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Summary

White Bird

a Wonder Story
This is another tale connected with Palacio's famous book Wonder. In Wonder, one of the main characters, Julian, is portrayed as very unaccepting of Auggie's differences and is quite the bully. In her second novel, Auggie and Me, Julian is somewhat redeemed as we learn about the story from his point of view and we see what happens to him following. In this book we learn about Julian's Grandmother. He calls her in Paris for a school assignment to learn more details about her life during World War II, when she was a young Jewish teen living in occupied France. When the Nazis began rounding up Jews in their small town, Sara (Julian's Grandmother) went into hiding for more than a year. She was led to safety by an unlikely friend, her shunned classmate Julien. Similar to Auggie, Julien was the subject of ridicule and bullying. Sara was complicit in the shunning of a classmate until her own eye-opening realization that she was despised by others, not because of something she did, but because of something she was. Julien and his parents protected and fed Sara in secret for the duration of the war. During her interminable hours alone in a hayloft, and through the daily visits from Julien and his mother, Sara starts to see the world through other eyes, and to understand how spoiled and self-centered she's been. She also learns the enormous value of kindness, a theme from all 3 of the Wonder books. Grandmother's story has a profound impact Julian and the reader sees him grow.