Ponder Post: Wonder and 365 Days More

The book Wonder ©2012 by R. J. Palacio is the fictional story of a 10 year old boy, August Pullman, with craniofacial abnormalities stemming from birth due to a mutation in his DNA. Technically, he reveals his diagnosis as mandibulofacial dysostosis, which is more commonly known as Treacher Collins Syndrome but the book does not dwell at all on the medical or the details of how his face looks. It is about the dynamics of the social and academic life experiences of a child who looks drastically different from his peers. Up to this point, Auggie had been homeschooled, not because of his appearance, but because of the many surgeries and medical procedures that precluded him maintaining a regimented school schedule with the requisite attendance minimum. Middle school can be tough enough but having to experience it with the disadvantage of highly distorted facial features is exceptionally challenging.

The front flap of the book jacket describes Wonder as "a funny, uplifting, and incredibly moving novel to read in one sitting". It was correct on all adjectives and I read the entire book yesterday. I loved it! I would rate it ★★★★★. The realities of blending in, loneliness, peer pressure, cliques, popularity, snipes, snitching, loyalty, betrayal, stoicism are portrayed vividly with striking accuracy through the voices of middle school age and high school age adolescents. The roles of the adults – parents, teachers and principal – are not heavy handed and are well represented, even though they are never relayed in first person voice. Wonder has recently been made into a major motion picture that I have yet to see, so I am pleased I was able to read the book before seeing the movie. Book before movie is always my preference.

Each chapter in Wonder is written in the voice of one of the adolescent characters. I thought R. J. Palacio's chapter voice technique was a excellent approach to conveying an alternate point of view on a situation.

• Part 1     August himself
• Part 2     Via, August's sister Olivia
• Part 3     Summer, one of August classmates
• Part 4     Jack, one of August's classmates
• Part 5     Justin, Olivia's boyfriend
• Part 6     August again
• Part 7     Miranda, a childhood friend of Olivia

The book opens with the story of August's birth, jumps to a debate between his mom and dad on whether or not to mainstream him into the school, and then addresses Auggie's fear, reluctance, resistance, and eventual acquiescence to attend a private prep school. He is given a school tour just before the academic year begins and meets his first group of classmates - some good, some not so good. In his first day of class, Auggie's English teacher Mr. Browne writes a precept on the board, which he does at the beginning of each month, and assigns the students to write an essay on it and discuss it. His first precept did give me pause to think, nod, and smile a bit.

In Part 1, where Wonder is told in the voice of Auggie, he thinks to himself, "As I wrote down Mr. Browne’s September precept, I suddenly realized that I was going to like school. No matter what." I do not know if Mr. Browne's precept choice for September was chance, but the quote also gave me a bit of foreboding about what was to come for Auggie. The book continues on to tell the tale of the fifth grade year up through a spring camping experience and on to graduation in June. The happy, the sad, the brave, the nasty, the guilty and remorseful emotions are so real they bring back those almost forgotten but now remembered school years of myself and those of my kids, whatever information about them they ever divulged to me. A lot of these feelings were echoed in Mr. Browne's precepts for the other months.

When I went to Amazon.com to snag a cover photo for this post, I noted that there were other books associated with Wonder. There is no sequel. The author herself states that Wonder does not lend itself to a sequel. The reader is left to surmise on his own how Auggie will fair in life. There was another book titled Auggie and Me that tells the story from the point of view of three other classmates during that fifth grade year. I am waiting on that one from my local library and am anticipating it too will be enjoyable. What I did download onto my Mac to read with my Kindle app however was 365 Days of Wonder: Mr. Browne's Precepts ©2014 also by R. J. Palacio. I read it today; it was a quick read.

Normally I buy my books from Amazon or Costco or check them out of the library. This book I thought would be more like one of those cube calendars that sits on your desk and you remove one page a day to reveal a new vocabulary word, do a crossword puzzle, chuckle at a joke, or learn a bit of trivia. In reality I almost always forget to do that daily, and wind up tearing off a ¼" to ½" chunk at a time to catch up. With a Kindle version of this book on my computer I could whiz through several precepts at once and bookmark those that inspired me. I was pleasantly surprised to find that between each month of precepts was a correspondence between Mr. Browne the English teacher and one of his fifth grade students that was concurrent with August. It was a fun bonus to read a postcard or an email or a letter and get a bit more insight into those characters presented in the Wonder novel. I imagine, even more so, what a treat for a teacher to hear from previous students! Teachers out there reading Wonder will not want to miss also reading this associated book. I would rate it five stars for the correspondence portions since they were so satisfying after reading Wonder, but about three stars for the precepts, for an average of four stars. One of the included precepts was:

I researched Dr. Wayne W. Dyer, source of the "choose kind" quote that was Mr Browne's September precept, and Dr. Dyer is a self-help author and motivational speaker whose book Your Erroneous Zone ©1976 is one of the best-selling books of all time, with an estimated 35 million copies sold to date. This figure is more than Gone with the Wind. To reveal my ignorance, I'd never heard of Your Erroneous Zone but, inspired by the above precept, I plan to find out about it.