Monday 14 September 2015

Review: Shingaling by RJ Palacio

Almost 2 million people have read the New York Times bestseller Wonder and fallen in love with Auggie Pullman. Readers have also been given a special look at another side of his story with The Julian Chapter and a peek at his life before Beecher Prep in Pluto. In this third Wonder Story, they’ll get to see his first year of school and what follows in the beginning of the next year through the perspective of reader-favorite Charlotte. 


Review: I've kind of got mixed feelings about this book. This is the third in the series of Wonder spin-off stories and I was really looking forward to hearing the story from Charlotte's perspective but I don't feel like her story added anything to the Wonder story like the other two spin offs did. We didn't really get any more insight into Auggie and the way his classmates perceived him, but we did get to find out a little more about Charlotte and the girls that attend Beecher Prep, who we don't get to hear about as much in the main Wonder novel. 

The wonderful thing about tall of these spin offs is that the strong values of Choose Kind and being true to yourself and your friends is very strong, even though these are just side stories, it is nice to have the theme recurring throughout! It was really good to catch up with Charlotte and see how her and her friends perceived Auggie, the Plaugue and the Boy War throughout the school year and see her reaction to the Beecher Medal awarded at the end of the year. 

This is definitely a short story so don't be expecting a full novel, you definitively need to have read Wonder first but I really don't think that the three spin off stories need to be read in any particular order as they all are separate stories featuring wonder characters. This was a nice quick read and it was interesting to find out a little more about Charlotte, although I would have liked it to feature Auggie a little more. 

These spin offs are now all in one bind up...



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