Wonder is a fictional story about a boy named August, who is a normal fifth grade boy in every way except one: he was born with a very rare gene disfunction that made his face severely deformed. He had always been homeschooled before but now he is starting school for the first time, and he and his family are uneasy thinking of how things will go. Auggie is such a sweet character who you can't help but root for from the very first page. Since most of the story is told from his point of view, you as the reader really find yourself emotionally invested in the story and especially August. "I won't tell you what I look like," he says. "Whatever you're imagining, it's probably worse."
Over the years, August has become used to the stares and reactions he gets from strangers, but that doesn't mean he is immune to the feelings that come with them. I understand why someone who doesn't know about Auggie or his condition would be surprised, scared or intrigued. How much of today's media is focused on people who are different and uncommon, just for the entertainment of the masses? The natural human reaction to anyone or anything unusual is to stare, wonder, and stare some more. It's not always meant in a bad or mean way, it's just what people tend to do.
When I described this book to my 5th grade class, I told them how much I loved it and also that it was a sad story. It's not an intense tear-jerker, and it has many funny moments in it, but there is also a thin and invisible blanket of sadness over the whole story because of how real everyone's reactions to August are.
At first, the kids in Auggie's new school are afraid even to be near him. They start a game called "The Plague" where if anyone touches him they get "the plague" and they have a short amount of time to touch someone else and give it to them. A few kids are nice to Auggie, most are scared of him and one is particularly mean to him. August even admits in the story that he knows "kids can be mean" and he says how it doesn't usually affect him much anymore, but you can tell that he's still sad because he rarely has the chance to show people that he's a completely normal kid on the inside; most people are too jaded by his face to give his personality a fair chance. In fact, August doesn't always trust people who are genuinely trying to get to know him because he thinks they feel bad for him and are just being nice.
There are so many reasons why I say that everyone should read this book. R.J. Palacio does an amazing job extracting the raw emotions of her readers. She instantly throws you into August's life and finds a special place for him in your heart. She makes you think - about yourself, about others and about humanity, how and why we treat people the way we do. Don't worry, August survives his first year being in a real school and the book has a happy ending. But like so many of those really good stories, it's not August's destination that makes it so good, it's his journey and the journeys of all those surrounding him.
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