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I'm listening to this with the kids, but I finished reading it a bit faster on my own.
I think it's an important book for them to hear, and I feel rotten having a few little nitpicks because I almost feel like August and his family are real people who might read this and be sad that I wasn't *completely* head over heels with their book. That's a compliment, by the way, the characters do feel pretty real.
I think a lot of things are well done, but call me a cold hearted Grinch, but I have a hard time believing that by the end of one school year, everyone (except for one) was Team Auggie. I admit this heavy dose of skepticism is probably fueled by the friendless and bullied years of my own elementary and junior high experiences (and I wasn't even dealing with a rare birth defect; only general social ineptitude and a bad perm), but it does feel a little like a Hallmark special ending to me.
Second, it gets awfully preachy betimes. Perhaps that's part of what makes it important for kids to hear/read. But my goodness, did we really have to have the whole graduation speech written in at the end? And who has a graduation ceremony in a school that goes 5th - 8th? This is weird to me, but maybe it's a regional thing. In my day along with walking to school uphill both ways in bare feet, we celebrated graduating from 9th grade (end of junior high) and high school graduation of course. Maybe preschool. That was it. But 5th? Dude no.
After reading some other reviews, I'm glad I listened to most of it (though the Auggie voice was kind of grating after a while. Not because of the raspy voice but because of the whine that made him seem more babyish than I think he really was) as it sounds like the different POV chapters are written kind of obnoxiously with different punctuation and fonts which would have driven me crazy.
Okay, so that sounds like a lot of nitpicks. But I feel like all the good stuff has been said; and I agree with a lot of that good stuff. So here be my few gripes. I'll keep them to myself and let the kids make up their own opinions.
I think it's an important book for them to hear, and I feel rotten having a few little nitpicks because I almost feel like August and his family are real people who might read this and be sad that I wasn't *completely* head over heels with their book. That's a compliment, by the way, the characters do feel pretty real.
I think a lot of things are well done, but call me a cold hearted Grinch, but I have a hard time believing that by the end of one school year, everyone (except for one) was Team Auggie. I admit this heavy dose of skepticism is probably fueled by the friendless and bullied years of my own elementary and junior high experiences (and I wasn't even dealing with a rare birth defect; only general social ineptitude and a bad perm), but it does feel a little like a Hallmark special ending to me.
Second, it gets awfully preachy betimes. Perhaps that's part of what makes it important for kids to hear/read. But my goodness, did we really have to have the whole graduation speech written in at the end? And who has a graduation ceremony in a school that goes 5th - 8th? This is weird to me, but maybe it's a regional thing. In my day along with walking to school uphill both ways in bare feet, we celebrated graduating from 9th grade (end of junior high) and high school graduation of course. Maybe preschool. That was it. But 5th? Dude no.
After reading some other reviews, I'm glad I listened to most of it (though the Auggie voice was kind of grating after a while. Not because of the raspy voice but because of the whine that made him seem more babyish than I think he really was) as it sounds like the different POV chapters are written kind of obnoxiously with different punctuation and fonts which would have driven me crazy.
Okay, so that sounds like a lot of nitpicks. But I feel like all the good stuff has been said; and I agree with a lot of that good stuff. So here be my few gripes. I'll keep them to myself and let the kids make up their own opinions.