understanding of it. I think all students should be required to read this book because it really shows how everyone should be treated equality no matter what. This kid struggled getting picked on by his fellow classmates just by the way he looks. It really does raise awareness with disabilities and bullying so all schools should have it required to read around the time of middle school. The book really shows that everyone should have love, kindness, and respect with one another because at the end of the day you don’t know what the person is going through.

Thank you for this post! My daughter has CHARGE syndrome, and has a small eye ( microphthalmia ) as well as vision and hearing loss, short stature, and developmental delay. She has always fought to fit in, and she is struggling really hard in 8th grade. We have all read Wonder, and watched the movie as a family. She can really relate to Auggie, and I think her brother and sister can relate to Via. Thanks again for perspective, I really enjoyed it!

What is this comment section? What is happening? And I remember reading the interview where she talks about her ‘inspiration’ for the book in a kids magazine when I was way younger. It never quite sat perfect with me. And I would have been soooo bugged about the ‘helping kids like Auggie’ thing when it’s never clarified how she wants to help/””””””””help””””””” (flashbacks to when I tried to convince my entire biology class that using genetic engineering to prevent autism and ADHD wouldn’t actually be a good thing until the only other kid in said class with ADHD finally put me out of my misery and asked the teacher to change the subject. For context, at that point I don’t really think anyone else in the class knew there were kids with ADHD in said class).

Hi Mike, thanks for the review. I am a woman who has lived with a disfigurement since birth, and I had a really hard time getting through Wonder. What a perfect example of the very concept of inspiration porn. I am glad you are injecting some much-needed nuance into the conversation, it’s exhausting to hear people defend this book and act like it’s the perfect work of fiction.

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Wonder leans on its great cast to tell an engaging, warmhearted family story

Jacob Tremblay, Julia Roberts, and Owen Wilson star in a movie based on the best-selling novel.

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The old maxim exhorting us to “be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle” is the thesis of Wonder — it’s even quoted at the end of the film — and Wonder handles it well, following a boy named August Pullman, his family, and his friends through a year of change in their lives.

August, nicknamed Auggie, was born with a chromosome condition that causes facial deformities, and after 27 surgeries he still looks noticeably different from other kids his age. His perspective on his life is certainly the core of the movie, and that’s part of what made the novel it’s based on a best-seller.

But Wonder doesn’t focus exclusively on Auggie, and that’s its biggest strength. The film’s bigger story is that even though Auggie’s family — his parents, his sister, even his dog — has bent their lives around his, they, too, are dealing with their own struggles. So are Auggie’s friends, and even his enemies.

While the movie’s premise feels prone to the maudlin, it’s ultimately quite poignant; Wonder is a family-oriented tale in which people make mistakes in the way they treat one another, but learn and grow in a way that doesn’t feel condescending to the film’s younger audience. Importantly, Wonder is also a movie about a young boy with a condition that makes him stand out from his peers — but it doesn’t valorize or patronize him by painting him as a saint. It respects Auggie too much for that.

Wonder is a sensitive exploration of the many ways people struggle in ordinary life

The movie picks up as Auggie ( Jacob Tremblay ) is getting ready to attend school for the first time, a new fifth-grader who’s been homeschooled thus far. His mother Isabel ( Julia Roberts ), his father Nate ( Owen Wilson ), and his sister Via ( Izabela Vidovic ) are all supportive and encouraging, but he’s not convinced it’s a step he is ready to take, and when they walk him to school through the park on his first day, he’s reticent to take off his beloved astronaut helmet.

Thanks to the school’s kindly headmaster, Mr. Tushman ( Mandy Patinkin ), Auggie has already met three of his classmates: chatty Charlotte ( Elle McKinnon ); quiet Jack Will ( Noah Jupe ); and two-faced Julian ( Bryce Gheisar ), who performs niceness around adults but harbors a serious mean streak. He soon meets another classmate, the immediately kind-to-him Summer ( Millie Davis ), and likes his energetic teacher Mr. Browne ( Daveed Diggs ), but school is still difficult for Auggie. He knows the other kids are looking at him, even if nobody is being mean. Every day makes him question whether he’ll ever be able to feel like he truly fits in.

Owen Wilson, Jacob Tremblay, Izabela Vidovic, and Julia Roberts in Wonder

His sister Via, meanwhile, is in high school and discovering that her lifelong best friend Miranda ( Danielle Rose Russell ) has changed over the summer. She joins theater and makes a new friend, Justin ( Nadji Jeter ), but simultaneously grapples with feeling as if she’s in second place regarding her parents’ affections — something she’s grown used to, given Auggie’s great need for care and attention.

