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A few months ago, I sat on the couch in my family room reading and re-reading middle-grade books. I had reached an end of sorts with young-adult fiction—had grown concerned about the divisions, the animosity, even, that had grown up among and between YA camps and were splitting writers from writers from (ultimately) readers. I wanted to feel the simple magic again of being a reader in a young person's world.

I read to be alive to the stories themselves. I read in search of binding patterns. I read, and I thought.

This essay, now published on Printers Row/Chicago Tribune, reports back on the thoughts I had.

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Title: how to Written and illustrated by: Julie Morstad Published by: Simply Read books, 2013 Themes/Topics: how to guide, imagination, whimsy, wonder Literary awards: Marilyn Baillie Picture Book Award (2014), Christie Harris Illustrated Children’s Literature Prize (2014) Suitable for ages: 6-9 Opening: how to go fast Synopsis: This imaginative ‘how to’ book explores … Continue reading →

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Katrina McKelvey started life in a little country town in New South Wales, where she was fortunate to be able to soak up the charming facets of nature. Nowadays, Katrina is soaking up the well-deserved praise for her gorgeous debut picture book, ‘Dandelions’. Having had embraced the pleasures and joys through her roles as mother, […]

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What is better than an Alain Crozon board book? TWO Alain Crozon board books! Originally published in France (Éditions des Grandes Personnes © 2013), Chronicle Books has translated the texts of Who’s There? and All Shook Up! for English-speaking children. Chronicle Books has made a specialty out of translating and publishing French children’s book. If …

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I confess: I am the last person in America to read Leif Enger's Peace Like a River. The last person to wake earlier than the usual early to get more pages in. The last person to brim up over the magnitude of this book's heart. The last person to sit very quietly still after the final sentence was sung and wish that the book had not been read yet—that it was still out there, rewarding discovery, still out there, beckoning.

For what a book is this book about an asthmatic boy and his literary sister, their miracle-stirring father, their outlaw brother, the minor and major sacrifices one makes when protecting love against the provable facts of a crime. This story about the wild west, the Valdezes and Cassidys, the crags in the earth that burn unending fires, the storms that blow in the snow or simply blow the snow, the quality of icing on cinnamon raisin buns. The stars:

They burned yellow and white, and some of them changed to blue or a cold green or orange—Swede should've been there, she'd have had words. She'd have known that orange to be volcanic or forgestruck or a pinprick between our blackened world and one the color of sunsets. I thought of God making it all, picking up handfuls of whatever material, iron and other stuff, rolling it in. His fingers like nubby wheat. The picture I had was of God taking these rough pellets by the handful and casting them gently, like a man planting. Look at the Milky Way. It has that pattern, doesn't it, of having been cast there by the back-and-forward sweep of His arm?

Magnificent, right? Magnificent. And not an ounce of the angry in this book, which is not to say there is no moral complexity or confusion. Not a whiff of cynicism, which is not to say that this ageless/timeless book is devoid of brave impartings. When I think about why I love this book so much, I think it has something to do with this: it is not afraid to be alive with the wonder of our living.

Am I right? Perhaps. For when I set off to read more about Enger, I came upon this excerpt from a Mark LaFramboise interview. Wonder is his topic—the importance of holding fast, and holding true, to the mysterious.

There is no greater lesson, I believe, for anyone writing right now. We seem in all-out pursuit of edge and bitterness, declarations of the apocalyptic. But aren't our very best books sprung from respect for natural and man-made loveliness?

Q: Although the narrator tells the story in retrospect, we see the world through the eleven- year old eyes of Reuben. How were you able to capture the wonder, fears, and curiosity of such a young protagonist?

A: First, my parents gave me the sort of childhood now rarely encountered. Summers were beautiful unorganized eternities where we wandered in the timber unencumbered by scoutmasters. We dressed in breechclouts and carried willow branch bows, and after supper Dad hit us fly balls. It was probably most idyllic for me as the youngest of four, since three worthy imaginations were out beating the ground in front of me; who knew what might jump up? Now I see that same freedom in the lives of our two sons, whose interests cover the known map. It's easy to witness the world through the eyes of a boy when you have two observant ones with you at all times. But the ruinous thing about growing up is that we stop creating mysteries where none exist, and worse, we usually try to deconstruct and deny the genuine mysteries that remain. We argue against God, against true romance, against loyalty and self-sacrifice. What allows Reuben to keep his youthful perspective is that he's seen all these things in action -- he is the beneficiary of his father's faith. He is a witness of wonders. To forget them would be to deny they happened, and denying the truth is the beginning of death.

