A local school is uniting as they read a novel focusing on several character traits, including anti-bullying.

P.S. Jones Middle School started its “One School, One Book,” program, giving its students a close look issues like anti-bullying and other character education traits, said Janet Calloway, an eighth-grade teacher, who is heading the program along with Dawn Landen, a seventh-grade teacher. Each day for the next six weeks, all students in sixth, seventh and eighth grade will read the book, “Wonder,” by R. J. Palacio, a first-time author. The book follows the story of a severely physically handicapped student, who experiences the transition from being home-schooled to attending middle school.

Calloway said she heard about the book through a national program and thought it would be a great fit for the school. Through a community effort of parents, local businesses and civic organizations, the school raised enough money to purchase over 900 hardback copies of the novel.

“This is a prime example of it takes a village to raise a child,” Calloway said. “We are raising these children. We are teaching them these skills, and middle school is when they learn these skills of tolerance and compassion and that people have feelings and that sort of thing so we’re really excited about it.”

Calloway and Landen molded their own lesson plans to fit the needs of the school and its students, Calloway said. By tackling relevant issues through the program, it has already started to bring P.S. Jones’ students together, and the school hopes its faculty will follow suit, Calloway said.

“We just hope to raise better children,” Calloway said. “We tweaked (the lesson) to fit our needs. We’re hoping it unifies the staff because we’re so separated simply by geography here so we’re hoping that it pulls us together, as well. It gives us a common conversation.”

Calloway said the school has many emotionally and physically handicapped students, and, by reading the novel together, it will bride the gap between students, who are different from each other, and eliminate bullying and social stereotypes.

Eighth-grade student Oscar Espinoza thinks, by reading the book together as a school, it will open the eyes of many students, helping them realize that it is okay to make friends with those who are different, he said.

“I think the fact we’ere all reading the same book at once is going to really unite us in a way that we’re all going to comprehend the same thing — that bullying is just wrong. I think it will be great for our school. I hope it will inspire (students) to become friends with some of these special needs kids.”

Nyjeria Distance, a seventh-grade student, echoed Espinoza’s comments, saying she thinks reading the book will help eliminate bullying among her classmates.

“I think it will help us overcome treating people, who look different or who are different from what we’re used to seeing, differently and maybe help us overcome bullying. There are a lot of kids that are disabled in many ways that go to school here with us, and a lot of people may pick on them or not want to talk to them because of how they look or the way they act around other students. But now, we’re starting to get the feeling that they are just the same as us. We’re basically all the same, and we shouldn’t treat them any different than we would anyone else.”