After being homeschooled for years, Auggie Pullman is about to start fifth grade, but he is worried: How will he fit into middle-school life when he looks so different from everyone else?

    Pullman has had 27 operations to correct facial anomalies* he was born with, but he still has a face that has earned him such nicknames as Freak* and Lizard* face. Though “his features look like they’ve been melted, like the drippings on a candle” and he is used to people averting* their eyes when they see him, he feels pretty ordinary inside.

    He is smart, funny, kind and brave, but his father says that having him attend Beecher Prep would be like sending “a lamb to the slaughterhouse*.”

    Author R. J. Palacio divides the novel into eight parts, mixing the boy’s first-person narrative with the voices of family members and classmates.

    School doesn’t test only him, his arrival affects everyone in the community. It’s a memorable story of kindness, courage and wonder.

    (SD-Agencies)