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“Our Christmas cactus has predictably bloomed each December for three decades and some years when it has been colder for longer, as is the case this year, it often blooms more than once a year. Our Christmas cactus is alive and growing 365 days of the year, most of which it is rarely seen by me but only looked at.”

That’s Owen Swain in his post “Blooming Cactus / blooming an illustrated life / and, what I learned in Sketchbook Skool.”

In his drawing of the cactus, he includes a quote which sent me immediately dashing for my commonplace book (which is to say, this blog).

“While drawing grasses I learn nothing ‘about’ grass, but wake to the wonder of this grass and its growing, to the wonder that there is grass at all.”

—Frederick Franck

That. Yes. Exactly. Or at least, I suppose I would say I learn something about grass when I’m drawing it, I learn something about everything I look at closely. But that kind of learning is implied in the quote. I get what he means by ‘about.’ And yes, the waking to the wonder of a thing by observing it quietly, moving your pen along its paths, or by writing a poem about it (“This grasshopper, I mean—/ the one who has flung herself out of the grass,/ the one who is eating sugar out of my hand, who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down—/ who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes…”)*; even, I daresay, by blogging about it—the combined act of observing, pondering, and then expressing, in word or line—these endeavors shift your relationship with the humble object; they awaken you to the wonder the thing actually is.

The very first revelation that struck me about drawing, way back in college during a too-brief foray into sketching, was the passage in the Betty Edwards book Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain in which one of Betty’s students mentioned that after she began trying to draw faces, “every face I looked at seemed beautiful to me.” I have written before about the enormous impact that statement had on me, not just in relation to drawing but to an overall view of life.

The drawing lessons taught her to really look at people, and when she did, she saw beauty everywhere.

I know I’m going all over the place here, but in my mind these things are all connected: this way of really looking, really seeing, noticing what is interesting and important and even beautiful about things many people whisk by without noticing. And what I can do for my children is refuse to fill up their lives with things they must patiently endure until a better moment comes. I can savor the moments as they happen, and give them the time and space to find what’s interesting and beautiful in every face the world shows them.

As I was writing that last sentence, Beanie appeared in front of me with a big smile and a present: a bracelet made of safety pins linked together, each pin shining with green and blue beads. “It’s for you, Mommy,” she breathed, so proud and excited. “Jane showed me how.” How patiently (the good kind of patience) she must have worked to slide all those beads in place.

I never noticed before what a work of art a safety pin is!

I’ve written so many times on this blog about how my approach to education is to keep the focus on the process, not the product. The lesson is renewed for me every time I take pencil in hand and try to capture the lines of a thing on my page. In the end, it doesn’t matter at all how my drawing ‘turns out.’ The magic is in the doing.

*From “The Summer Day” by Mary Oliver

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Today’s guest blogger is Leslie Anido, a special needs teacher in California. She first connected with First Book as a member of long-time partner Pi Beta Phi Fraternity. She now receives books and resources for the children she serves through First Book.

Leslie Anido and her students with one of the many books that have helped encourage understanding within their school.

“Books have helped our students look beyond their differences and discover their similarities, regardless of appearance or skills,” explains Leslie.

Leslie’s students’ physical, medical and communication abilities mean many use assistive technologies to aid their learning. Though they learn differently than their peers, they have the same interests, dreams and love of books.

Books from First Book have helped start a dialogue about disabilities at Leslie’s school. Most recently, the students read “Out of My Mind,” by Sharon Draper, featuring a main character who uses an augmentative communication device, which three of Leslie’s students also use.

Her students have been able to relate to these characters on a very personal level. Their peers have also gained a greater understanding of what life is like for kids who rely on learning tools and assistance. They are now initiating and engaging in conversations with Leslie’s students more frequently. These books have served as more than just an educational resource. They’ve become tools for developing an understanding of community and inclusivity within the school.

“The lives of our students have been truly enriched by the availability of these books,” says Leslie.

The post Books to Start A Dialogue About Disabilities appeared first on First Book Blog.

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Recently I was talking to a younger colleague, a recent PhD, about what we and our peers read for pleasure. He noted that the only fiction that most of his friends read is young adult fiction: The Hunger Games, Twilight, that kind of thing. Although the subject matter of these series is often dark, the appeal, hypothesized my colleague, lies elsewhere: in the reassuringly formulaic and predictable narrative arc of the plots. If his friends have a taste for something genuinely edgy, he went on, then they’ll read non-fiction instead.

