Wonder, by R. J. Palacio

Hello!

I'm doing another book review. The reason is because I have officially been alive for two decades; also, this book is quite a special book to me. Confession: Harry Potter is not my favourite book. Lord of the Rings is not my favourite book. Wonder is my favourite book, because I relate to the main character, August Pullman, quite a lot - more, I think, than I relate to any other character.

A wonder-ful book!

August is a ten-year-old boy with Treacher-Collins syndrome. Treacher-Collins syndrome is (to quote Wikipedia), characterised by deformities of the ears, eyes, cheekbones and chin. It has no impact on intelligence; however, August, at the time the story starts, has spent his life up till then being home-schooled, partly because he still experiences a lot of difficulties. The story starts with his parents enrolling him in a middle-school (it's set in America), as they want him to experience more of the wider world.

The plot of the book revolves around August's first year in public education: the main characters, other than August, are his sister Olivia, his parents, his friends Summer and Jack, Olivia's friend Miranda, and Olivia's boyfriend. Also August's bully, Julian.

Movie poster - left to right is August's dad, Olivia, August himself, the dog, and his mum.

The book starts with August's parents enrolling him in the school; the school year starts with August meeting Jack and Julian, who were friends from early childhood. They've been assigned by the head-teacher to befriend August. Jack does a pretty good job of it; Julian, on the other hand, starts off by asking if August was caught in a fire! Things only go downhill from there: Julian (feeling threatened by August's friendship with Jack, I guess) starts being actively horrible to August. Jack ends up getting caught in the middle, forced to choose between his best friend and August; things come to a head on Halloween, when Jack, compelled by peer-pressure, says some rather horrible things about August, without realising he's nearby. Unsurprisingly, August isolates himself from his classmates and friends; eventually, though, Summer, another one of August's friends, finds out what happened and tells Jack. Jack, guilt-ridden and becoming increasingly unsure that Julian is someone he wants to be friends with, eventually punches Julian in the face. After this, his friendship with August is repaired, though at the cost that Julian's bullying of August extends to Jack as well. 

Jack and August in the movie.

Olivia, meanwhile, has her own problems - she's spent most of her life defined by being 'August Pullman's older sister'. Also, Miranda has been avoiding her since the start of the school year (this is later revealed to be because Miranda essentially committed fraud and pretended that August was her brother at a summer camp, and now feels guilty.) As a result, when Olivia starts at a new school, where hardly anybody knows her, she starts distancing herself from being 'August Pullman's older sister'. This means that nobody at school knows about August, and nobody at home knows how she's doing at school. This comes to a head when Olivia gets a part for a play. Olivia reveals to her mum that she doesn't want August (or the rest of her family) to see the play. Can you guess what happens next? August overhears this, and is naturally very upset. Olivia, being a good sister, relents and allows her family to come to the play. Miranda is also in the play, as it happens - Olivia's her understudy. She goes on stage at the beginning, sees August, and is so overwhelmed with guilt for claiming that he was her brother that she decides that she can't play; Olivia takes her place. After the play, August gets lost, but Miranda finds him. Olivia's also looking for him, which results in the two girls reuniting and repairing their friendship.

Olivia with August.

From there, August's year starts getting better. Julian's bullying is still happening (by way of a rather horrible game of pretending that August has the plague!), but August mostly shrugs it off. The turning point in the bullying is one of my favourite scenes in the book - August jokingly tells a friend that the UglyDolls brand of toys was based on him. After this, people start realising that he's funny and cool (not to mention, confident enough to make jokes about his disabilities), and they get bored of bullying him. Even Julian's closest friends stop - but Julian himself doesn't.

At the end of the year, there's a three-day nature reserve trip, which August is initially apprehensive about, in part because he's now got a hearing-aid which is not inconspicuous. In the end, he decides to go anyway. The new hearing aid turns out to be a non-issue for his classmates; on the other hand, however, those who don't know him aren't so friendly. August has a chance encounter with several highly immature teenagers, who start mocking him and beating him. He's rescued by Julian's ex-friends, but it turns out that the hearing-aid has gone missing. It later turns up mangled beyond repair.

At the end of the school year, August wins an award for 'being notable or exemplary in certain areas', and his mum name-drops the title, calling him her wonder.

I, uh, won a similar award, for similar reasons.

Wonder is a very interesting book - it shows the world through the perspective of someone with disabilities. And of course that's not in itself unique, even though Treacher-Collins is a very rare syndrome. There are many books and films which focus on disabled people and their lives, some of which are fictionalised, and some of which are based on real-life events. What makes Wonder unique is the fact that it focuses on the social dimension of being - as the book says - 'born to stand out'. As a result of his disabilities, August finds it very difficult to make friends - he's not the...most photogenic person. Various times, younger children see August and, bluntly, are so scared of him that they burst into tears; even children of August's own age are uncomfortable around him. This discomfort, combined with the admirable maturity of fifth-graders, makes August prime bullying material, which leaves him very isolated.

