Wonder

by R.J. Palacio

Stuff like that makes me ordinary. I guess. And I feel ordinary. Inside. But I know ordinary kids don’t make other ordinary kids run away screaming in playgrounds. I know ordinary kids don’t get stared at wherever they go.

If I found a magic lamp and I could have one wish, I would wish that I had a normal face that no one ever noticed at all.

the only reason I’m not ordinary is that no one else sees me that way.

I know how to pretend I don’t see the faces people make.

They see me as extraordinary. I think the only person in the world who realizes how ordinary I am is me.

WHEN GIVEN THE CHOICE BETWEEN BEING RIGHT OR BEING KIND, CHOOSE KIND.

She said soft words that I know were meant to help me, but words can’t change my face.

They would take the longest way around me to avoid bumping into me in any way, like I had some germ they could catch, like my face was contagious.

They were just being normal dumb kids. I know that. I kind of wanted to tell them that. Like, it’s okay, I know I’m weird-looking, take a look, I don’t bite.

Then Jack whispered: “Are you always going to look this way, August? I mean, can’t you get plastic surgery or something?” I smiled and pointed to my face. “Hello? This is after plastic surgery!” Jack clapped his hand over his forehead and started laughing hysterically.

do. The things we do are the most important things of all. They are more important than what we say or what we look like. The things we do outlast our mortality.

That’s when I knew for sure that there was this thing about touching me at Beecher Prep. I think it’s like the Cheese Touch in Diary of a Wimpy Kid. The kids in that story were afraid they’d catch the cooties if they touched the old moldy cheese on the basketball court. At Beecher Prep, I’m the old moldy cheese.

I wish every day could be Halloween. We could all wear masks all the time. Then we could walk around and get to know each other before we got to see what we looked like under the masks.

I’ve always understood that August is special and has special needs.

I’ve seen August after his surgeries: his little face bandaged up and swollen, his tiny body full of IVs and tubes to keep him alive. After you’ve seen someone else going through that, it feels

kind of crazy to complain over not getting the toy you had asked for, or your mom missing a school play. I knew this even when I was six years old. No one ever told it to me. I just knew it.

My worst day, worst fall, worst headache, worst bruise, worst cramp, worst mean thing anyone could say has always been nothing compared to what August has gone through. This isn’t me being noble, by the way: it’s just the way I know it is.

we’ve all spent so much time trying to make August think he’s normal that he actually thinks he is normal. And the problem is, he’s not.

They were told that August had what seemed to be a “previously unknown type of mandibulofacial dysostosis caused by an autosomal recessive mutation in the TCOF1 gene, which is located on chromosome 5, complicated by a hemifacial microsomia characteristic of OAV spectrum.”

It’s like how compass needles always point north, no matter which way you’re facing. All those eyes are compasses, and I’m like the North Pole to them.

Now that I look back, I don’t know why I was so stressed about it all this time. Funny how sometimes you worry a lot about something and it turns out to be nothing.

You don’t need your eyes to love, right? You just feel it inside you. That’s how it is in heaven. It’s just love, and no one forgets who they love.”

I think there should be a

rule that everyone in the world should get a standing ovation at least once in their lives.

The truth is she hadn’t changed at all: we had. We’d become these other people, and she was still the person she’d always been.

there are more good people on this earth than bad people, and the good people watch out for each other and take care of each other.

“But the best way to measure how much you’ve grown isn’t by inches or the number of laps you can now run around the track, or even your grade point average—though those things are important, to be sure. It’s what you’ve done with your time, how you’ve chosen to spend your days, and whom you have touched this year. That, to me, is the greatest measure of success.

‘Shall we make a new rule of life … always to try to be a little kinder than is necessary?’ ”

Because it’s not enough to be kind. One should be kinder than needed. Why I love that line, that concept, is that it reminds me that we carry with us, as human beings, not just the capacity to be kind, but the very choice of kindness.

If every single person in this room made it a rule that wherever you are, whenever you can, you will try to act a little kinder than is necessary—the world really would be a better place. And if you do this, if you act just a little kinder than is necessary, someone else, somewhere, someday, may recognize in you, in every single one of you, the face of God.”

It’s like people you see sometimes, and you can’t imagine what it would be like to be that person, whether it’s somebody in a wheelchair or somebody who can’t talk. Only, I know that I’m that person to other people, maybe to every single person in that whole auditorium. To me, though, I’m just me. An ordinary kid. But hey, if they want to give me a medal for being me, that’s okay. I’ll take it. I didn’t destroy a Death Star or anything like that, but I did just get through the fifth grade. And that’s not easy, even if you’re not me.

“You really are a wonder, Auggie. You are a wonder.”