Viola hears about bullying all the time. New bills, task forces, specially designed strategies, and the inevitable funding announcements—every time the news reports another incident in schools, everyone scrambles to propose the most absurd and useless solution. But real change, Viola thinks, is like so many things in life—especially when you're climbing uphill. It requires something simpler: the sensitivity to imagine ourselves in the situations we want to fix. Literature can help us there. It has the power to step back from a story and see it through another person's eyes.
Viola is thinking particularly of two novels she recently read: Wonder and The Julian Chapter by R.J. Palacio, and Melody by Sharon M. Draper. Both center on troubled children—some with physical disabilities, some with family hardship—and neither book preaches. They simply tell the story from a different point of view.
The Julian Chapter is a sequel to Wonder, which follows August Pullman, a ten-year-old whose face is severely altered by Treacher Collins syndrome. After years of homeschooling, August enters middle school despite his family's worries and his classmates' mixed reactions. Some discover he's an intelligent, funny friend. Others are cruel about his appearance. The book was so popular that readers asked the author to continue the story. The Julian Chapter is exactly that—another chapter, another perspective. And where the first book centered on August, this one is told by Julian, the bully who tormented him for months, mocking his looks and playing cruel pranks. Julian is sharp and likable to everyone—until he becomes a complete outcast himself, his role reversed with his former victim.
Melody tells the story of an eleven-year-old girl with spastic quadriplegia, also called cerebral palsy. It limits her body but not her mind. Melody cannot speak. She cannot walk. She cannot write. Most people—doctors and teachers included—assume she has no capacity to learn. But her mind is bursting with things to say. She is the smartest, most knowledgeable student in her school. No one knows it until a computer finally gives her the voice she never had.
These stories don't shy away from pain. The world of adults and children is not ready to listen or to see beyond what someone's appearance seems to say about them. That world of the excluded, always withdrawing further into itself—"Maybe they think we're so retarded," Melody thinks, "that we don't even mind being treated like we're invisible." Indifference, ignorance, and cruelty are always there, waiting. One step forward can be erased by a leap far backward. These are delicate stories, but deeply true ones. Everyone should read them—especially those who look away, who pretend not to see because of embarrassment, fear, or discomfort. Yet August, Julian, and Melody tell us something simple: sometimes all it takes is a smile and a greeting.
Giulia Galeotti, 2016