Via’s story is told from her perspective, which adds layers to our understanding of her, and Wonder delves into the perspectives of other characters, too: Jack Will, Miranda, Isabel, and even Julian. It turns out that learning about other people’s fears, wants, hurts, and joys can make everything those people do — the bad stuff and the good stuff — make more sense. And as the school year goes on, they all grow in their maturity and relationships with one another, and in their ability to experience empathy.

The film leans on strong characters and a strong cast to tell a warm, meaningful story

Wonder succeeds largely on the strength of its cast, which includes a bevy of stellar performers led by Tremblay’s sensitive portrayal of Auggie as a complicated kid who worries about his classmates but sometimes yells at his parents and sister, too.

Julia Roberts, Owen Wilson, Izabela Vidovic, Jacob Tremblay, and Danielle Rose Russell in Wonder

But it’s also a tricky story to tell without tipping over into manipulation. Director Stephen Chbosky ( The Perks of Being a Wallflower ) adapted R.J. Palacio’s source novel into a screenplay with Steve Conrad and Jack Thorne , and it neatly avoids becoming a didactic after-school special about why it’s important for people to be kind by letting the story work as a character piece, full of humor and warmth and conflict and fun. Sometimes the adults deliver speeches about growing up and dealing with life, but those speeches always seem to flow organically from their characters.

Of course, Wonder is still a moderately sentimental film. And as a movie called Wonder that’s aimed at families, that characteristic is practically in its DNA. But it earns the sentiment. Auggie struggles, and so do his parents, and his sister, and his friends. And so do we all. A bit of kindness is never out of place. And these days, it seems more important than ever.

Wonder opens in theaters on November 17.

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– Entertainment Analysis and Reviews

Wonder Book Review: A Heartwarming Tale of Kindness and Empathy

“Wonder” is a novel by R.J. Palacio that tells the story of a young boy named August Pullman, who was born with a facial deformity that has made him the subject of much attention and ridicule. The book explores themes of acceptance, empathy, and kindness in a way that is both heartwarming and thought-provoking. “Wonder” has become a beloved modern classic and has inspired a generation of readers to embrace differences and treat others with compassion. In this article, we’ll dive deeper into the plot, writing style, characters, themes, and overall impact of “Wonder” to understand why it has captured the hearts and minds of so many.

The book wonder Summary of the Plot:

Review of the writing style:, wonder book analysis of the characters:, discussion of themes:, overall evaluation of book wonder:.

“Wonder” is the story of August “Auggie” Pullman, a ten-year-old boy who was born with a facial deformity that has caused him to be homeschooled his entire life. When Auggie’s parents enroll him in a mainstream school, he must navigate the challenges of fitting in with his classmates and dealing with bullying and exclusion. Along the way, Auggie makes new friends, learns to cope with his condition, and teaches others about the power of acceptance and kindness. The book is divided into several sections, each narrated by a different character, providing a unique perspective on Auggie’s experiences.

Some of the key events in the book include:

Auggie’s first day of school, where he meets classmates who are both welcoming and hostile
Auggie’s friendship with Summer, who stands up for him and shows him kindness
Auggie’s struggles with bullying, including incidents where he is physically threatened
The fallout of Auggie’s classmates learning about his facial deformity
The school’s winter concert, where Auggie’s classmates perform a song in his honor
Auggie’s growth and development throughout the school year as he learns to navigate his relationships and embrace his differences

Palacio’s writing is also effective in creating a vivid and empathetic portrayal of Auggie and his experiences. The descriptions of Auggie’s facial deformity are detailed enough to convey the severity of his condition, but not so graphic as to be overwhelming or unsettling for younger readers. Additionally, the use of humor and lighthearted moments throughout the book provides a balance to the more serious themes and adds to the overall appeal of the story.

One of the strengths of “Wonder” is its memorable and relatable characters, who bring depth and nuance to the story. Some of the key characters in the book include:

August “Auggie” Pullman: The protagonist and central character of the book, Auggie is a young boy with a facial deformity that has made him the target of bullying and ridicule. Throughout the book, Auggie displays resilience, kindness, and a strong sense of self, as he learns to navigate the challenges of fitting in with his peers.
Via Pullman: Auggie’s older sister, Via is a compassionate and loyal character who supports her brother but also struggles with her own feelings of neglect and isolation. Via’s chapters in the book provide a perspective on the impact of Auggie’s condition on his family and the challenges they face as a result.
Jack Will: Auggie’s classmate and friend, Jack initially struggles to accept Auggie due to his appearance but ultimately learns the importance of empathy and kindness. Jack’s journey throughout the book is a testament to the power of growth and self-reflection.
Julian Albans: Auggie’s main antagonist, Julian is a bully who actively targets Auggie and spreads rumors about him. Julian’s actions and motivations are complex, reflecting the ways in which insecurity and fear can manifest as cruelty and exclusion.

