The truth as told by Mason Buttle evoked many different emotions ranging from happiness, anger, and sadness. I found it heartwarming and heart breaking that such a young boy, enduring so many hardships in his life could remain positive through all of it. Even when bullied relentlessly, he still managed to find something positive in the situation. I found the friendships, while only a few of them, that Mason made throughout the story to be a good example of how, despite their differences, they were the best of friends.
Leslie Connor’s coming of age story about Mason Buttle won the Schneider Family Book Award in January of 2019. The story is told as Mason Buttle would have written it, it tends to be choppy, with short sentences and truthful, as a boy with a reading and writing disability would write via the “dragon”. The story looks inside the mind of a boy who has suffered tragedy, bullying, and lives in a run-down home on an apple orchard with an unconventional living situation.
This story would make wonderful addition in any library or school for middle school students. With topics about bullying, friendship, losing friends and family to death, “pranks” ending in tragedy, telling the truth, disabilities, and wrongly judging others, there is little shortage in important topics to discuss. Conversations about this book could bring about empathy and sympathy for those affected by such circumstances and events.