When did we develop this idea that fiction, to be enjoyable, must be comforting nursery food? I’d argue that it’s not only in our recreational reading but also, increasingly, in the classroom, that we shun what seems too chewy or bitter, or, rather; we tolerate bitterness only if it comes in a familiar form, like an over-cooked Brussels sprout. And yet, in protecting ourselves from anticipated frictions and discomforts, we also deprive ourselves of one of fiction’s richest rewards.

One of the ideas my research explores is the belief, in the eighteenth-century, that fiction commands attention by soliciting wonder. Wonder might sound like a nice, calm, placid emotion, but that was not how eighteenth-century century thinkers conceived it. In an essay published in 1795 but probably written in the 1750s, Adam Smith describes wonder as a sentiment induced by a novel object, a sentiment that may be recognized by the wonderstruck subject’s “staring, and sometimes that rolling of the eyes, that suspension of the breath, and that swelling of the heart” (‘The Principles Which Lead and Direct Philosophical Enquiries’). And that was just the beginning. As Smith describes:

“when the object is unexpected; the passion is then poured in all at once upon the heart which is thrown, if it is a strong passion, into the most violent and convulsive emotions, such as sometimes cause immediate death; sometimes, by the suddenness of the extacy, so entirely disjoint the whole frame of the imagination, that it never after returns to its former tone and composure, but falls either into a frenzy or habitual lunacy.” (‘The Principles Which Lead and Direct Philosophical Enquiries’)

It doesn’t sound very comfortable, does it? Eighteenth-century novels risked provoking such extreme reactions in their tales of people in extremis; cast out; marooned; kidnapped. Such tales were not gory, necessarily, in the manner of The Hunger Games, and the response they invited was not necessarily horror or terror. More radically, in shape and form as well as content, eighteenth-century writers related stories that were strange, unpredictable, unsettling, and, as such, productive of wonder. Why risk discomforting your reader so profoundly? Because, Henry Home, Lord Kames argued in his Elements of Criticism (1762), wonder also fixes the attention: in convulsing the reader, you also impress a representation deeply upon her mind.

One of the works I find particularly interesting to think about in relation to this idea of wonder is Mary Shelley’s 1818 novel Frankenstein. Frankenstein is a deeply pleasurable book to read, but I wouldn’t describe it as comfortable. Perhaps I felt this more acutely than some when I first read it, as a first year undergraduate. The year before I had witnessed my father experience a fatal heart attack. Ever since then, any description or representation that evoked the body’s motion in defibrillation would viscerally call up the memory of that night. One description that falls under that heading is the climactic moment in Shelley’s novel in which Victor Frankenstein brings his creature to life: “I saw the dull yellow eye of the creature open; it breathed hard, and a convulsive motion agitated its limbs.” If the unexpected, in Smith’s account, triggers convulsive motions, then it seems fitting that a newly created being’s experience of its own first breath would indeed be felt as a moment of wonder.

When I was a nineteen year-old reading Frankenstein, there was no discussion about the desirability of providing “trigger warnings” when teaching particular texts; and even if there had been, it seems unlikely that this particular text would have been flagged as potentially traumatic (a fact that speaks to the inherent difficulty of labeling certain texts as more likely to serve as triggers than others, given the variety of people’s experience). I found reading Shelley’s novel to be a deeply, uncomfortably, wonder-provoking experience, in Smith’s terms, but it did not, clearly, result in my “immediate death.” What it did produce, rather, was a deep and lasting impression. Indeed, perhaps that is why, more than twenty years later, I felt compelled to revisit this novel in my research, and why I found myself taking seriously Percy Shelley’s characterization of the experience of reading Frankenstein as one in which we feel our “heart suspend its pulsations with wonder” at its content, even as we “debate with ourselves in wonder,” as to how the work was produced. High affect can be all consuming, but we may also revisit and observe, in more serene moments, the workings of the mechanisms which wring such high affect from us.

In Minneapolis for a conference a few weeks ago, I mentioned to my panel’s chair that I had run around Lake Calhoun. He asked if I had stopped at the Bakken Museum (I had not), which is on the lake’s west shore. He proceeded to explain that it was a museum about Earl Bakken, developer of the pacemaker, whose invention was supposedly inspired by seeing the Boris Karloff 1931 film of Frankenstein, and in particular the scene in which the creature is brought to life with the convulsive electric charge.

