Wonder

Raquel J. Palacio lebt mit ihrem Mann und ihren beiden Söhnen in New York. Zwanzig Jahre lang gestaltete sie als Art Director die Cover für die Bücher anderer Leute und wartete auf den richtigen Moment, ihr eigenes Buch zu schreiben. Dann traf sie eines Tages vor einem Eisladen ein ganz besonderes Mädchen, und der Moment war gekommen.

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.

Learn more about R.J. Palacio and the world of Wonder at wonderthebook.com.

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