If you know anything about the children’s chapter books chances are you’ve heard of Wonder. The best seller has taken over classrooms and bookshelves since being published in 2012. In 2017, Lionsgate and director Stephen Chbosky adapted the story of a boy with facial differences adapting to his new school into a feature film.
Since then, author R.J. Palacio expanded the story with White Bird, including other perspectives in the same universe. The story follows the school bully’s grandmother and her escape from occupied Germany during World War II. Like its predecessor, Lionsgate saw the potential in the story and greenlit production almost immediately after publishing. The film, starring Helen Mirren and Gillian Anderson, hits theaters this weekend.
I recently had the opportunity to chat with the White Bird creative team behind the latest installment. In both interviews, author R.J. Palacio, director Marc Forster and producer Renée Wolfe stressed their desire that the film, like the first film, perpetuates kindness and teaches kids to come to their own conclusions based on their morals. “I think as educators and as parents, the most we can hope for is to teach our children to think for themselves,” Palacio told me. “To be critical thinkers so they can take those lessons from the past that they’ve been exposed to… and judge for themselves what seems right and what seems wrong.”
As this could be the first Holocaust film many children see, this lesson seems even more important. “The movie, I think, is coming out at the perfect time because it’s a call to action for people to see one another, to treat each other with dignity and respect, to understand and pay tribute to that shared humanity that we all have.”
Watch my interviews with Palacio, director Marc Forster, and producer Renée Wolfe below.