As Bakken’s experience suggests, the images that disturb us can also inspire us. Mary Shelley affirms as much in her Introduction to the 1831 edition of the novel, which suggests that the novel had its source in a nightmarish reverie. Shelley assumes that Frankenstein’s power depends upon the reproducible nature of her affect: “What terrified me will terrify others,” she predicts. Haunting images, whether conjured by fantasies, novels, or films, can be generative, although certainly not always in such direct and instrumental ways. Most of us won’t develop a life-saving piece of technology, like Earl Bakken (my father, in fact, had a pacemaker, and, although it didn’t save his life, it did prolong it) or write an iconic novel, like Mary Shelley. But that is not to say that the impressions that fiction can etch into our minds are not generative. If comfort has its place and its pleasures, so too does discomfort: experiencing “bad feelings” enables us to notice, in our re-tracings of them, the unexpected connections that emerge between profoundly different experiences—death; life; reading—all of them heart-stopping in their own ways.

The post Heart-stopped: Fiction and the rewards of discomfort appeared first on OUPblog.

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Wonder Eye from Wikimedia Commons

WONDER

5:30 in the morning
I'm walking along
in the dark neighborhood
my brain already full of the day ahead
not paying the kind of attention
that will keep me from
stumbling into a skunk
by accident
when I look up
and see a very large dog
in the park
that resolves into a fawn
whose sibling and mother are across the street
not quite hidden in the shadows of the front yard
and it's as if the plug was pulled
and my brain is empty of everything
except the here
and the now.

I continue walking slowly down the sidewalk
toward the fawn
who bobs its head
looking at me
assessing my threat level
until suddenly its tail flags and it
floats silently
across the street to its family
on impossibly thin legs and tiny feet
and I struggle to keep the wonder
hold the moment
stop the everyday thoughts from flooding back in
but the pure animal focus
is gone.

©Mary Lee Hahn, 2014



Laura has the Poetry Friday Roundup today at Author Amok.

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100% Kid-Approved Book Recommendations

As you probably know, STACKers love to read, so today we are featuring a book recommended by one of YOU! FriendlyMonkey10 recommends “a book that you have to read!!!” It’s Wonder by R.J. Palacio (for ages 8-12). Have you read this book? What did you think?

Read on for FriendlyMonkey’s review. . .

Read Wonder by R.J. Palacio!!!!!!!!!! If you have not read this book, pick it up at the library and read it now!!! It’s a touching story about a boy named Auggie Pullman that was born with a facial deformity. Due to his frequent surgeries, he is homeschooled. For fifth grade though, he won’t be attending homeschool anymore. Because of his face, Auggie faces rudeness, mean comments, etc. . .  Can Auggie convince everyone that he is just like them even with his appearance and how will he do that? To figure out the answers, read the book!!!!

Do you agree with FriendlyMonkey10

? Leave a Comment or go to the Reading Buzz Message Board to join the discussion about this book.

 

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moonlight mavens ©the enchanted easel 2014

©the enchanted easel 2014

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A wonderful lady sent this to me in an email this morning and it inspired me, and so I want to share it with you too. Have a wonder-filled week!

“We lay there and looked up at the night sky

and he told me about stars called blue squares and red swirls. 

I told him I’d never heard of them.Of course not, he said,

the really important stuff they never tell you.

You have to imagine it on your own.”

-Brian Andreas, Traveling Light, Stories & Drawing for a Quiet Mind

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#65 Wonder by R.J. Palacio (2012)
31 points

I was going to go with a classic, but couldn’t pick from so many possibilities (and I know others will surely choose them) so I decided to go the other route and pick a brand new title from this year. Palacio does the unbelievable in creating a book with a theme of kindness that doesn’t give you cavities. Looking forward to more by this new author! - Heather Christensen

Put this in every school library everywhere, please! Every library anywhere, really. A story about an otherwise average 10 year old boy with severe facial deformities attending school for the first time. It succeeds in teaching empathy without being overly sentimental or Beaches-style manipulative in pulling your heart strings. What I think it does best though is create a magnifying glass that shows us how we react to difference through the frank and honest perspective of various kids’ voices. It’s a bit shaming at times, but with the power to change and open minds. It’s very readable and the rotating narrative adds perspective and keeps things moving. – Nicole Johnston

Surprisingly, when this poll was held in 2010 no books from that particular publishing year made the Top 100, and even if they had would they have been as high as #65?  It takes a particularly special book to garner that kind of love.   And Wonder is some kind of somethin’.  The current frontrunner for the 2013 Newbery, it has been mentioned in Entertainment Weekly and other trade publications.

