R. J. Palacio
Raquel Jaramillo Palacio (born July 13, 1963) is an American author and graphic designer. She is the author of several novels for children, including the best-selling "Wonder", which was adapted into a 2017 film starring Julia Roberts and Owen Wilson. Career. Palacio began her career as an art director and graphic designer, designing book covers for Paul Auster, Thomas Pynchon and others. During the course of her career she designed many hundreds of book covers, covering both fiction and non-fiction books. She also illustrated several children's books that she wrote herself. For the first  two decades of her career, she wrote books at night after her day job as a designer. She illustrated her early books which were board books for children, published under the name Raquel Jaramillo. In 2021, Random House announced that her new novel "Pony" would have a first printing of 500,000 copies. It is her first novel not featuring characters from the Wonder universe. Personal life. Palacio is the daughter of Colombian immigrants and was born in New York City. She attended Manhattan's High School of Art & Design and majored in illustration at the Parsons School of Design. She  spent a year at the American University of Paris, travelling widely throughout Europe, before returning to New York. She currently lives in New York City together with her husband and two sons Caleb and Joseph. Awards and honors. She was a recipient of the Christopher Award for "Wonder" in 2013, and the Dorothy Canfield Fisher Children's Book Award in 2014. "Wonder" was on The New York Times Best Seller list and was also on the Texas Bluebonnet Award master list. Wonder was the winner of the 2014 Maine Student Book Award, Vermont's Dorothy Canfield Fisher Children's Book  Award, the 2015 Mark Twain Award, Hawaii's 2015 Nene Award, the 2015 Young Hoosier Book Award, and the Junior Young Reader's Choice Award for 2015. In Illinois, it won both the Bluestem and Caudill Awards in 2014.