Emma Maree Reviews: Wonder
Book: Wonder by R. J. Palacio
Genre: Fiction/Middle Grade/Children's/Contemporary
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?
When you pick up a book about a primary school kid with an illnesses that’s destroying his face, you’d expect it to be a depressing story. Not quite. Wonder manages to be both heart-breaking and heart-warming at the same time, mixing humour and honesty in a way that puts your emotions through a spin cycle.
I didn’t think I’d be tearing up at a novel for primary school-aged readers, but this book managed that. August is a warm, lovable character, and a huge Star Wars fan – he starts school with a Jedi braid in his hair, removing it only after this painful exchange with a school bully:
"Who's your favorite character?" Julian asked. I started thinking maybe he wasn't so bad.
"Jango Fett."
"What about Darth Sidious?" he said. "Do you like him?"
Maybe no one got the Darth Sidious thing, and maybe Julian didn't mean anything at all. But in Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith, Darth Sidious's face gets burned up by Sith lightning and becomes totally deformed. His skin gets all shrivelled up and his whole face just kind of melts.
I peeked at Julian and he was looking at me. Yeah, he knew what he was saying.
This story isn’t just about August, either. Auggie’s friends and family all have roles to play in the story, and each viewpoint has a different voice to match it. Wonder could be used as a textbook for great characterisation – it crafts a fantastic villain in school bully Julian while August’s friends and family are all flawed but loveable.
If you’re into children’s or young adult fiction, do yourself a favour and pick up “Wonder”. It’s a fresh, brave concept in the children’s writing world -- and a great story to boot.
A copy of this book was provided for review by Random House.
Ladies and Gentlemen, My Morning
Last night, there was some heavy, heavy snow across Scotland. This morning, it's still here -- and there's a good 3 inches of it. Something about the grey skies through the night and my gotta-wake-up-early-to-walk-in-the-snow panic meant that I woke up quite confused...
- 01:00. I should probably get some sleep.
- 01:30: Oh man, hold on, I need to write this idea down....
- 02:30: WHY CAN’T I SLEEP. D:
- 02:45: zzzzzzz
- 06:00: ALARM WHY ARE YOU GOING OFF IT’S NOT 07:00 YET.
- 06:01: IS IT DAYLIGHT SAVING’S TIME.
- 06:02: I JUST GOOGLED IT’S NOT DAYLIGHT SAVING’S TIME
- 06:02: zzzzzzz
- 06:30: I’M UP I’M UP I’M UP
- 06:31: zzzzzzz
- 06:45: I’M UP I’M UP I’M UP
- 07:00: *sleepy brushing of hair and finding of the winter clothes*
- 07:12: I’M RUNNING LATE AAAHHHHH GOTTA JET
- 07.13: tromp tromp tromp through the snow.
- 07:24: oh wow. work is kind of quiet. and there’s people still clearing the car park
- 07:25: wait what I’m doing here I don’t start until 8.
Oh dear, oh dear. I'll see you lovely lot at the end of my shift, time to get to work.
Clever, Powerful and True
Saw this image, thought it was clever, powerful and true. So I'm sharing it, as I do.
Reading this short article about being a YA writer, after reading this quote:
Writing coming-of-age novels of my own has led to a profound discovery. There are thousands of kids out there who are just like me. Secret readers. Tough-shelled, “mediocre students” who find themselves in books.
...and I thought that was clever, powerful and true as well.
Who’s that Pokemon?
Roan, a regular commenter and member of the forum, left a compelling question there today that I felt needed it's own blog post:
If you could be transported to the world of Pokemon (any platform, any generation), which place/region, and with which Pokemon?
That's right, guys. We're having a POKEMON post. Because I love Pokemon and so do all the cool people in the world.
Here's Roan answer, which I thought was wonderfully inventive and strategic:
I'd choose an Igglybuff that would come to me as an egg so I can breed it myself, and the region I'd like to explore the most would be the Orange Islands.
And mine, which was much less original:
Pokemon Yellow [the Gameboy Colour game from the same generation as Red and Blue] was my first and favourite, so I'd have to pick Kanto with Pikachu. After beating the Elite Four, I'd use the money to buy a falling-down little place outside of Lavender Town. I'd head into the city to buy cakes and tea regularly as well as to catch up on events, freaking out the townspeople because I have a freakin' Mewtwo with me.
And now, of course, I want to know your answer! So drop it in the comments. 
Dear March, I Do Not Like You
This image was drawn by Sekra, and I have a sneaking suspicion she had a look right into my life because HELLO THIS IS ME. I even have that Batman t-shirt... but I lack the awesome haircut. I want short hair but I think I'd suck at pulling it off, I'm very much a 'wake up and run a brush through it' person when to comes to hair styles.
March has been insanely difficult and I can't wait for it to be over. Some of my relatives have been in hospital. Moving house is ridiculously complicated and tiring. We've been understaffed at work. I'm facing a lot of biiig changes I need to make to my writing WIP, and I just want to run the other way and hide in a corner because large-scale revisions are hard. AND I'VE RUN OUT OF MILK FOR TEA.