The description from my review reads, “Auggie Pullman has never had to go to school with other kids. Lucky him you say? Not so much. You see, Auggie’s a great kid. Loves his Star Wars and his Xbox and all the other stuff kids are into. He also has had more surgeries than most people go through in an entire lifetime, and he’s only in the fifth grade. Born with severe birth defects that have rendered his face very different from that of other kids he’s been homeschooled for years. Now, at long last, he has a chance to go to a small school near his home for the first time. He’s always had to deal with people treating him differently. The real question is whether or not he can get them to look beyond his face to see how he’s just the most ordinary kid you ever did know.”

Note that both the commenters above compliment Ms. Palacio on her ability to do a meaningful bit of subject matter without goo or treacle.  As Heather put it, “a theme of kindness that doesn’t give you cavities” and Nicole concurs saying it shows, “empathy without being overly sentimental or Beaches-style manipulative in pulling your heart strings.”  That is the true art of the book.  So where did it come from?  Well, in a recent profile in PW Ms. Raquel Jaramillo (the real name of R.J. Palacio) explained the true inspiration behind the book:

“A chance encounter with a little girl who looked the way Jaramillo imagines Auggie looks provided the seeds of her novel. The girl, her mother, and a friend sat next to Jaramillo and her young sons outside an ice cream shop. Her younger boy, only three at the time, started to cry. Her older son maintained his composure but was visibly unsettled. As Jaramillo qui

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Today, I did what I have been doing on Good Friday for the past three years.  I listened to Jesus Christ Superstar while dipping peanut butter eggs in melted chocolate.

I also dipped candied orange peels in chocolate since my Dad has decided they are scrumptious.

About a third of the way through the dipping I decided something.  My neighbor and I are friends but lately things have seemed...awkward, maybe?  Strained?  You know how it gets.  Someone does or says something and, later, you replay it and wonder if it means something more serious than it does.  And then someone's feelings get hurt.  Usually mine, because I have very fragile feelings and a HUGE imagination for all the negative meanings or nuances for what has been said or done.

So, since the Hub was out running errands and I had just made coffee and was dipping things in chocolate, I called my neighbor and offered to bring her coffee and chocolate.

It was a very good idea.  I like my neighbor a lot.  We had fun talking to one another.

When I returned to chocolate dipping - and to Jesus Christ Superstar - I started thinking about Wonder by R. J. Palacio.  Now, that is a book made to think about.  Some of you will think about the characters and the events.  Others will wonder if the author's choices were realistic.  And still others will get inspiration from the way the characters behaved.


I realized that I might have been inspired by Miranda's actions.  In the book, Miranda is/was Auggie's sister's best friend.  And then something happened, some small thing, that changed the dynamics of the girls' relationship.  Towards the end of the book, Miranda makes a choice which helps the girls reconnect.  Yeah.  This is a good thing.  I like Olivia, Auggie's sister, and I like Miranda.  They should still be friends.

More about the book.  The book is told in many voices - one of the choices the author makes that will make people wonder.  I felt the choice was a good one.  I needed to see the same events - or situations - through different people's eyes.  Auggie, whose facial deformities have made his life challenging and painful, does most of the narration.  But when Olivia gets a chance to speak, it is good to see that she is not as perfect as Auggie paints her.  Their family life is all about Auggie and Olivia understands and accepts that.  That doesn't mean that she wants everyone to think of her as "the girl with the deformed brother."

Miranda has loved Auggie for as long as she has been Olivia's friend.  There are times that she thinks of Auggie as her brother.  This complicates her life.  Her story is a touching one.  Miranda might be my favorite character.

We hear from Auggie's friends at school, Summer and Jack.  Sometimes, fifth graders do stupid hurtful things when they think no one will know about them.  Honesty is hard at that age.

We hear from Olivia's first boyfriend.  This is an odd narration.  But a useful one.  The other characters are involved with Auggie in constant and deep ways.  Josh is an outsider and his view of the family dynamics is refreshing.  Plus, I like a little romance in books about difficult topics.

AND, there are fun happenings and scary happenings in this book - action, maybe even a little adventure.  There is information about birth defects -  how they are treated and technology.  Humor and hope can defuse a lot of painful events.

