Laurel Snyder, author of Bigger than a Bread Box and Penny Dreadful, interviews R.

Transcription

1 Laurel Snyder, author of Bigger than a Bread Box and Penny Dreadful, interviews R. J. Palacio, author of Wonder. I remember the first time I heard mention of Wonder. I was haunting Twitter, late one night, chatting with other kidlit insomniacs about new middle-grade titles. Kate Sullivan, one of the Random House sales reps, asked me if I d read Wonder. I hadn t. I d never heard of the author, R. J. Palacio, either. But when the book arrived in my mailbox, there was something about it. I set aside everything else in my to-be-read pile and jumped in. Four hours later, I closed the book. My face was wet. Wonder is a rare thing a straightforward contemporary middle-grade book that kids will devour. Put simply, it s the story of a boy with an extreme medical condition, starting school for the first time in the fifth grade. I hate to say this, but in this era of reality TV, it may be the premise a deformed kid that draws some readers in. But if they begin Wonder for the wrong reasons, kids will finish it for the right ones: because they care so much about what happens to Auggie. The clarity and honesty of his voice will change the reason they re reading. Needless to say, I m thrilled at this chance to talk with the author of this special book and find out a little bit more about Wonder. **

2 Snyder: Let s start at the beginning. Why Auggie? How did you arrive at the idea for this book? Was there a moment, a catalyst, a person who inspired this story? Palacio: There s a scene in the book in which Jack talks about the first time he sees Auggie. He s sitting on a bench in front of an ice cream store with his babysitter and his little brother, who s in a stroller. At a certain point, both he and his brother notice Auggie and they don t react well at all. The babysitter, in her attempt to shield Auggie from their reactions, makes things worse by hastening away in a rather obvious manner. As they re leaving the scene, Jack overhears Auggie s mom say to her kids, Okay, guys, I think it s time to go. Her voice is calm and sweet, and the babysitter is mortified at how badly she and Jack and his little brother have handled the situation. That scene actually happened to me about four or five years ago. I was with my sons visiting a friend who lives out of town, and at some point we found ourselves sitting next to a little girl who looked like Auggie. The scene played out exactly as it played out in the book and afterward, I couldn t stop thinking about how poorly we had handled that encounter. My sons I could excuse: they were still young. But I hated the way I had responded. What could I have done differently? What should I be teaching my kids to prepare them for something like this? Is don t stare even the right thing to teach them? What would it be like to walk in that child s shoes? Since I m a mom, that other mom just broke my heart. Okay, guys, I think it s time to go. Her voice had been so serene, so gentle. She d seen it all a million times before, I m sure. I was in awe of her.

3 I couldn t stop thinking about it as we drove home that night, and after a while, just to distract myself, I turned the radio on. Natalie Merchant s song Wonder came on right away, and it was something about the combination of that song and what had just happened that sparked the book. The first line of the book, the first paragraph, came to me in the car. I started writing the book the moment I got home. Snyder: Wow, so you began with the outsider s perspective, in a way. That s fascinating. That makes me wonder did you feel at all nervous, crafting a kid with a condition you haven t experienced yourself? How did you research Wonder? How did you get inside Auggie s head? There are some absolutely amazing touches like how Halloween is his favorite holiday because it s the one day of the year that he can go unnoticed. Did you imagine those touches, or did you gather those details from other people? Palacio: I did some research on genetics and different types of craniofacial syndromes. There are websites, including those of organizations involved with these concerns, and I spent some time on them. But I really didn t talk to anyone who had this kind of condition. Of course, it s truly impossible to know what it s like to experience something like that if you haven t lived it yourself, but the feeling of being an outsider, not having friends, not fitting in those are universal themes that aren t that hard to tap into. In the book, every one of the characters has their own issue to deal with Auggie just happens to have the one that s the most obvious to the world.

4 I don t know why, but I really felt like I understood Auggie, so it wasn t hard for me to put myself inside his head. It seemed natural that he would love Halloween; most kids do anyway, but for Auggie it would be the most liberating feeling to be able to walk around wearing a mask. To not get noticed. That s what he really wants, and Halloween s the one night a year when he can do that. Finding Auggie s voice wasn t a stretch because I have two sons. I m around boys all the time. Sometimes I d come home from work and there would be hordes of them hanging out, playing video games, being really loud. Since Auggie really is just a normal little boy albeit one that looks very different from other little boys it wasn t hard to imagine what he would think about things, how he would respond. Snyder: I m fascinated by how the book is formatted. You chose to write these really strong, short chapters. And then you broke the book into parts, each one voiced by a different character Auggie; his sister, Via; his friends at school. I loved how this gave us a chance to see the world from so many perspectives. Did you begin the book having made all of these formal choices? Palacio: No, I actually didn t intend to leave Auggie s character when I started writing the book. But then I became so intrigued by the other characters and what they were thinking, what led them to do the things they did (or didn t do). Via, especially, was fascinating to me. She s so strong and fierce, but vulnerable, too. I wanted to explore that. I agonized for a bit before going there, afraid that I d lead the book astray and it would be

5 hard to come back, but then I decided that as long as the characters were able to propel the narrative, following the timeline of events, which is one school year, then I d be okay. I also wanted to be able to show Auggie as a multidimensional character. He s flawed. He evolves. He grows up in the book. And I don t know if I could have had that happen without turning the camera around on him sometimes. It isn t that he s not a reliable narrator, because he is. But he s so sheltered and self-protective, there s a lot beyond him that he just wouldn t grasp or be able to express. I wrote in short chapters because it kept me on point. And I remember my son really liked books with short chapters when he was in middle school. Slow, plodding books were not for him, and I really wrote this book for him, for my younger son, and for that little girl in front of the ice cream store. Snyder: Auggie s teacher, Mr. Browne, has all of these sayings, these quotes that work their way into the story. And then you ve integrated a lot of song lyrics from artists like David Bowie and Natalie Merchant. How did you collect those precepts and songs? How did they inform the writing of the book? Palacio: Well, I had always loved Natalie Merchant. Wonder came out about the time my older son was born, and I used to listen to it when he was a baby. It s a very special song. And its joyousness set the tone for the book. Know this child will not suffer. With love, with patience, and with faith, she ll make her way. I liked how positive that was.

