Wonder | Review

I picked this book up on a complete whim in Tesco's 'best sellers' selection before I went on holiday, read the first page in the shop, and decided straight away that it was going to be, if you excuse the pun, wonderful. 

Written by R.J Palacio, 'Wonder' is a story concerning different children's perspectives on a boy named August, who has a severe facial deformity. Although August himself will not describe in detail what he looks like, the part of the book from his sister's point of view allows the reader to understand that it isn't as simple as having a cleft lip, or an under-developed nose - it's a very unique deformity that causes a lot of double-takes and whispers behind his back.

August is aware of this, yet when his parents suggest it to him, he decides to take the plunge and go to school. The book then follows as as he is subject to awful bullying, stares, whispers and his classmates acting as if he has some kind of infectious disease, as well as Augusts' own paranoia that the only reason a few people speak to him is because they've been asked to by the principal.

What makes this book really special is that the author has chosen children's narrative viewpoints rather than adults; which makes it far more honest, abrupt and painful in its exploration of the way 'differences' are looked upon and treated, as adults would be way too PC about it to be able to talk about this kind of thing openly.

Palacio does amazingly well to key the book's narrative style into the way that children think, speak and act, as well as depicting a totally accurate picture of the way schools work. Because although the book does focus on the specific issue of Augusts' deformity, it's also worked into the universal problem of the social hierarchy that establish themselves within schools. It discusses the way that popularity and cliques work in our lives in a very subtle but also very overt way, which makes it one of the most intuitive things surrounding this kind of topic that I have read in a very long while.

If you're anything like me (i.e. over-emotional), you'll be in floods of happy tears by the end of it. Because, despite its dark subject matter, this book is nothing but a positive reinforcement about the goodness of humankind.