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Everyone has their own side of a story. You never know what someone else is going through in their own life.

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Visit the Children's Craniofacial Association website.

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Visit the Children's Craniofacial Association website.

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Learn more about Wonder, its author, and kids with craniofacial deformities like August.

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Our Choose Kind Initiative started in 2012 when the book Wonder was published by R.J. Palacio. The novel, now a national bestseller, features the story of 10-year-old August "Auggie" Pullman, a boy with a craniofacial condition. This book follows Auggie as he attends his first year attending school, after previously being home schooled. He experiences the trials and triumphs of most kids going to a new school, and also unique challenges based on his appearance. This book is changing lives in classrooms across the country and teachers send reports of its impact on their students on a consistent basis. The book encourages kids to Choose Kind, meaning choose to practice empathy, tolerance, inclusion, and patience.

While the story is about a student with a craniofacial condition, the message applies to everyone. When this book came out, CCA knew it was an incredible tool for our families, students, and community. We ordered a special edition book with our logo, recommended resources, a special foreword from CCA members, and a letter from the author, Palacio, to CCA Kids. To date, we have ordered 22,500 books and we have been distributing them for the past two years to schools in Dallas, throughout Texas, and in other states.

Perhaps our most valuable resource is our speakers' bureau of "Real Life Auggies," or WonderKids. We have 40+ CCA Kids and Adults who provide unique classroom experiences that deepen the educational and social impact by matching our speakers, who all have facial differences and/or craniofacial syndromes, with classrooms. These CCA Kids visit classrooms that have just read the book, and students are able to connect with them, to ask them questions and discuss how the book reflects their life experiences.

If the school is located in an area without a CCA Family to represent, we can set up a Skype video session or a pen pal program. These activities reinforce the message of the book, Choose Kind, and to strengthen empathy bonds in students across the country. Teachers love these opportunities to bring the book to life. Some classrooms have been so moved that they've responded in many ways, like holding school-wide walk-a-thons and 5Ks for CCA, others starting marble jars to count kind acts, some setting up peer mentoring programs, and a few special communities have hosted city-wide assemblies.

Our Choose Kind initiative is incredibly unique because it benefits CCA Kids by giving them a positive platform and a tool to talk about their difference confidently, but also is incredibly impactful to students who read the books and hear these presentations. Teachers report that after reading Wonder and participating in a visit or Skype session, students are more outgoing and more patient with each other, and bullying problems get resolved. This proactive kindness education is even stronger and more powerful than bullying prevention alone, because our resources help students form values that will stay with them their entire lives. The Choose Kind message is truly universal because at some point in all of our lives we feel unsure, self-conscious, and out of place.

If you would like to get involved, please consider bringing Wonder to your school!

You can order your own copy for yourself or your classroom!
Click here for individual orders.
For bulk orders, contact CCA via email or by calling 800.535.3643.

Available for $12 (including shipping and handling) on our webstore and for bulk purchases and discounts, please contact us.
August (Auggie) Pullman was born with a facial difference that prevented him from going to a mainstream school-until now. He's about to enter 5th grade at Beecher Prep, and if you've ever been the new kid, then you know how hard that can be. The thing is Auggie's just an ordinary kid, with an extraordinary face. But can he convince his new classmates that he's just like them, despite appearances? R.J. Palacio has crafted an uplifting novel full of wonderfully realistic family interactions, lively school scenes, and writing that shines with spare emotional power.
- Julia Alvarez, Author

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Our Choose Kind Initiative started in 2012 when the book Wonder was published by R.J. Palacio. The novel, now a national bestseller, features the story of 10-year-old August "Auggie" Pullman, a boy with a craniofacial condition. This book follows Auggie ... Continue reading →

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This song has special meaning to August. Listen to the song and then have students discuss the importance of the song in the book.

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David Bowie- Space Oddity Original Video (1969)

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Even HE has a story to tell. After reading Wonder, read The Julian Chapter. Have students write about how Julian felt about having August at school.

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Read this article and write your reaction to it. What did you think about what the author was saying? Have you ever thought about this before?

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Everyone Has A Story To Tell | Teen ersonal Experience About large, crowd, story and individuals

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Have you ever been in the middle of a large crowd? Take a look at the people around you. The mass of

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After reading this article, write about a time when someone judged you or you when you judged someone else.