But on the bright side: I had an awesome dinner party with my friends last night, I saw The Hunger Games, and I'm incredibly lucky and have some of the best friends this shy geek could ever ask for.
I just can't wait for things to get back in order so I can relax. In the meantime, I'm going to go outside and get some fresh air, sunshine, and milk so I can make so much tea.
“The Hunger Games” Movie
Along with a significant chunk of the YA writing/reading/reviewing world, I went to see The Hunger Games on it's release day.
I'll try to keep this as low on spoilers as I can, but I'm assuming all you cool people have read the books. And if you haven't, read the friggin books, because even though this is a faithful and brilliant movie adaption it will never be as good as the books. The movie had to cut out or just imply a lot of things the book covers in more detail. So read the books.
The Good
- Haymitch! I didn't care much for him in the first book, but movie Haymitch is brilliant. And he has an eerie similarity to Thor/Chris Hemsworth.
- Tracker Jackers! I was strangely concerned about them overdoing this and giving us some brightly coloured giant super-wasps. They didn't do this. What they did instead was TERRIFYING and so very well done. The entire Tracker Jacker scene is made of win and awesome.
- Most of the 'soundtrack' songs weren't actually in the movie, the soundtrack used was almost entirely instrumental. I liked a lot of the soundtrack songs, but the movie worked much better that way.
The Not-Quite-What-I-Expected
- Peeta. He's a great actor, just not what I expect from the boy with the bread. But he won me round by playing the role so well.
- The dog-creatures (the mutts). They showed a 3D model of them that looked kick-ass, but something about their design in motion didn't mesh well with me. They handled the fear in that scene very well, but they also took out a very creepy and powerful element from the books.
- The bloodlessness. I know this is a useless complaint, and if they had tried to add more blood this movie would never have been made... but sometimes the character deaths just felt too clean. It took away from the horror.
The Awesome
- SENECA CRANE'S BEARD.
- They somehow made Effie Trinket funny.
- The Gamekeeper's Control Room.
- Rue's lullaby.
- SENECA CRANE'S BEEEEAAARDDD.
I really loved this movie, and recommend it to anyone who loved the books -- just be sure to treat it as a separate creature to the books. Totally worth sitting through the 30 minutes of boring cinema adverts, and the one hour bus ride with loud drunks and no seatbelts that followed.
Giving Babies Tea
“Mum, how old was I when I first had tea?”
“I’m not sure… not when you were that wee. But when we got you your first tea set, you were fascinated with it for hours…”
The Missing 35%
These are all the ingredients listed on a small tester bag of ferret food.
Nothing to worry about in there, but I'm not sure if I want to know what's in the other 35%....
Ferret Pictures!
Took some black and white photos of the ferrets that I thought were worth sharing. Ferrets are a pain to catch in photographs because they move super-fast, but I managed to get snaps of: Tea staring excitedly down a hosepipe, Tea jumping around, war dancing and looking insane and Coffee glaring sinisterly from on top of her digging box. The photo's show their differences well--Tea's the Pinky of their relationship and Coffee's The Brain.
The normally look a lot cuter and fluffier than this, though, and you can see that side of them over here.
Neil Gaiman on Writer’s Block
Neil Gaiman: Reposted as something that can be reblogged. ON WRITER'S BLOCK.:
I’ve seem to be hitting writer’s block far too often now. My grade in my creative writing class is suffering because i don’t turn in anything because i’m never really satisfied with anything i do. all my good ideas seem to turn into bad ones once i write it down. How do you get pass writers block?
You turn off your inner critic. You do not listen to your inner police force. You ignore the little voices that tell you that it’s all stupid, and you keep going.
Your grade isn’t suffering because your writing is bad, it’s suffering because you aren’t finishing things and handing them in.
So, finish them and hand them in. Even if a story’s lousy, you’ll learn something from it that will be useful as a writer, even if it’s just “don’t do that again”.
You’re always going to be dissatisfied with what you write. That’s part of being human. In our heads, stories are perfect, flawless, glittering, magical. Then we start to put them down on paper, one unsatisfactory word at a time. And each time our inner critics tell us that it’s a rotten idea and we should abandon it.
If you’re going to write, ignore your inner critic, while you’re writing. Do whatever you can to finish. Know that anything can be fixed later.
Remember: you don’t have to brilliant when you start out. You just have to write. Every story you finish puts you closer to being a writer, and makes you a better writer.
Blaming “Writer’s Block” is wonderful. It removes any responsibility from the person with the “block”. It gives you something to blame, and it sounds fancy.
But it’s probably more honest to think of it as a combination of laziness, perfectionism and Getting Stuck. If you’re being lazy, don’t be. If you’re being a perfectionist, don’t be. And if you’re stuck, figure out where the story went off the rails, or what you got wrong, or where you need to go deeper, or what you need to add to make it work, and then start writing again.
Things I need to remember.
Hailing from the wet and windy Scottish Highlands, Emma is an avid reader and writer of YA novels. She works in IT and drinks too much tea.
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