Auggie & Me: Three Wonder Stories

R. J. Palacio's Auggie & Me is three stories for 9 year olds about the children standing around August Pullman, each told in their own words.

What happens

The first voice is Julian's. He is the boy who was horrible to Auggie at Beecher Prep. He is not sorry.

Big deal, he says. Nobody died. Can everyone please stop with the drama and move on?

Then he starts explaining, and he goes back before Auggie arrived, to when he was the most popular boy in the fifth grade and everything was, in his own word, ordinary.

Mr Tushman had rung home to ask if Julian would be a welcome buddy for a new boy. His mum treated it like an award. She is on the board of trustees and she has been class mum for every year he has been at the school.

So he turns up at an empty school with Charlotte Cody and Jack Will, gliding down the corridor, winding Charlotte up. Then Jack goes quiet on the stairs and says he is an idiot for agreeing to this. Julian still has no idea who the new boy is.

Reading it feels different from the first book, and not comfortable. You are sitting inside the head of the one who was cruel. He is funny and quick and good company, and he is saying vile things about another child's face while he explains himself to you.

That is rather the point. Whether it suits your reader depends a lot on how they took Auggie's story.

Here's the thing to weigh up. Nothing softens Julian at the start. He calls Auggie's face creepy and tells him to put a mask on. If your child got properly attached to Auggie, hearing him talked about that way can sting, and the book means it to. A reader who finished the first one furious with Julian and wanting to know WHY is exactly who this was written for.

The other two stories pass the microphone on. Christopher has known Auggie since they were tiny, from long before any of this started. Charlotte was standing on those stairs too.

One practical note. It's American throughout, so expect Mom, fifth grade and middle school.

What to read next

This is a book that really wants you to have met Auggie first. If your reader hasn't yet, start with Wonder itself, where he gets to tell you his own version before anybody else has a turn. He opens by insisting he is perfectly ordinary, and then explains why nobody else agrees.