At its core, “Wonder” is a story about empathy, kindness, and the power of acceptance. Some of the key themes and messages in the book include:

Acceptance: “Wonder” explores the importance of accepting others, regardless of their appearance or differences. The book emphasizes the value of empathy and the ways in which we can all work to make the world a kinder and more inclusive place.
Bullying: Through Auggie’s experiences with bullying and exclusion, “Wonder” sheds light on the harmful effects of cruelty and the lasting impact it can have on individuals and communities. The book advocates for speaking up against bullying and standing up for those who are vulnerable.
Family and Relationships: “Wonder” also delves into the complex dynamics of family and relationships, particularly in the context of disability and chronic illness. The book portrays the ways in which love, support, and understanding can help individuals and families navigate difficult circumstances and emerge stronger on the other side.

“Wonder” is a heartwarming and thought-provoking book that offers a powerful message of empathy and kindness. While the book is primarily aimed at younger readers, it has resonated with audiences of all ages, and its themes and messages are relevant and valuable for everyone.

Some of the book’s strengths include:

Engaging and memorable characters: Palacio’s characters are well-drawn and memorable, each with their own distinct voice and perspective. Readers will find themselves invested in the characters’ journeys and rooting for their growth and development.
Nuanced exploration of themes: “Wonder” tackles complex and important themes with nuance and depth, offering a thought-provoking exploration of issues such as acceptance, bullying, and family relationships.
Inspiring and uplifting message: Ultimately, “Wonder” is a book about the power of kindness and empathy to overcome adversity and make the world a better place. Its inspiring and uplifting message is both timely and timeless.

“Wonder” is a beautifully written and deeply affecting book that offers a powerful message of empathy and acceptance. By exploring the experiences of Auggie and those around him, the book encourages readers to see beyond appearances and embrace our differences. Its themes and messages are both timely and timeless, and its impact on readers of all ages is undeniable.

Through its engaging characters, nuanced exploration of themes, and inspiring message, “Wonder” has earned its place as a modern classic. While there are some weaknesses to the book, its strengths far outweigh any criticisms. “Wonder” is a book that everyone should read, regardless of age or background, and its message of kindness and compassion is one that we can all strive to embody in our daily lives.

In the end, “Wonder” reminds us of the importance of empathy and the power of small acts of kindness. It is a book that encourages us to see the good in others and to work towards a more inclusive and accepting world. Whether you are a young reader or an adult, “Wonder” is a book that will touch your heart and inspire you to be a better person.

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Table for Two: Fictions

By Amor Towles Viking: 464 pages, $32 If you buy books linked on our site, The Times may earn a commission from Bookshop.org , whose fees support independent bookstores.

In three bestselling novels over eight years, Amor Towles has established himself as one of our most beloved contemporary novelists, exhibiting a chameleon-esque ability to inhabit vastly different settings and characters in a style uniquely his own, yet never the same from book to book.

He can write elegantly and persuasively from the point of view of young women looking to make their mark in 1938 Manhattan, as he did with “Rules of Civility,” in which the intricacies of New York society are revealed to be as Darwinian as any jungle. With “A Gentleman in Moscow,” Towles transported us to 1920s Russia, where an unapologetic aristocrat is exiled to a once-grand hotel by the incoming socialist regime, and eventually forced to join the ranks of the proletariat. And in 2021’s “The Lincoln Highway,” we follow four boys as they embark on an enthralling road trip that takes them from 1950s Nebraska to a New York City filled with danger and delight.

Towles’ latest is the superb short fiction collection “Table for Two.” For fans who worry that a volume comprising six stories and a novella won’t serve up the deeper delights of his novels, prepare to eat your hat: This may be Towles’ best book yet. Each tale is as satisfying as a master chef’s main course, filled with drama, wit, erudition and, most of all, heart.

Case in point: “Hasta Luego,” the third story in the volume, involves a chance encounter at LaGuardia Airport between a debonair political consultant named Jerry — who could be Towles’ twin — and an amiable schlub named Smitty. The two are thrown together for an evening in Manhattan when their flight is canceled and they are routed to a Midtown hotel for the night. After checking into their rooms, they repair to the bar for their meal, and the drinks flow.

For Jerry, the many tequila shots they consume into the wee hours pose only the risk that he may be hung over the next day. For Smitty, though, the stakes are much higher, something Jerry learns when he mistakenly leaves the bar with his new acquaintance’s phone and receives a series of concerned calls from Smitty’s wife, Jennifer. At first Jerry doesn’t see how Smitty’s dilemma should concern him, but by the time morning comes, Jerry’s studied nonchalance has evolved into something more like compassion. It’s a perfectly constructed story that had me in tears.

