#1 New York Times bestseller
A School Library
Journal Best of Children''s Books 2012
A Publishers
Weekly Best of Children''s Books 2012
A Kirkus Reviews
Best of Children''s Books 2012
A Booklist Best of
Children''s Books 2012
I won''t describe what I look like. Whatever you''re thinking,
it''s probably worse.
August Auggie Pullman was born with a facial deformity that
prevented him from going to a mainstream school--until now. He''s
about to start 5th grade at Beecher Prep, and if you''ve ever been
the new kid then you know how hard that can be. The thing is
Auggie''s just an ordinary kid, with an extraordinary face. But can
he convince his new classmates that he''s just like them, despite
appearances?
R. J. Palacio has written a spare, warm, uplifting story that
will have readers laughing one minute and wiping away tears the
next. With wonderfully realistic family interactions flawed, but
loving, lively school scenes, and short chapters, Wonder is
accessible to readers of all levels.
關於作者：
R. J. PALACIO lives in NYC with her husband, two sons, and two
dogs. For more than twenty years, she was an art director and
graphic designer, designing book jackets for other people while
waiting for the perfect time in her life to start writing her own
novel. But one day several years ago, a chance encounter with an
extraordinary child in front of an ice cream store made R. J.
realize that the perfect time to write that novel had finally come.
Wonder is her first novel. She did not design the cover, but
she sure does love it.
內容試閱：
Ordinary
I know I’m not an ordinary ten-year-old kid. I mean, sure, I do
ordinary things. I eat ice cream. I ride my bike. I play ball. I
have an XBox. Stuff like that makes me ordinary. I guess. And I
feel ordinary. Inside. But I know ordinary kids don’t make other
ordinary kids run away screaming in playgrounds. I know ordinary
kids don’t get stared at wherever they go.
If I found a magic lamp and I could have one wish, I would wish
that I had a normal face that no one ever noticed at all. I would
wish that I could walk down the street without people seeing me and
then doing that look-away thing. Here’s what I think: the only
reason I’m not ordinary is that no one else sees me that way.
But I’m kind of used to how I look by now. I know how to pretend I
don’t see the faces people make. We’ve all gotten pretty good at
that sort of thing: me, Mom and Dad, Via. Actually, I take that
back: Via’s not so good at it. She can get really annoyed when
people do something rude. Like, for instance, one time in the
playground some older kids made some noises. I don’t even know what
the noises were exactly because I didn’t hear them myself, but Via
heard and she just started yelling at the kids. That’s the way she
is. I’m not that way.
Via doesn’t see me as ordinary. She says she does, but if I were
ordinary, she wouldn’t feel like she needs to protect me as much.
And Mom and Dad don’t see me as ordinary, either. They see me as
extraordinary. I think the only person in the world who realizes
how ordinary I am is me.
My name is August, by the way. I won’t describe what I look like.
Whatever you’re thinking, it’s probably worse.
Why I Didn’t Go to School
Next week I start fifth grade. Since I’ve never been to a real
school before, I am pretty much totally and completely petrified.
People think I haven’t gone to school because of the way I look,
but it’s not that. It’s because of all the surgeries I’ve had.
Twenty-seven since I was born. The bigger ones happened before I
was even four years old, so I don’t remember those. But I’ve had
two or three surgeries every year since then some big, some
small, and because I’m little for my age, and I have some other
medical mysteries that doctors never really figured out, I used to
get sick a lot. That’s why my parents decided it was better if I
didn’t go to school. I’m much stronger now, though. The last
surgery I had was eight months ago, and I probably won’t have to
have any more for another couple of years.
Mom homeschools me. She used to be a children’s-book illustrator.
She draws really great fairies and mermaids. Her boy stuff isn’t so
hot, though. She once tried to draw me a Darth Vader, but it ended
up looking like some weird mushroom-shaped robot. I haven’t seen
her draw anything in a long time. I think she’s too busy taking
care of me and Via.
I can’t say I always wanted to go to school because that wouldn’t
be exactly true. What I wanted was to go to school, but only if I
could be like every other kid going to school. Have lots of friends
and hang out after school and stuff like that.
