The Julian Chapter

R. J. Palacio's The Julian Chapter is a school story for 9 year olds that hands the microphone to the boy who was horrible.

What happens

Read Auggie's own book first. This one only really works if your reader already knows what happened, because it's the same school year told from the other side.

Julian gets a phone call at home. The middle-school director wants him to be a welcome buddy to a new boy starting at Beecher Prep. His mum is thrilled. She's on the board of trustees, she's been class mum every single year, and she takes the call as proof that the school knows which children are the special ones.

Nobody has actually told Julian anything useful about the new boy.

So he turns up on a hot afternoon with Jack and Charlotte, messing about on the corridor floor, winding Charlotte up, playing a rib-jabbing game called spleen with Jack. Then Jack goes quiet and says the boy is "the kid with the face". Mr Tushman explains about a craniofacial difference. Julian thinks his mum said something about a cleft lip.

And then August walks in.

Julian's first reaction is set down flat on the page, with no softening at all. He wanted to cover his eyes and run. He shook Auggie's hand and wanted to wash it. Inside his own head he just repeated one word over and over.

It's hard to read. That's the point.

What Palacio does next is the clever bit. Julian tells you about being five and seeing a zombie face in a Halloween advert, then Voldemort, then a trailer for a film about demon fairies, and how the fear mushed together into one blanket he couldn't get out from under. Six weeks of sleeping in his parents' bed. Screaming before bedtime. Panic attacks as he drifted off.

He isn't excusing himself. He's explaining where the horror came from, and your reader can see both things at once.

You should know what you're handing over. Your child will spend this whole book inside the head of a boy being cruel, hearing the cruelty as he justifies it to himself. For a reader who found Auggie's story upsetting, this will reopen it. For one who came out of it angry with Julian and has been arguing about him ever since, it's exactly the book they want, and it's a brilliant way into a conversation about why people are unkind.

What to read next

If they haven't met August yet, start with Wonder, where he explains that he won't tell you what he looks like because whatever you're imagining is probably worse.