6 As for the other songs, they re just songs I love. And I figured the characters in the book would love them, too. Space Oddity came because it s about an astronaut, and I figured that Miranda, who was the one who had given Auggie his astronaut helmet, would have played the song for him. The theme of that song, though, is really Via s. Like the astronaut in that song, she s caught between returning to Earth, which is her life with Auggie, and the freedom of outer space, which is a life beyond Auggie. She spends much of the book navigating which way she ll go: Planet Earth is blue, and there s nothing I can do. Just like there s nothing she can do about Auggie s face. And the other songs tied into the themes of the book. You are beautiful, no matter what they say and I m the ugliest guy on the Lower East Side... That one is moving to me because of how far Auggie s come by then, that he can own that song and sing it loudly and happily. As for the precepts, I used to collect precepts as a teenager. I didn t call them precepts: they were just words that spoke to me, things I thought were either profound or beautiful. The James Barrie quote, for instance: Shall we make a new rule of life from tonight: always to try to be a little kinder than is necessary? That one just gets to me. Snyder: It s powerful stuff! And speaking of kindness, I want to ask about the therapeutic aspects of the book. Wonder never feels preachy to me. But there s no denying, with a book like this, that adults hope kids will read it and become more sensitive as a result. How much was that a goal for you, and how much were you just

7 trying to tell a story? Also, I m curious about the books you loved as a kid. I wonder if you have any books you read and were changed by in this way? Palacio: It was, actually, a big goal of mine to reach kids with Wonder. While I was writing the book, I always went back to that day in front of the ice cream store: if my kids had known what it was like to walk in this child s shoes, would they have reacted the way they did? It s not a question of teaching empathy, but inspiring it. And relating to someone in that situation is the best way, I think. Seeing it from their perspective. Hearing it from the perspective of the kids around him. Every kid s going to see themselves in one of the kids in the book. Are you like Jack, or are you like Julian? Are you like Summer, or are you like Charlotte? I set the book in middle school exactly because it s a time in kids lives when we ve almost come to expect that they ll be mean to each other. And I just don t understand that. Middle school isn t an arena. It s not Lord of the Flies. There are adults around. This idea that they ll work it out on their own doesn t serve the child on the losing end of that equation, you know. As parents, we need to look out for each other s kids, too. As for the books I loved when I was a kid, I think Charlie and the Chocolate Factory was a pivotal one. I loved that Charlie gets the chocolate factory in the end, simply by virtue of being a good kid. I liked stories like that, where the good guys are rewarded. The Lord of the Rings. The Chronicles of Narnia. The Happy Prince, which I loved despite it being

8 a tad melancholy:... in my garden of Paradise this little bird shall sing for evermore, and in my city of gold the Happy Prince shall praise me. It gives me goose bumps! Snyder: I haven t thought of The Happy Prince in a long time! I remember crying over it as a kid, and also The Nightingale and the Rose. Can I ask, do you think kids should read the classics today, as well as new books? Palacio: Yes, absolutely but only if they want to. The last thing you want to do is force your kid to read something he s just not into. I loved The Happy Prince because my mother loved Oscar Wilde and that s what she read to me when I was little. But just the other day I tried reading The Happy Prince to my younger son and he was so bored! I ended up paraphrasing and skipping entire sections. It simply wasn t his cup of tea, and that s okay. My challenge as a parent is to find out what books will be his thing and feed them to him when he s ready. If it s The Jungle Book and Call of the Wild, great. If it s Captain Underpants and Dragonriders of Pern, great. So long as he s reading, it doesn t matter at all. Snyder: I totally agree, and I think that blend of influences shows up in your work. I almost can t believe this is your first book it s so well written. How does it feel to be an author? Any chance you re willing to tell us what you re working on now? Further adventures for Auggie?

9 Palacio: Thank you so much, Laurel! Yes, it s my first book that s been published. But I have a file cabinet full of false starts on previous novels. Truth be told, I ve been quietly working on the craft of writing all my life: it s just that no one has seen all those efforts which is a good thing! It feels amazing to be an author. It s what I ve always dreamed of doing. And the fact that Wonder has connected with so many people already and it hasn t even been published! is kind of incredible. I m working on my next book now, which is called That Was the River. I can t go into it too much more because I have no idea which way it ll take me. As for Auggie Pullman, I don t know, I don t think there will ever be a sequel. I think people love him so much by the end of the book that they take a little ownership of him, they feel protective of him. And I like that. I like that he ll grow up, become an adult, have a life in other people s imaginations and not just mine. It s better that way. Let him live inside each one of us. Snyder: That s a lovely way to think about it that his sequels are being written by your readers. I love it. Thanks so much for these wonderful insights into your work!