“Eve in Hollywood” is the book’s headliner. It’s a novella that occupies half the book’s 400-plus pages, and deserves every bit of that real estate. Its heroine, Eve Ross, will be recognizable to readers of “Rules of Civility” as its Holly Golightly-esque character whose life unalterably changes when a car accident in Manhattan leaves her scarred.

We’re fortunate that Towles wasn’t entirely done with the enigmatic Eve. In the new story’s opening scene — which is as tight and suspenseful as a Hitchcock film — she’s on a train out of New York bound for Chicago. The year is 1938, and the plan is to move back in with her parents in Indiana. But on a whim, when the conductor announces their approach to Union Station, Chicago, she decides to pay the extra fare and head to L.A. (Defeat averted!) There Eve takes center stage amid con men, retired cops, movie studio heads and such film stars as Olivia de Havilland, who is just being cast in “Gone With the Wind.”

If Eve was a semi-tragic figure in her first literary outing, here she has reclaimed the verve and spirit of which recent events might have robbed her. Her personality shines even brighter now, but the vulnerability is gone, and in its place is an unshakable belief in her own instincts and intelligence. She has become adept at sniffing out troublemakers, but she’s equally proficient at recognizing a kind soul when she sees one. This noir-ish tale of police corruption, exploitation and 1930s Beverly Hills elan is an ode to such hard-boiled crime masters as Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett, but with a feminist twist.

In the remaining stories — all set in Manhattan during various periods — desperate financial straits prompt desperate schemes, which most of the time leave the perpetrators with pockets emptier than when they started. Few salvage lessons from their failures, yet somehow, they remain sympathetic, even endearing. It’s true that Towles is a polymath whose knowledge of such varied topics as finance, art collection and classical music can feel a little daunting at times, but these stories make clear that, at heart, he is a humanist with deep compassion for even the faultiest among us.

While known primarily as a novelist, the author is not entirely new to short fiction: In 1989, his Stanford master’s thesis, “The Temptations of Pleasure,” was published in the Paris Review. After graduate school, the Boston native moved to New York City, where he shared an apartment in the East Village and chipped away at his goal of writing a novel. But when Towles finally finished that book, he deemed it unfit for publication. He stored it away. Broke and uncertain of his literary future, he turned to a career in investment banking, where he stayed put for 20 years.

On weekends, he worked on what became “Rules of Civility,” and when it was sold at auction to his publisher, he retired from banking and turned to writing full time. He describes his process as one that entails “Plan, design, outline,” which is a system that must work well for him, as his three books have sold 6 million copies. Towles has also said he jots down ideas for future books on index cards and keeps multiple notebooks in which he explores potential plotlines or character arcs. It should be no wonder that “Table for Two” could spring from such a treasure trove.

On the final page of “Hasta Luego,” as Jerry finally makes his way home after being stranded with Smitty, he reflects on his imperfections — that he doesn’t remember birthdays; feels compelled to complain whenever inconvenienced; allows his own priorities to come first, even when it comes to loved ones, including his wife. In fact, he realizes, he hasn’t been very considerate of his wife. But perhaps his rendezvous with Smitty was transformative: “As I stood there in the customer service line thinking of all that had just transpired, what I found myself hoping, what I found myself almost praying for, was that despite all my flaws, when the time came, as it surely would, my wife would be willing to fight for me as hard as Jennifer had fought for her husband.”

Leigh Haber is a writer, editor and publishing strategist. She was director of Oprah’s Book Club and books editor for O, the Oprah Magazine.

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A Critic’s Plea for Maximalism: ‘Crack Us Open Like Eggs’

In her first essay collection, Becca Rothfeld demonstrates that sometimes, more really is more.

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ALL THINGS ARE TOO SMALL: Essays in Praise of Excess , by Becca Rothfeld

The essays I love favor abundance over economy, performance over persuasion. Zadie Smith’s exemplary “Speaking in Tongues” juggles Barack Obama, Shakespeare, Shaw’s “Pygmalion,” Pauline Kael on Cary Grant, Thomas Macaulay on the Marquess of Halifax and her own “silly posh” speaking voice. Its modest argument, that “flexibility of voice leads to a flexibility in all things,” disappears into the spectacle of a nimble mind reveling in its omnivorous erudition.

