Wonder

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August Pullman, called Auggie, is starting public school for the first time because he had so many surgeries as a kid he was unable to attend school. He also has a serious craniofacial abnormality. Auggie tries to make as many friends as he can, even though he has some hiccups along the way. He learns the meaning of true friends, forgiveness, and perseverance. Auggie has found some close friends in Jack and Summer. By the end of the story Julian, the student who is the main one bullying Auggie, is no longer attending his school and he has found new friends in those who had been bullying him alongside Julian. Even though Auggie is the main character, he is not the one who learns the real lesson. From his example, the other students are the ones who are learning a lesson.

This is a wonderful book to teach lessons about character analysis, how to treat others, perspective, and point of view. This story is told from many different perspectives, Auggie, Jack, Julian, Auggie's sister Via, and Miranda, Via's childhood friend. Telling the story this way makes it easy to teach lessons about perspective, as well as discuss the fact that everyone will see a situation in a different way. There are resources online that help teach this book and there are fun activities included as well. 

There are an amazing amount of resources for librarians to use when looking for book recommendations. Some of these lists give ideas about award winning books and some of these lists are the "if you like this then read this" type. Sometimes, if you see a book pop up on more than one of these lists you know that it must be a good one. When deciding what books to read for our assignment some books that fit this bill were Wonder, that showed up on the New York Times Bestseller list, as well as many lists on Goodreads and Amazon.

Link to Choose Kind Resources

Citation

Palacio, R. J. (2013). Wonder. London: Corgi.