I have a few really good friends now. Christopher is my best
friend, followed by Zachary and Alex. We’ve known each other since
we were babies. And since they’ve always known me the way I am,
they’re used to me. When we were little, we used to have playdates
all the time, but then Christopher moved to Bridgeport in
Connecticut. That’s more than an hour away from where I live in
North River Heights, which is at the top tip of Manhattan. And
Zachary and Alex started going to school. It’s funny: even though
Christopher’s the one who moved far away, I still see him more than
I see Zachary and Alex. They have all these new friends now. If we
bump into each other on the street, they’re still nice to me,
though. They always say hello.
I have other friends, too, but not as good as Christopher and Zack
and Alex were. For instance, Zack and Alex always invited me to
their birthday parties when we were little, but Joel and Eamonn and
Gabe never did. Emma invited me once, but I haven’t seen her in a
long time. And, of course, I always go to Christopher’s birthday.
Maybe I’m making too big a deal about birthday parties.
How I Came to Life
I like when Mom tells this story because it makes me laugh so much.
It’s not funny in the way a joke is funny, but when Mom tells it,
Via and I just start cracking up.
So when I was in my mom’s stomach, no one had any idea I would come
out looking the way I look. Mom had had Via four years before, and
that had been such a “walk in the park” Mom’s expression that
there was no reason to run any special tests. About two months
before I was born, the doctors realized there was something wrong
with my face, but they didn’t think it was going to be bad. They
told Mom and Dad I had a cleft palate and some other stuff going
on. They called it “small anomalies.”
There were two nurses in the delivery room the night I was born.
One was very nice and sweet. The other one, Mom said, did not seem
at all nice or sweet. She had very big arms and here comes the
funny part, she kept farting. Like, she’d bring Mom some ice
chips, and then fart. She’d check Mom’s blood pressure, and fart.
Mom says it was unbelievable because the nurse never even said
excuse me! Meanwhile, Mom’s regular doctor wasn’t on duty that
night, so Mom got stuck with this cranky kid doctor she and Dad
nicknamed Doogie after some old TV show or something they didn’t
actually call him that to his face. But Mom says that even though
everyone in the room was kind of grumpy, Dad kept making her laugh
all night long.
When I came out of Mom’s stomach, she said the whole room got very
quiet. Mom didn’t even get a chance to look at me because the nice
nurse immediately rushed me out of the room. Dad was in such a
hurry to follow her that he dropped the video camera, which broke
into a million pieces. And then Mom got very upset and tried to get
out of bed to see where they were going, but the farting nurse put
her very big arms on Mom to keep her down in the bed. They were
practically fighting, because Mom was hysterical and the farting
nurse was yelling at her to stay calm, and then they both started
screaming for the doctor. But guess what? He had fainted! Right on
the floor! So when the farting nurse saw that he had fainted, she
started pushing him with her foot to get him to wake up, yelling at
him the whole time: “What kind of doctor are you? What kind of
doctor are you? Get up! Get up!” And then all of a sudden she let
out the biggest, loudest, smelliest fart in the history of farts.
Mom thinks it was actually the fart that finally woke the doctor
up. Anyway, when Mom tells this story, she acts out all the
parts--including the farting noises--and it is so, so, so, so
funny!
Mom says the farting nurse turned out to be a very nice woman. She
stayed with Mom the whole time. Didn’t leave her side even after
Dad came back and the doctors told them how sick I was. Mom
remembers exactly what the nurse whispered in her ear when the
doctor told her I probably wouldn’t live through the night:
“Everyone born of God overcometh the world.” And the next day,
after I had lived through the night, it was that nurse who held
Mom’s hand when they brought her to meet me for the first
time.
Mom says by then they had told her all about me. She had been
preparing herself for the seeing of me. But she says that when she
looked down into my tiny mushed-up face for the first time, all she
could see was how pretty my eyes were.
Mom is beautiful, by the way. And Dad is handsome. Via is pretty.
In case you were wondering.
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