S

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I swear that every time my computer goes on the fritz I feel like I’m walking underwater for days on end while it’s in the shop.  I can’t do email effectively, I can’t update Goodreads, I can’t do anything without feeling like it’s all fake until that little laptop is returned to my knees where it belongs.  It’s a sickness, man.  Not healthy in the least.  But now that it’s back I can’t help but be thrilled!  Woot and woo-hoo and other “woo” related forms of cheering. Now on to the news . . .

• First off, I’m pilfering this next link from the always amusing and informative Jennifer Schultz.  Because I am a member of PEN here in New York I’ve been vaguely aware of the efforts to help New Orleans rebuild post-Katrina (the Children’s/Young Adult Book Authors Committee helped move an elementary school library from St. Joseph’s School in Greenwich Village, New York City, to the Martin Luther King Jr. School in New Orleans and have continued to aid that school ever since).  The New Orleans public libraries themselves haven’t been on my radar as much.  Jennifer filled me in on the matter:

“Yesterday’s Times-Picayune (New Orleans’s newspaper) had an excellent article about the rebirth of the New Orleans Public Library system, which was devastated by Hurricane Katrina. Ever since they started to rebuild the libraries, their motto has been “Building Back Better.” The NOPL libraries were okay—they’ve always had strong community programming, but there was a lot of room for improvement—but drastic improvements were never going to be in the city’s finances, until Katrina came and they had no choice but to literally start over with many of their libraries. They didn’t want to just rebuild what they had—they wanted to take this unusual and tragic opportunity to make a strong and community-oriented system for the city. They wanted to make them public transportation-friendly, since many residents rely on it, technologically savvy,  environmentally-friendly—you name it. This is their website: http://nutrias.org/ (The nutria is a pest —they are great at destroying wetlands-and a source of humor in Louisiana-Louisianians can have a dark sense of humor. They had a rather colorful governor  years ago who suggested that folks should hunt and eat the nutrias in order to cut down on their numbers, and they’ve been sort of a joke ever since. Nutria fur is marketed as “guilt free fur,” etc).”

Thank you, Jennifer!  Fantastic info.  I can’t wait for ALA to return and to get to see the city (and it’s libraries!) firsthand.

• There’s a new Diary of a Wimpy Kid book coming out this November.  Kinney says the new book will in
  0 Comments on Fusenews: If Henry James says it’s wrong I don’t wanna be right as of 1/1/1900
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My library is hosting a book fair this week, so Middle Grade books are on my brain in a big way! Here are some newly discovered titles paired with old favorites.

Historical Gems:

Jennifer Arena at Random House (psst…she’s such a lovely fellow bookworm.) introduced me to CROW by Barbara Wright. The narrator, 11-year-old Moses, brings us into his turn of the century world. In 1898 Wilmington, North Carolina, the legacy of Jim Crow is alive and well. One generation from slavery, a thriving black community struggles to maintain hard-won liberty, and Moses’ family is caught up in a firestorm of prejudice and hate. You’ll fall in love with the authentic voice and realistic characters.

CROW is an excellent companion to ROLL OF THUNDER, HEAR MY CRY by Mildred B. Taylor. Set in the 1930′s, the novel chronicles the Logan family’s fight to hold onto inherited land and personal dignity. This Newbery winner is a storm of its own, a thunderclap of fierce, emotional storytelling.

Books with Heart:

WONDER, by RJ Palacio, is a tremendous debut, a novel that coaxes out grins even as it wrings out tears. Auggie, the fifth grade protagonist is different–his face is so badly deformed, he spends much of his preschool years hiding under a toy astronaut helmet. When he starts attending school for the first time, he makes enemies and friends, enduring the worst kind of taunts and enjoying the best kinds of friendships.

WONDER is Auggie’s story, but it’s also ours. The novel captures the dual nature of childhood, both how cruel and how tender we can be with one another. It’s about the wounds we inflict and the scars we carry, all the things that teach us to do things differently the next time.

WONDER pairs *wonderfully* with FREAK THE MIGHTY by Rodman Philbrick. Philbrick’s singular voice breathes life into an unforgettable story. Max and Kevin are two different types of young outcasts, a hulking loner and disabled genius, who forge an incredible, life-altering bond–a friendship that carries them through adventure and heartbreak.

Magical Reads:

Happenstance brings this last pair-up. I had the good fortune to meet Meaghan Finnerty, a Sterling rep, at ALA Midwinter. When I asked her to recommend a book, she pressed HORTEN’S MIRACULOUS MECHANISMS (by Lissa Evans) into my hands

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