Comments on: Battle Bullying with Books: An Update

By: Michelle Fadlalla

Michelle Fadlalla — Thu, 10 Feb 2011 13:56:19 +0000

Thanks for your comment, June. From my perspective, as someone who works in publishing, I hope that providing books about bullying for teachers and librarians to use with their students will spark discussions like you held. Books are a tool that can be used to further raise awareness of the problem of bullying and what students, teachers, librarians, parents, and publishers, can do to help stop it. This year No-Name calling week was celebrated by thousands of schools and received lots of media attention. Discussions were clearly happening and that is exactly our hope! Anything that can be done to spread a message of acceptance and respect for one another is an important piece of the puzzle in the efforts to eliminate bullying. I personally hope that books are helping to make a small difference. Michelle Fadlalla, Simon & Schuster

By: June Morgan (chorkie)

June Morgan (chorkie) — Thu, 03 Feb 2011 23:37:54 +0000

Books that demonstrate what happens when kids bully other children, but you are not going to change attitudes and behaviors without discussions. Last summer, I conducted an academic middle school camp where the students each read a book where someone is bullied in some way. But, it didn’t end there. We had long discussions about how our characters felt, how the student would feel in a particular situation, and most importantly, how things could have been handled differently. Many times, a student would argue that a character was just teasing and not bullied. Then, we would have to stop and define bullying, the kinds of behaviors that demonstrated bullying, and how the situation could have been handled differently.
Reading books is just a small part in dealing with the problem of bullying.