Wonder

Wonder is R. J. Palacio's 2012 middle-grade novel, the New York Times bestseller and the source for the 2017 Stephen Chbosky film that became required reading in U. S. middle-school curricula across the late 2010s and 2020s. August Pullman, a ten-year-old boy in New York City with Treacher Collins syndrome (a craniofacial difference that has required twenty-seven surgeries by the time the novel opens), has been homeschooled by his mother since birth. The novel opens with the family's decision to send Auggie to mainstream school: Beecher Prep, a private New York middle school where he will start fifth grade in September. The novel is the school year that follows.

Palacio's structural method is the rotating multi-POV close-third that gives readers Auggie's experience first, then the experiences of his older sister Olivia (Via), his classmates Summer and Jack Will, Via's high-school friend Miranda, and Via's high-school boyfriend Justin. The rotating-POV decision is the structural genius of the novel: the reader experiences Auggie's school year first through his own moral framework, then through the moral frameworks of the people around him who are also negotiating their own lives. The class-bullying material (Julian Albans's ringleading and the social pressure on Jack Will) is treated with the patient ethical specificity that distinguishes Wonder from the after-school-special register the marketing sometimes implies.

Recommended as required contemporary middle-grade and young-adult literature reading, as the right Palacio entry point, and for parents and teachers of fifth-through-eighth graders. Read We're All Wonders (2017) for younger readers and Auggie & Me (2015) for the supplementary novellas. The Diana Steele / Nick Podehl / Kate Rudd audiobook is the definitive audio production. Five stars without reservation.