Comments on: What a Day!

By: Elizabeth Burns

Elizabeth Burns — Thu, 27 Dec 2012 18:16:38 +0000

Wendy, I went in thinking WONDER SHOW was going to be MG and at the end am quite interested in why people would think that. The MC is 14 for the bulk of the book; it’s about a search for identity & family, along with forgiveness/living with the responsibility for what happened with Caroline which I see as YA material. Agreed that this book will be “safe” for those reading up (the joke about what wayward girls really are will go over their heads, as will the full scope of what Mister does) but this doesn’t make it a MG book.

By: Laura Canon

Laura Canon — Fri, 07 Dec 2012 16:37:41 +0000

The age issue is a little confusing in Wonder Show. There’s the fact that one of the orphanage girls is clearly considered old enough to marry, although the creepiness factor is mitigated when it’s casually mentioned that she’s “a few years older” than the heroine thought she was. I think it could go either way. More difficult for me was that I felt there was too much telling in the novel. The ideas behind the book are terrific but it doesn’t feel fully carried out to me.

By: Wendy

Wendy — Fri, 07 Dec 2012 10:34:51 +0000

I think Wonder Show looks younger than it really is. Notably, it deals with a young teenage girl trying to figure out her life with only tangential support/assistance from adults; she is thrust into an adult world and has to function almost as an equal. It’s one of those books that I think a ten-year-old can understand (perhaps missing some of the sexual references) but a fourteen-year-old will get more out of.