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Don't judge someone by their cover. It's just not right. People shouldn't be judged by what they look like or what they have done. The person may seem rough and hard on the outside, but they may be nice and sensitive on the inside. People are not books. Books shouldn't even be judged by their cover, but what is on the inside.
It's like my sister, she always has to compare people to her and judge them by their looks. It made me mad because I don't judge people like that. I judge them on their inside, their personality. Its brings me back to my friend and I. My sister judges him by stupid rumors that have spread and by how he looks. Yes, he may not have the greatest looks in the world but he has a personality like gold. He is sweet, kind, helpful, thoughtful, loving, and treats me very well. My sister doesn't see that in people. It makes me want to rip her head off.
I love making new friends because of this reason. I don't like to judge them on how much money they have, or how they dress, or even their family. Judging someone is just flat out rude, because if you don't know them personally you shouldn't judge anyone at all. People that are being judged right now should have a right to stand up and say that no one should judge them if the person who is judging them doesn't know them. That is absolutely true because if you don't know someone and don't know them at all you shouldn't judge them by what you think!
It makes me frustrated just talking about it because people make me sick when they judge someone by their outside and not their inside. I'm not saying it's ok to judge people on the inside but just judging from the outside is the worst thing you can do. For all the people who read this and are being judged by their "cover", you are strong for holding in there and making a difference in the world. Those people who judge other people are plain rude because you shouldn't judge someone by their outside because you know what, I was that person once being judged all the time by their appearance on the outside. I used to be teased because I'm a bigger girl. I'm not the prettiest girl in the world, but the thing that hurt the most was when my sister judged me by this. She called me fat every day, said that I will never find a guy and get married, never have kids, and more that made me cry every day! You want to know what, I work on my weight issues and try my hardest to become someone that I'm really not. It's not hard to make a difference in your weight but the hardest thing was trying to become someone that I really wasn't!
Don't let people judge you. Be like me and be who YOU want to be, not what everyone else wants you to be. To this day I found who I really love, lost a bunch of weight, and am the person who I'm most happy with, MYSELF, my own regular country girl! Don't let anyone tell you who to be, like I let my sister do to me.

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Don't judge someone by their cover. It's just not right. People shouldn't be judged by what they look like or what they have done. The person may seem rough and hard on the outside, but they may be nice and sensitive on the inside. People are not books.

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Read this story and then read the story from the wolf's point of view. Who do you believe?

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Who do you believe? Students will write a persuasive essay convincing readers to believe either the Pigs' story or the Wolf's story.

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After reading a couple of examples of these poems, students will choose a fairy tale and write a two-sided poem based on the protagonist and antagonist of the story.

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March 4th, 2010 by jules

Two things on this Poetry Friday:

First, you know those picture books that try entirely too hard to be clever concept books, as in the concept is uncomfortably forced? Well, it's Opposite Day (in more ways than one): Here's one concept book, a collection of poems, that really works. Below is the smart poem that goes with the spread you see above. It comes from Marilyn Singer's newest collection of poetry, Mirror Mirror: A Book of Reversible Verse, illustrated by Josée Masse, and released this week by Dutton Juvenile:

"We read most poems down a page," writes Singer in the book's note on the poetry. "But what if we read them up? That's the question I asked myself when I created the reverso. When you read a reverso down, it is one poem. When you read it up, with changes allowed only in punctuation and capitalization it is a different poem..." Singer uses her reverso technique to tell both sides of each tale, Publishers Weekly calling the concept a smart one and praising Masse's fun-with-symmetry, as you can see in these featured spreads.

Having chosen fairy tales as her theme for this collection of poetry, Singer brings us the double life of Cinderella; the tale of Sleeping Beauty, as told through the sleeping princess' point-of-view and the prince's - both a bit jaded; the story of Goldilocks and the three bears, as if headlines in the news; and much more. "It is a form that is both challenging and fun - rather like creating and solving a puzzle," she tells child readers, challenging them to create their own reversible poetry. I love this. It makes me want to be an elementary language arts teacher RIGHT NOW. What fun with words, and what fun with puzzling out the two sides of one tale...

Masse's work is new to me. (I think, though I can't fully translate , that she's also a book designer in Montreal.) "The vibrant artwork is painterly yet unfussy and offers hints to the characters who are narrating the poems," writes School Library Journal. That review calls the book "a marvel to read," and I have to add that the illustrations are a marvel to take in, too. Captivating.

And my second note on this Poetry Friday? I pretty much have to mention it, given how these two mirror books have fallen into my lap in one week: In May, a book that the ultra-talented Suzy Lee (who you may remember visited me in 2008) created in 2003 (I believe) will be published here in the States by Seven Footer Press. It's called Mirror, and it is beautiful and sad and funny and stunning in that Suzy-Lee way. I'm hoping to secure some illustrations from it to show you, but I had to mention it today, what with this mirror theme. (Also: I got a copy of it just today, and the world stopped spinning while I read it, another reason I have to yawp about it now.) This wordless wonder, all about a young girl playing with her mirror image, also demonstrates the Best Use Ever of the Space Eaten Up by the Necessary Binding of a Book and also More Brilliant Use of Symmetry in Illustrations. More on this later. God, I love Suzy Lee.

Here is her slide show about the book from her site.

Tomorrow's Poetry Friday round-up (yup, I'm posting a bit early) is over at TheTeachingBooks.net blog. Enjoy.
MIRROR MIRROR by Marilyn Singer, illustrated by Josée Masse © 2010. Used with permission of Dutton Children's Books, an imprint of Penguin Young Readers Group.

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Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast

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March 4th, 2010 by jules Two things on this Poetry Friday: First, you know those picture books that try entirely too hard to be clever concept books, as in the concept is uncomfortably forced? Well, it's Opposite Day (in more ways than one): Here's one concept book, a collection of poems, that really works.

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Sometimes the story isn't what you thought.

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Sometimes the story isn't what you thought.

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Have you ever thought about how the evil stepmother felt? Or what Baby Bear really thought about Goldilocks? Students will read multiple versions of these books as a mentor text for rewriting an event from a fairy tale from the perspective of one of the minor characters.