Book Review - Anissa

A book review about Wonder by R.J. Palacio.

Wonder, is about a young boy that has a facial disfigurement, he is ten years old and he lives with his sister, mum and dad. His name is August, sometimes he gets really upset because people give him different looks only because he has something wrong with his face. At the start of the story August was saying that he does ordinary things but his face isn’t the same. He is going into 5th grade [year six] but he didn’t really go to school because of his face and the surgeries he had. At first it was a happy story but then it started getting sad.

The main characters are August, his mum, his dad and his new school principal. August is a very kind and thoughtful boy, his dad is very funny because he always tells funny jokes, his sister is very thoughtful and helpful because she always helps August with anything and the principal is very nice and kind he can help at all times. Some of the characters were described like August about the way he looks like. I found August’s sister [Via] is the most interesting because she always tells people to stop and I could feel like I was her because it just gets in my mind. She didn’t change, she was the same all through. Their mum and dad are the only relationships there.

It was written in first person just like it was happening now. It was important because it made it feel like it was happening now and it would get in your mind. The setting wasn’t really in detail because it didn’t really give much information about it. The feelings were described in detail because they tell you how they feel. It was a very good and marvellous story because it has all the details and what happened. My favourite part of the story was when they came in to August’s new school and he went looking round because he was so scared about it but then got happy.

I think that the author had a particular reason of telling this story to show to some children to not judge people or a book by its colour or look. I felt really sad at one point because these older kids started picking on him and making him get upset but after I read it I felt happy that he found a lot of different friends to play with. I learned that you can’t be mean to people with disabilities or anything else. I would definitively recommend this book to a lot of people. I would read other books by this author because his books always tell true stories that people learn to be nice to others.