The critic Becca Rothfeld’s first collection, “All Things Are Too Small: Essays in Praise of Excess,” is splendidly immodest in its neo-Romantic agenda — to tear down minimalism and puritanism in its many current varieties — but, like Smith, she makes her strongest case in her essays’ very form, a carnival of high-low allusion and analysis. Macaulay, Cary Grant, Obama and a posh accent? Rothfeld will see you and raise you: How about Simone Weil, Aristotle, “Troll 2,” Lionel Trilling, Hadewijch of Brabant (from whom she takes her title), serial killer procedurals, Proust and the Talmud? Not that she neglects Cary Grant; in an essay on love and equality, she filters a smart reading of “His Girl Friday” through the philosopher Stanley Cavell.

Cynthia Ozick (who ought to know) has favorably — and justly — compared Rothfeld to “the legendary New York intellectuals,” though Rothfeld lives in D.C., where she’s the nonfiction book critic for The Washington Post. She’s also an editor at The Point, a contributing editor at The Boston Review, and has published in The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books, The Nation, The Atlantic, The Baffler and The British Journal of Aesthetics. Of course she also has a Substack, and she declares on her website — which links to many splendid pieces not collected in this book — that she’s “perhaps delusionally convinced” she’ll eventually finish her Harvard Ph.D. dissertation in philosophy.

The costive and the envious might wonder if she’s spreading herself too thin, but Rothfeld’s rigor and eloquence suggest that in her case, as the title of one essay has it, “More Is More.” That piece begins in dispraise of “professional declutterers” such as Marie Kondo, whose aesthetic amounts to “solipsism spatialized,” and from whose dream houses “evidence of habitation — and, in particular, evidence of the body, with its many leaky indecencies — has been eliminated.”

But it soon morphs into dispraise of minimalist prose and the “impoverished non-novels” of fashionable writers including Jenny Offill, Ottessa Moshfegh and Kate Zambreno, whose “anti-narratives are soothingly tractable, made up of sentences so short that they are often left to complete themselves.”

Rothfeld, by contrast, leaves no phrase unturned. Her maximalist prose abounds in alliteration — “I recommend bingeing to bursting,” she writes, exhorting us to “savor the slivers of salvation hidden in all that hideous hunger” — as well as such old-school locutions as “pray tell” and “cannot but be offensive.” If these mannerisms sit uneasily next to her f-worded celebrations of sexuality, the dissonance is deliberate, and the unease is a matter of principle.

In “Wherever You Go, You Could Leave,” a takedown of “mindfulness,” Rothfeld reports that when she “decided to live” after a suicide attempt in her first year of college, she rejected the soothing blankness of meditation and concluded that “perturbation is a small price to pay for the privilege of a point of view.”

Despite her disdain for “professional opinion-havers” — among them the columnist Christine Emba, lately also of The Washington Post — she doesn’t mind laying down the law. In the book’s longest essay, “Only Mercy: Sex After Consent,” Rothfeld taxes Emba, author of the best-selling “Rethinking Sex,” with an “appalling incomprehension of what good sex is like.”

So, pray tell. “We should choke, crawl, spank, spew, and above all, surrender furiously, until the sheer smack of sex becomes its own profuse excuse for being.” Some sexual encounters, she continues, “crack us open like eggs” and “we should not be willing to live without them.”

We-shoulding is an occupational hazard of opinion-having, but we need take these pronouncements no more — and no less — to heart than Rothfeld’s paradoxical admiration for both the “beatifically stylized” films of Éric Rohmer and the “magnificently demented” oeuvre of David Cronenberg. Do we agree or disagree with her that Sally Rooney’s novels are overpraised, and that Norman Rush’s “Mating” is really “one of the most perfect novels of the past half century”?

More to the point, do we agree that “the aesthetic resides in excess and aimlessness,” and that extravagance is “our human due”? I’d say no to the former and yes to the latter, but who cares? What counts in these essays is the exhilarating ride, not the sometimes-dodgy destination. William Blake wrote that the road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom; Rothfeld might say that they’re one and the same. No argument there.

ALL THINGS ARE TOO SMALL : Essays in Praise of Excess | By Becca Rothfeld | Metropolitan Books | 287 pp. | $27.99

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Reforming the child welfare system should mean starting with kids

In ‘broken,’ jessica pryce shares stories from her career as a child welfare worker, with a focus on parents.

It is natural to assume that the author of a book on “transforming child protective services” would be interested in children. As such, the most surprising thing about “ Broken ,” Jessica Pryce’s memoir of her career in child welfare, is how disengaged she seems from kids and how best to promote their well-being.

There can be real tension between the needs of children and the rights of their parents, between protecting children and pathologizing different parenting styles or criminalizing poverty. Pryce is not the first expert to argue that the child welfare system places disproportionate scrutiny on Black families — and in particular, on Black mothers. One version of an engaging book on this subject might offer a comprehensive proposal for policy reform. Another might make the case for a family welfare system instead of one focused exclusively on children. Unfortunately, “Broken” is neither of these things. Structured as an awkward crossover between memoir and reported investigation, the result is a bizarre chronicle of self-congratulation rather than an effective contribution to child welfare debates.

