"Wonder", by R.J. Palacio, is a wonderful story about a ten year old boy with a facial abnormality who goes to a traditional school for the first time as a fifth grader, and the book is divided into 8 sections, each section told in first person by a different character of the story. It was not too difficult to follow throughout the pages, remembering which voice I was reading. (Although I had to really force myself to read the section in all lower case with no punctuation except periods.) I get that this book was (apparently) written for children, but because the author switched perspectives so often, I don't think it would be a stretch to ask to have a peek into one of the adults' minds.
However!
There is liberal cursing, swearing, and general taking of the name of the Lord in vain throughout the entire book by every character.
There is a heavy blanket of humanism drenched in every chapter. One teacher has "precepts" he gives to the kids every month (and the author wrote an entire other book just about sayings from everyone from Carl Sagan to Tolkien)--most of the precepts are about how *I* feel about things and why *I* was put on this earth. Heaven is questioned, and "rebirth as another human" is given as the answer to what happens after death. The principal gives a rousing speech ending with "through kindness one can see the face of God...or whichever politically correct higher power you want to believe in" and the parents all love that last part.
If none of these reasons are deal-breakers to you, go to Amazon and read the 87 one-star reviews. Granted, 44 of them are people complaining about the font size, the condition or language the book arrived in (apparently Amazon has a hard time making a distinction between English and Italian in their description), or people giving it a five star review because "people don't read five-star reviews, so I'm giving it one star so people will read this and see that this book was awesome!" So 43 one-star reviews about the lack of proofreading, lack of authenticity, lack of realism, lack of consistency in the author's abhorrence of bullying, lack of character depth...I agree with every single one of them.
I wish a Christian author had written this book--I would have given it 5 stars and placed in the "definitely read" column for 4-6 grades. As it was, I only finished it so I wouldn't write a review about a book I didn't read all the way.