"We're All Wonders" is a picture book based on R.J. Palacio's famous middle school novel, "Wonder", about Augie, a boy with Treacher Collins syndrome, which causes severe facial deformities. "Wonder" follows Augie's journey as he enters middle school for the first time, and it tells the story from different perspectives, bringing home the lesson that you never truly know a person just from looking at them from the outside.
In Morah Weintraub's art class, the students discussed what makes everyone unique, and how even though we all may look different on the outside, we all share similar emotions and feelings on the inside.
In "We're All Wonders", R.J. Palacio draws Augie with one eye, because she wants the people reading the book to use their imagination about what Augie would look like. For their self-portraits the students did the same but they made sure to personalize each drawing. They also wrote facts about themselves around the drawing.
The exercise prompted a lot of thought from the students. "People aren't always the same, but they can still have unique talents," said 4th graders Avi Malayev and Pinchas Dov Muroff.
Morah Weintraub hung the portraits on bulletin boards in the Girls' and Boys' buildings.