By her own account, Pryce drifted into child welfare work, accepting a job as an investigator in the Department of Children and Families in Tallahassee after interning there during her social work master’s degree program. She writes that she felt no particular drive to interview families or children, zoned out during training, and focused on churning through case files, even knowing that as a result she “came off to parents as hurried and detached” and her investigations lacked depth. Until a dear friend was reported to CPS, Pryce writes, she never considered whether the requirements she imposed on parents were fair or helpful. It was not until she went back to graduate school a second time that Pryce says she became acquainted with the extensive data documenting the disproportionate involvement of Black families in the child welfare system, numbers she could have employed to bolster her anecdotes about how Black women experience being investigated.

Pryce borrows a chapter title from “Torn Apart,” Dorothy Roberts’s deeply researched 2022 cri de coeur against racism in the child welfare system, but doesn’t cite that volume or invoke Roberts’s arguments about how foster care affects children. It says a great deal about what kind of book “Broken” is that Ibram X. Kendi’s “How to Be an Anti-Racist” appears in Pryce’s footnotes three times, while Roberts, whose decades of work on child welfare ought to have been vital to this book, merits only a single mention. (Pryce makes no mention of — much less offers a rejoinder to — proponents of much more aggressive child welfare policies, such as Harvard University professor Elizabeth Bartholet, who argues for swifter termination of parental rights and speeded-up adoptions.)

Instead of drawing from academic literature, Pryce prides herself on using case studies to build her argument that the child welfare system unfairly penalizes conscientious parents. But the examples she’s chosen tend to work against those contentions.

Take the story of Madisen, whose mother, Didi, struggled with depression and homelessness. Didi left Madisen in the care of Erica, Madisen’s godmother and Pryce’s good friend. (Pryce writes in her introduction that she uses a mix of pseudonyms and real names throughout the book, though it’s often not clear which names are invented.) Though the arrangement was intended to be temporary, Didi eventually abandoned Madisen. Out of quite understandable grief and confusion, Madisen began acting out, and Erica began spanking her, ultimately escalating to holding Madisen down and hitting her with a belt.

To many readers, Madisen’s visible bruises might seem like a logical thing to investigate. Yet Pryce invokes Erica’s experience as evidence of the extreme unfairness of CPS to Erica. How awful and unfair that Pryce’s dear friend, a person who Pryce is sure is incapable of cruelty, could be investigated! What business is it of the state whether parents employ their “chosen form of discipline”?

In defense of Erica, Pryce suggests that 70 percent of American parents spank their children. But she never provides a citation for that figure, which is odd given that some evidence suggests that spanking is on the decline , and probably far less widespread than that figure would suggest. Nor does she spend a moment grappling with whether spanking is an effective form of discipline — many studies suggest it is not — or whether Erica’s escalating punishments of Madisen might have been a sign that they were both in crisis.

I can imagine that being investigated was humiliating and awful for Erica, whose feelings appear to be Pryce’s primary concern. But the story Pryce tells suggests that involvement with the child welfare system did help to straighten out a dreadful tangle. Didi’s parental rights were terminated (a development to which Pryce doesn’t muster much objection), and after Madisen was temporarily placed in foster care, Erica was able to adopt her goddaughter legally.

Then there’s the story of Jatoia and Lawrence, who underwent a harrowing investigation after their prematurely born son, Kenny, was horribly injured. Only years later, after both parents lost custody of both of their children and spent time in jail, did Lawrence finally acknowledge that he alone was responsible for Kenny’s injuries: While drunk and high, he dropped the baby outside, and then concealed the accident. Based on the information Pryce provides in “Broken,” it seems terribly unfair that Jatoia also lost her parental rights. But the person most responsible for that injustice isn’t the child welfare investigator who wanted to find out what happened to Kenny. It is Lawrence. If he’d acknowledged his role in Kenny’s injuries sooner, Jatoia would not have been unfairly tarred as an unfit mother, and their children might still be in the custody of one of their biological parents.

It’s also hard to understand why Pryce devotes so little of “Broken” to “blind removal,” an approach to removing children from their families for which she has been a major national advocate. This decision-making process, in which committees of child welfare workers make determinations without knowing a family’s race or ethnicity, or even names, has been adopted in multiple cities and states seeking to reduce racial disparities in their child welfare systems. This is arguably Pryce’s most significant contribution to her field. But perhaps discussing it more fully would have required her to wade into the debate about whether it actually works as intended, and whether “blind removal” is consistent with Pryce’s goal of persuading the child welfare system to see mothers as individuals working through complicated circumstances.

