The Wonder of Wilson

Earlier this year Dr Rebecca Butler had the pleasure of interviewing Jacqueline Wilson about her book Katy, a retelling of What Katy Did by Susan Coolidge. Since their conversation ranged more widely than could be reported in the interview summary, this article adds more items to Butler’s report.

The novel Wonder by R J Palacio was one of the subjects we discussed. Its protagonist Auggie Pullman has a facial condition known as Treacher Collins syndrome. The symptoms of this rare impairment may include absent cheekbones, downward-slanting eyes, a small lower jaw and malformed or absent ears.

The book describes Auggie’s entry into the mainstream educational system in the USA. Some pupils are willing to welcome him despite his appearance. Others reject him. A boy who is supposed to be Auggie’s friend is overheard saying that if he looked like Auggie he would take his own life. One group of pupils never really accept Auggie as a member of the school. They bully him. But in the end enough do accept him. At the end of the academic year he wins a prize and earns a standing ovation from the assembled pupils.

I mentioned to Wilson that I found the ending of Palacio’s book unsatisfactory. Auggie gets his school award. Everyone cheers. All is for the best in the best of all possible worlds. What most disappointed me was that Auggie alone got the award. During the book he has done nothing more remarkable than turning up for school, despite some discouraging episodes. If an award was given, it should have been given to him and to the team of friends who got him through the year. Giving the award to Auggie alone makes it seem that he is honoured just for being disabled, a subtle form of patronisation.

The Palacio novel, its ending and its prize winning status in the USA raised a question that interested Jacqueline. Do American critics and readers have a more pronounced taste for happy endings than British readers? We don’t object to nuanced endings that leave the reader uncertain of the outcome. Wilson’s book The Illustrated Mum closes with the death of the mother. But the reader is left uncertain how her two daughters will cope without her. Wilson believed American readers don’t feel the same about uncertainty. She had encountered some reader resistance to her own books when a happy ending is deliberately avoided in favour of realism.

There is also a technical issue arising from Wonder. The viewpoint from which each chapter is given changes, offering Palacio’s readers a somewhat kaleidoscopic picture of the unfolding narrative. I asked Jacqueline what she made of such a technique and whether she had ever used it herself. She has used it, but not often. Jacqueline believes that accessing the narrative from multiple standpoints is a technique that older readers will take in their stride. But using the same technique with young readers risks confusing them and weakening their grasp on the unfolding story. The story of Katy Carr would, Wilson believes, have been weakened by being filtered through different viewpoints. Katy was to be the one and only central focus of the book. How else would young readers come to appreciate her struggle?

Jacqueline Wilson’s partnership with her illustrator, Nick Sharratt, goes back a long way. Jacqueline told me that she does not find it necessary to discuss with him how episodes should be illustrated. She hands him the text and trusts him to find the appropriate visual imagery. Sharratt’s distinctive style is now firmly associated in the reader’s mind with Wilson’s text. They are as inseparable now as Roald Dahl and Quentin Blake were in their time.

Several years ago I voiced a criticism of one of Wilson’s books. Sleepovers has a character named Lily who is an aphasic wheelchair user. I mentioned to Wilson that I found the characterisation of Lily somewhat unsatisfactory. She was really little more than a bundle of symptoms. Wilson took my comment to heart. When she signed my copy of Katy she wrote ‘Here is your book at last’. In Sleepovers Sharratt’s drawings of Lily somewhat emphasised her status as a cipher and nothing more. Both Wilson and Sharratt have developed a different approach since.

Sharratt’s drawings of wheelchairs are meticulous. He uses photographs of real wheelchairs to avoid making mistakes. He and Wilson wanted to put a drawing of Katy in her wheelchair on the front cover of the book but they were told by the publisher that it would damage sales. Wilson was keen for the book to reach the widest possible readership so she decided to take the publisher’s advice.

Dr. Rebecca Butler writes and lectures on children’s literature.

Books mentioned

Katy, Jacqueline Wilson Puffin, 978-0-1413-5398-2, £6.99

Sleepovers, Jacqueline Wilson, Young Corgi, 978-0-5525-5783-2, £5.99 pbk

What Katy Did, Susan Coolidge, Scholastic Press, 978-1-4071-6246-1, £4.99pbk

Wonder, R J Palacio, Corgi Children’s Books, 978-0-5525-6597-4, £7.99 pbk