This is my symphony

Wonder
R. J. Palacio
Knopf

I might very well be the last reader in the U.S. to have read Wonder, writer R. J. Palacio’s best-selling first novel. I’m kind of out of the middle-reader loop at this stage in my life, and I found the title by clicking on a trailer that popped up on my Facebook feed. Thank goodness (at least in this case!) for click bait because this book was a gem.

Auggie Pullman was born with Treacher Collins syndrome, a craniofacial condition that left him facing surgery after surgery (twenty-seven, to be precise) from his first few months of life. Because he was so often hospitalized or recovering from surgery at home, Auggie’s mom home-schooled him. His dog Daisy and sixteen-year-old sister Via are his best friends because Auggie doesn’t get out much. When he was younger, Auggie wore an astronaut’s helmet in public just to minimize the stares from adults and children alike. (Strange creatures we humans are that a boy wearing a helmet is less odd than dealing with a facial difference.)

But now ten-years-old, Auggie is starting school for the first time. A small group of children–Jack Will, Julian, and Charlotte–have been recruited to show him around the building before the school year begins, and it’s a rocky start. Charlotte is overly nice. Julian pretty much ignores Auggie and then bluntly asks “What’s the deal with your face?” But Jack Will. Auggie smiled at him, and Jack smiled back.

The first days of school, Auggie keeps his head down and his mouth shut. Except that the tween world is a stratified place and his difference isn’t easy to hid. Fifth grade can be rough. There are whispers. The lunchroom is hell. A cruel game called the Plague circulates around Auggie. Even his English teacher Mr. Browne’s monthly precepts (September’s is “Choose kind”) can’t keep the wolves at bay. But Auggie’s humor and wit win over a few good souls and he finds a tribe.

Of course that’s not the whole story. There’s a betrayal, a violent episode on a class camping trip, a heart-wrenching loss, and some pretty despicable adults. Palacio also gives us the story from the voices of Summer and Jack, true friends both of them. Auggie’s sister Via’s chapters reveal how a condition like TCS affects the whole family. My heart ached for her.

When I saw the movie trailer, I wondered how the movie industry ever put out a call for actors to play Auggie and how the boy with TCS who played Auggie would be recieved. But this is Hollywood, after all, and it was prosthetics and make-up that turned child actor Jacob Tremblay into August Pullman. Shouldn’t have been a surprise.

If you’d like a thought-provoking response from a young woman who lives with a craniofacial condition, read Ariel Henley’s review in Teen Vogue. Invoking the attitude “nothing about us without us”, Henley is clearly disappointed that the movie makers chose Tremblay: “… it was devastating to realize that the directors involved with Wonder would rather cast a healthy, “normal” looking child and put him in makeup and prosthetics, rather than cast someone who looked like me.” If you are a Wonder fan already, please read her article “What ‘Wonder’ Gets Wrong About Disfigurment and Craniofactial Disorders” for another perspective.

In the end, though, August Pullman’s story is fiction. And the most important Truths can be found in story. For me, it’s Auggie’s indomitable spirit that makes me want to be a better person.