Auggie & Me consists of three separate stories, each previously published as an ebook. Wonder left me downright yearning to read Julian and Charlotte's stories, so I was eager to read this collection that includes both Julian and Charlotte's perspectives.
The Julian Chapter ★★★★
I started out not really liking this story, with Julian's actions basically being explained away with excuses. Still, it made sense from Julian's perspective, and I could understand Julian's parents being blinded by love for their son; it's hard for any parent to believe that their child could actually be the bully.
The school administrators, however, were another story. Mr. Tushman and Dr. Jansen were in a position to do more for both Julian and Auggie. Why didn't they arrange some kind of mediation between Julian and Auggie to address the issues between them? In this book more so than in Wonder, it was clear that the administrators all knew there were problems, but instead of stepping in to help with the root cause, they just took disciplinary action after events unfolded. Yes, Julian was responsible for his own behavior, but I felt the school should have done more to help diffuse the situation.
It wasn't until Julian went to visit his grandmother in Paris that things started to fall into place. Grandmere and Mr. Browne were finally able to identify the root problem - which, again, should have happened much earlier - and Julian finally received some empathy and understanding as Grandmere told him a rather incredible story of her own with a similar theme, and a worthy lesson.
Pluto ★★★★★
This story surprised me! I wasn't at all curious to know more about Christopher when reading Wonder, but I really enjoyed his story. His perspective was honest and sweet, yet still believably realistic. Suddenly, Christopher is one of my favorite characters from Wonder!
Shingaling ★★★★★
One of the things I liked about Pluto and Shingaling is that both stories felt down-to-earth, more realistic. Nothing too over-the-top.
My one complaint about Shingaling is that, like Wonder, it had a lot of relationship dynamics that I think are more typical of 7th graders than 5th graders.
Putting that aside, I think Charlotte's story was more representative of how most kids would deal with someone like Auggie. Charlotte put it well at the end of her story - she was "nice", but Summer was "kind", a more genuine and meaningful sort of friendliness. Could Charlotte have been kinder to Auggie? Sure. But Auggie just wasn't a high priority for her. She had her own troubles, mostly worrying about changing friendships - which she cleverly outlined in Venn diagrams. When she wasn't trying to figure out middle school relationships, she had a dance performance to rehearse, regular school work to attend to, not to mention the mystery of the accordian-man to solve.
This book includes a little recap of the different-books-for-different-perspectives style of writing that is used in these Auggie books: On page 280 of my edition, Charlotte says, "Funny how all our stories kind of intertwine. Every person's story weaves in and out of someone else's story." And that's just it. Every single person has a rich and complex life that can't be understood solely through their interactions with just one other person. Through Charlotte's story, we see how Ximena - just a marginal character in Wonder - was much more fleshed out in this book. We can imagine that even Charlotte's friend Maya must have a pretty compelling story of her own, if we just took the time to get to know her, too.
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