Wonder

Wonder is a children's novel by the American writer R. J. Palacio, published on 14 February 2012. It is her first novel, and it centres on a boy who is going to school for the first time.

August Pullman is ten years old and lives in Upper Manhattan. He has Treacher Collins syndrome, which has affected his face and required a great many operations, and because of that he has been taught at home by his mother for years.

His parents decide that he should have the experience of an ordinary school, and they enrol him at Beecher Prep for the beginning of fifth grade. The novel follows what that year is like for him and for the people around him.

Palacio has said that the idea came partly from Natalie Merchant's song Wonder and partly from an incident in which her own son reacted with distress on seeing a girl with a facial difference. The book has since been followed by several spin-offs and by a film released in 2017.