While Pryce tells readers that she was motivated by “a genuine desire to help children in some way,” “Broken” gives the impression that she has little interest in or connection to the specific kids whose stories appear fleetingly in its pages. Pryce reported her own sister to child protective services after witnessing her sister’s partner assault her — and bemoans the impact of that act on their relationship without exploring what happened to her sister’s children. In her telling, Pryce never bothered to find out what happened to the children she met during her first case as an intern, who were living in squalor, infected with ringworm and effectively parenting their baby brother.

Pryce shows no more care with the big questions that have long bedeviled much more serious books about the child welfare system. Writing about domestic violence, she notes that efforts to protect children may end up in tension with efforts to protect mothers. Rather than attempt to propose a balance, she asks, “Who is responsible for protecting whom? What is the prioritization of which victim?” and moves on.

She blithely excuses herself from the greatest problem of child welfare by writing: “There are some children who need immediate protection, some families who need state intervention, and some parents who need judicial accountability. Those types of cases are in the minority nationwide, and they constitute none of the Black mothers in this book.”

That kind of evasion isn’t fair to kids like Rob Henderson, whose recent memoir, “Troubled” recounts an early life with a mother who tied him to a chair so she could get high, a series of neglectful foster parents, and an adoption by a well-meaning mother and father whose marriage subsequently fell apart. It’s not fair to children like David Edwards, who was beaten to death by his parents, and whose murder became the subject of “The Book of David” (1996) , a serious investigation of the child welfare system by Richard J. Gelles.

Designing a child welfare system with the resources and flexibility to keep a child such as Madisen with a parental figure who is loving but overstretched; with the clarity and commitment to place Henderson for adoption sooner; and with policies that didn’t leave Edwards to be murdered by his parents is very, very hard. It takes “vulnerability and culpability,” as Pryce so proudly claims but does so little to demonstrate.

Alyssa Rosenberg writes about mass culture, parenting and gender for The Washington Post’s Opinions section.

