Wonder is a wonderful book and movie! That has a unique and powerful way of reminding readers that beauty is only skin deep. The novel also offers lessons about the dangers of responding to peer pressure and the importance of simple human kindness. For August and the other kids at Beecher Prep, when it comes to status and popularity are at the top of pyramided for importance. Wonder is sprinkled with the kids’ point of view about their social structure. Also, how status and hierarchy function in their world at school, and what the consequences of being popular or unpopular are on the student population. In particular, Wonder suggests that as strong as popularity might be for August and his classmates, the social structure that allows some students to be popular requires those students to bully their less popular classmates to maintain their position. Julian, for example, emerges early on as the leader of the popular kids at Beecher Prep, and he maintains his position by creating an environment where it is in his classmates best interests to get as close to him as possible by excluding those he considered to be unpopular. This results in a common theme of bullying against August and anyone who associates themselves with him. August was no stranger to bullying before he started at Beecher Prep. You can see throughout the book how Julian has positioned himself as the one and how with his power he has created August as the Other due to him being different from the other. Another challenge for August is identity, it is a tricky subject because he has very little power to control how others see him. He recognizes that other people see him first and foremost as a kid with a scary-looking face and lots of people have little interest in getting to know him once that single surface piece of his identity is established. This is held up time and again as August notices people of all ages looking briefly surprised when they first see him and then working very hard show smiles to cover up their discomfort during whatever conversation happens. With this, he recognizes that people struggle greatly to get past visual appearance of identity. For that, August also struggles to get past surface level interactions with people. This is because people tend to focus so much on his visual identity, it makes it hard for him to show people that he’s also smart, kind, and funny. Taken together, Wonders journey of bullying and social structure shows how toxic a social structure can be when it’s based on putting down others in order to raise oneself.