It's something I can very much relate to. While (I assume) nobody was scared of me, I've always felt isolated, in a way. The most obvious reason being my hearing-aids - I find it difficult to hear in loud environments, which means I can't keep up easily in conversations, and I feel left out. It's partly why I spent so much of my adolescence feeling like I didn't have friends. Even now, I struggle with insecurities over friendship, and that's part of the reason why. Another aspect of this isolation, for me, is the fact that I quite literally don't fit in. I'm deaf, which partially alienates me from the hearing world, but I feel more at home around non-deaf people than around deaf people. I'm British, but raised in Africa. Similarly, after returning to England, I adjusted to life back in England far faster than you'd think, considering I grew up in Africa. Even with my CHARGE Syndrome - it's rare enough that each individual case is entirely unique, each case having a different arrangement of symptoms. And everything I am is because of CHARGE Syndrome. No balance canals? CHARGE. Deafness and coloboma? CHARGE. High pain threshold? CHARGE. Tendency to become obsessed with certain things (e.g. the human body)? CHARGE. Almost everything which makes me who I am derives from a syndrome which is so rare that literally nobody else in the world can fully relate. Other people can (and do) relate to various aspects - I'm friends with other deaf people. A friend at university grew up in Africa, just like me, and my sister and cousins also grew up in Africa. Many of my friends have poor eyesight. But nobody in the world would truly be able to relate to the sum of those parts, which is soul-crushingly isolating. I would love nothing more than to not have CHARGE, even to just be only deaf. And it's true that everybody is the sum of their experiences, but sometimes it feels like everything I am stems from something which occurred before I was born. But, as Wonder says, how can you blend in when you were born to stand out? It's why I relate to August so much - Treacher-Collins is fairly rare. So while we don't have the same syndrome, we do both understand something of being practically unique.

Another thing Wonder does is depict the perspectives of people who know August - the impact that he has on their lives. His family, for instance, have had to schedule their lives around August's condition and his subsequent need for assistance. His mum had to quit her job to home-school him (though this was admittedly partially because other children wouldn't have the emotional maturity to be nice to him.) His sister, poor Olivia, is very independent for her age, because their parents often had their hands full looking after August. So if she had a problem, she'd generally need to solve it herself. Also, she's known as 'August Pullman's older sister', which pushes her to form her own identity, separate from being August's sister. Miranda, similarly, considers herself as good as August's sister, due to her close friendship with Olivia - and it's August's presence at the play which enables her to strengthen her relationship with Olivia.

It's a good demonstration of the ways in which people's lives are impacted by knowing somebody with disabilities. It's a similar story with the people I know - my parents have had to devote a lot of time, effort and money to supporting me, e.g. accompanying me to hospital appointments for ears, eyes, endocrinology, annual check-ups, and so on. And my sister, similarly to Olivia, has been rather over-shadowed by being 'Robert Murrell's little sister'. She started at secondary school the year after I did, and found that everybody knew her as my little sister. As a result, she wanted to establish her own identity, and over time it created distance between us, which hasn't entirely gone away even now. Though speaking as a proud older brother, she certainly succeeded at establishing her own identity!

Regarding my own experiences with bullies, I honestly don't have a clue why the bullying started. My main bully could have felt upset that I was deaf and still in mainstream school. Or, he could have been jealous that I was reasonably academically successful and liked by the teachers. The most he ever said on the subject was that I was 'arrogant', because I'd tell other students to behave. But then, he never had a problem telling me what to do. It's something I often think about - whether my deafness factored in to the bullying in some way.

Another thing I really like about Wonder is how it presents disabled people as essentially normal people with certain difficulties. Apart from his condition and the attendant issues it causes, he's a fairly normal ten-year-old. He's a big fan of Star Wars, and starts the book off with a Padawan braid. When he receives the hearing aid, he receives a consolation in that it makes him look like Lobot; August's response is 'But Lobot's lame.' And when he finds out that Olivia's got a boyfriend around half-way through the book, he immediately does what siblings are contractually obligated to do - he starts teasing her. Another aspect of this is the sub-plot of the family dog getting ill. August's so consumed with his various other problems that he fails to truly realise how ill the dog is, which I think is something which a lot of people, and especially children, do.

It's a good reflection of how disabled people are just people, who happen to have more problems to deal with than most do.

Overall, I would rate Wonder 9/10 - I highly recommend!

Random observations

-There's a movie, which is fairly accurate to the book. I like it. I saw one of my classmates while watching it at the cinema.

-The movie does a pretty clever version of August and Jack's reconciliation - they chat while playing Minecraft. In the book, that takes the form of letters/texts.

-Olivia's boyfriend's perspective is one of the perspectives in the book. The entire section is written in lower-case, which is a rather interesting stylistic choice.

-In fitting with August's fondness for Star Wars, the dog's called Darth Daisy. But the 'Darth' bit is usually dropped.

-At one point in the book, August and Summer notice that they both have names relating to summer, as does Julian (July), so their lunch table could be the summer table, and they could include Julian. It's ironic, given Julian's behaviour...

-At one point, Julian asks August if his favourite Star Wars character is Palpatine, because of Palpatine's appearance. Unsurprisingly, August doesn't just pick his favourite characters based off apparent similarities in appearance - his favourite's actually Boba Fett. A sentiment I can second, though my favourite character is Obi-Wan.

-My mum, like August's mum, quit teaching. Unlike Mrs. Pullman, my mum quit to become a Bible translator - I hadn't been born yet.

-One thing that has garnered a fair amount of criticism for the movie, and the book to an extent, is the fact that it downplays the difficulties of life with disabilities - August's able to solve the bullying through kindness. In real life, tragically, that's not as likely.