Best Book Ever: "Wonder" by Palacio

I love inspirational sayings. The only thing that stops me from embroidering my favorites and framing them is that it’s a weird, old lady thing to do (and also I don’t know how to embroider). But I’m all about a good precept.

I recently came across a great one in, of all places, a kid’s book. It said, “Your deeds are your monuments.”

This, by itself, was interesting. Then it got even more so. The book’s hero, 12 year old Auggie, wrote a paragraph about what these words meant to him. Here’s what Auggie wrote: 

“This precept means that we should be remembered for the things we 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. The things we do are like monuments that people build to honor heroes after they’ve died. They’re like the pyramids that the Egyptians built to honor the pharaohs. Only instead of being made out of stone, they’re made out of the memories people have of you. That’s why your deeds are like your monuments. Built with memories instead of with stone (Palacio, 2012, p. 65).”

Wow. These words of wisdom are from the book Wonder by R.J. Palacio. The book is about Auggie, a child with a severe facial deformity. What happens to Auggie when he hits 6^th grade and attends school for the first time? What does the experience teach Auggie, his family and his classmates about the choices that unite and divide us?

It’s one of the best books I’ve ever read. The resident 10 year old loved it too. She had to check a copy out of her school library just so we could read it at the same time. Because neither one of us wanted to put it down. That’s how easy it was to read and yet buried in those pages were some really great insights. About courage and friendship and pressure and change.

It’s one of those books that’s special. It would work for kids as young as 3^rd grade. And the dialogue it’ll inspire at your house? Ageless. Because these topics are just as relevant at 40 as they are at 14. We can’t control friendship, pressure or change. But we can control our choices, the decisions that determine what our personal monument looks like. (Click this link to learn more about "Wonder" by Palacio on amazon.com, where you can purchase it for around $9.)