Wonder is about ten year old August Pullman who has a severe
facial disfigurement. Due to this he has had to have various operations
throughout his short life and so has never been to school. His mum has always
taught him at home. This year everything changes. This year August goes to
school. The book follows him the summer before school and his first year of
school. Understandably, August is terrified, but he’s also a bit excited at the
same time. Mostly he dreads the way the other children and the teachers will
react to him. He gets stared at everywhere he goes; even if people aren’t being
rude about it, they can’t help but look.
I enjoyed the character of August. He is determined to have
as normal a life as possible. He’s not disabled, he just looks different.
Inside he’s just a regular kid, except he’s not really because he’s never been
treated totally normal. Even his parents, who try to treat him the same as his
sister, can’t. In the beginning it was for medical reasons and now it’s to try
and protect him from the reactions of strangers. Having said that though,
August and his family are pretty cool. They obviously all love each other a
great deal and that is nice to read about.
The way that he is treated by his classmates and teachers
felt realistic. To begin with no one will sit with him and the head teacher has
asked a few pupils to keep an eye on him and to befriend him. Some are happy to
do this, others not so much. That’s the way it is with all schools though, when
you have so many different people together; someone is going to get singled out
for a reason and someone else is going to do the singling out. They weren’t all
portrayed as full-on bullies either, al lot of them were just indifferent and
pretty much ignored August which felt more real.
I expected the book to be completely written from August’s
point of view but it covers six different characters’ perspectives. They are
all connected to August in different ways so it’s interesting to see how and
why they’ve found themselves in the circle of protection around him that his
parent’s started. It feels like the author really got inside the characters’
heads as the voices sound right for the different ages and genders. It’s not
easy to write from a child’s outlook and I think she did well with this. There
were quite a few pop culture references peppered throughout the book, some of
which I got and others I didn’t. For some reason adding these little bits lets
you relate to them easier and feel like you’re in the story.
I would recommend this book to everyone. It was brilliant. I
liked all the people I supposed to and disliked all those I wasn’t. I think it
gives an important message about tolerance and treating others with kindness.
The children in the book are more accepting than the adults, except those with
very narrow-minded parents and I think how parents react has a massive effect
on how their offspring react. This isn’t just a book for children and teens;
this is a book for adults too. My only problem with the book was that it felt a
bit Disney. I can easily see this being made into a film and the ending felt
too perfect for my liking. However, this didn’t detract that much from the rest
of the story and I still thoroughly enjoyed it.
Overall rating 4 out of 5.
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