Club de Lectura Enjoy Reading 14/12/2017: We are going to read ...
R. J. Palacio
(New
York, 1963) though her real name is Raquel
Jaramillo, she wrote in under the pen name "R.J. Palacio". She 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, which many others followed. Source: bookbrowse.com
Auggie & Me, Three Wonder Stories (2015) In the companion novel to Wonder, (2012) three students at Beecher Prep middle school tell stories that connect with Auggie Pullman’s dramatic arrival into their worlds. “Sometimes friendships are hard,” and friendship with Auggie Pullman is a special challenge. He is different. He looks different, and that’s not easy in middle school. He has a “severe craniofacial difference,” facial features that, even after many surgeries over the years, look like “the drippings on the side of a candle.” Now, Palacio zeros in on three characters: Julian, the bully; Auggie’s oldest friend, Christopher; and Charlotte, the girl who is nice to Auggie but never especially friendly. Auggie is the common thread in their stories, but he’s behind the scenes here, peripheral to their first-person narratives. Each character relates a story that includes an epiphany about friendship, family, and life. Auggie is the catalyst for transformations in their lives, but readers will see sides of characters Auggie never would have known. The stories are explorations of kindness, each character demonstrating how it takes bravery to be kind, how, in the tricky business of navigating new situations, “it’s always better to err on the side of kindness.” Source: kirkusreviews.com
“Greatness... lies not in being strong, but in the right use of strength... He is the greatest whose strength carries up the most hearts by the attraction of his own.” R. J. Palacio
To know more:
Interview with the writer
The origins of childrens literature
Inclusive education