Transforming Child Protective Services — Notes of a Former Caseworker

By Jessica Pryce

Amistad. 283 pp. $28.99

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Wonder by R.J. Palacio [BOOK REVIEW]
Wonder: a book review of a powerful children's novel
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Wonder Book Review
Our review: Parents say ( 57 ): Kids say ( 272 ): Auggie himself is a very convincing and poignant character -- definitely not just a device -- and his story is extremely moving and uplifting. Author R.J. Palacio writes Wonder in multiple voices, including Auggie's, some of his friends', and his sister's.
Wonder [Book Review]
Wonder [Book Review] October 27, 2017 ***This post contains Amazon affiliate links. ... This is the advice 10-year-old August Pullman receives from his parents on the first day of school: "There are always going to be jerks in the world, Auggie," she said, looking at me. "But I really believe, and Daddy really believes, that there are ...
Wonder (Wonder, #1) by R.J. Palacio
Starting 5th grade at Beecher Prep, he wants nothing more than to be treated as an ordinary kid—but his new classmates can't get past Auggie's extraordinary face. Wonder, begins from Auggie's point of view, but soon switches to include his classmates, his sister, her boyfriend, and others. 315 pages, Hardcover.
Wonder Review: A Message to Choose Kindness
Reflecting on the incident, she believed she could have handled it better. It also made her wonder what sort of life the little girl faced if this reaction was typical. Before writing 'Wonder', Palacio was a book cover illustrator and designer. She was born to Columbian immigrant parents in New York City on July 13, 1963.
'Wonder,' by R. J. Palacio
By Maria Russo. April 6, 2012. Born with several genetic abnormalities, 10-year-old August Pullman, called Auggie, dreams of being "ordinary.". Inside, he knows he's like every other kid ...
Wonder by R. J. Palacio
Wonder is about something that we don't like to talk about because it is so rare and so sad. But August is a boy who can't be hushed into silence or invisibility in his world, simply because of ...
Wonder
You can request a review of a title you can't find at [email protected]. Book reviews cover the content, themes and worldviews of fiction books, not their literary merit, and equip parents to decide whether a book is appropriate for their children. The inclusion of a book's review does not constitute an endorsement by Focus on the Family.
Wonder by R.J. Palacio
Wonder by R.J. Palacio - review. 'I think almost everyone will relate to this influential story'. Wonder is a brutally powerful story of a 10-year-old boy named August Pullman, who has a ...
Wonder by R.J. Palacio: Summary and reviews
R. J. Palacio has written a spare, warm, uplifting story that will have readers laughing one minute and wiping away tears the next. With wonderfully realistic family interactions (flawed, but loving), lively school scenes, and short chapters, Wonder is accessible to readers of all levels. Ages 8+.
Wonder by R. J. Palacio
Miss Katniss. Fri 22 Feb 2013 04.00 EST. Wonder, by R.J. Palacio is a riveting story about a nine year-old boy, called August, with a facial deformity and how this affects the people who live ...
Book Review: Wonder by R. J. Palacio
TEEN REVIEW | Ben Lahey. August Pullman, the main character of Wonder by R. J. Palacio, is only 10 years old, but his story engages readers of any age. August was born with a severe facial deformity that leaves him unable to attend school, until the fifth grade, when his family decides it's time for him to try to give up homeschooling.. Wonder tells the story of August's first year of ...
Book Review of R.J. Palacio's 'Wonder'
The power of the book likes in how Palacio creates such a normal, relatable character from a boy living with such an extraordinary physical affliction. Even though "Wonder" is recommended for children ages 8 through 12, the book's themes of identity, bullying, and acceptance make it interesting reading for a wide audience as well.
Wonder, by R.J. Palacio
It is an essential aspect of being human. In the captivating, award-winning New York Times bestselling novel Wonder by R.J. Palacio, the theme of exhibiting kindness is explored in an inspiring way. The story revolves around a 10-year-old boy named August Pullman living with rare facial deformities. Auggie, as he is affectionately called ...
Wonder Book Review and Ratings by Kids
It is one of those books that are impossible to make the right prediction, that is what makes it so interesting! Show More. Wonder has 3823 reviews and 1943 ratings. Reviewer bookaddict wrote: "I've listened to his book a billion times on my Alexa. This book is pure masterpiece! I'm new by the way. Please follow me!"
Parenting and Guidance Theme in Wonder
Parenting and Guidance Theme Analysis. LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Wonder, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work. As August begins school, he comes into contact for the first time with professional teachers and with parents other than his own and those of his long-term childhood friends.
Wonder: book review (B1)
Wonder is an excellent book that tells a moving and inspiring story. It's fast-moving and gripping too. I found myself reading it on the bus even if I only had time to read a couple of pages. It appeals to all age groups and is very popular with teenagers and adults. Auggie is a very likeable central character.
Review: Wonder by R.J. Palacio
Before. I'm writing this preamble before I re-read the book I'm about to review. As much as this is a review of R.J. Palacio's 2012 book Wonder by a Disfigured person (my chosen ID and capitalisation) , it won't - and can't - be reflective only of my proximity to the story. It must also reflect that I've changed, and that my view of myself and the world around me has changed ...
Wonder review: a warm family story that avoids becoming too saccharine
Wonder leans on its great cast to tell an engaging, warmhearted family story. Jacob Tremblay, Julia Roberts, and Owen Wilson star in a movie based on the best-selling novel. By Alissa Wilkinson ...
Wonder book summary: Characters, Review, Themes, Symbolism
Books. Author William Jones Reading 8 min Views 3.6k. Published by 08.05.2023. "Wonder" is a novel by R.J. Palacio that tells the story of a young boy named August Pullman, who was born with a facial deformity that has made him the subject of much attention and ridicule. The book explores themes of acceptance, empathy, and kindness in a way ...
Wonder: a book review of a powerful children's novel
As a parent and as a teacher, I highly recommend Wonder to all fourth, fifth, and sixth-grade students, as well as their parents. Read it together, discuss it together, and live it together. ... Read Stacy's book review of Wonder. Watch my video review of Wonder by RJ Palacio. Watch the Wonder trailer: Previous Article Tween fiction heroes.
Amor Towles' short stories make you wonder: How many lives can one
Book Review. Table for Two: Fictions. By Amor Towles Viking: 464 pages, $32 If you buy books linked on our site, The Times may earn a commission from Bookshop.org, whose fees support independent ...
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Book Review: 'All Things Are Too Small,' by Becca Rothfeld
The costive and the envious might wonder if she's spreading herself too thin, but Rothfeld's rigor and eloquence suggest that in her case, as the title of one essay has it, "More Is More."
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Review: 'Broken' by Jessica Pryce
In "Broken," Jessica Pryce shares stories from her career as a child welfare worker, with a focus on parents. ... Books Book Reviews Fiction Nonfiction March books 50 notable fiction books.

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Wonder, by R.J. Palacio | Book Review

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R. J. Palacio

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Wonder: book review (B1)

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Review: Wonder by R.J. Palacio

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Wonder leans on its great cast to tell an engaging, warmhearted family story

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Wonder is a sensitive exploration of the many ways people struggle in ordinary life

The film leans on strong characters and a strong cast to tell a warm, meaningful story

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