Wonder was great young adult fiction. It explores the life of a 5th grader who has some major birth facial defects: August Pullman. The Author R. J. Palacio writes her chapters in two to three-page chunks and jumps around a years time from different perspectives. It was really well done and creative. Sometimes I laughed so hard I cried and other times I cried so hard my kids laughed. It was a lovely story. I highly recommend it. I read it aloud to my 7, 9, and 11 year old. My 13 year old read it himself and loved it. My five year old was bored.

This was a New York Times Bestseller and made into a movie. I heard the book is better by the way. It is about 320 pages but the reading level is 3-7th grade. It is an easy read.

Probably one of the drawbacks is the use of slang like "stupid" and "Shut up" and "God". As a parent who doesn't want to hear my little kids use those words I am sensitive to what words I say to them so when reading I changed the words a bit. There is a lot of lying too and that gave us an opportunity to talk about honesty. Finally, the author uses a lot of cultural references that will soon date her work and place it outside of the range of her readership. So the lasting power of such a book will be severely tested.