Getting a Read on Teens Through Anti-Bullying Books

“The Trouble with Tuck by Theodore Taylor [2],” I began to tell my class, “is an important book to me because it was one of the first that I read again and again.”

I held up the 100-page paperback book for my students to see. A couple looked as if they might laugh at me, showing off a kid’s book. But I continued to tell them how the main character, Helen, trained a guide dog to lead her first dog, Tuck, when he went blind. Despite my fear that talking about books would create opportunities for put downs, I soon heard rumblings through the classroom as students dropped names of their favorite books.

And so began this year’s series of Important Book Presentations [3].         

Taylor’s book was the first I remember that hooked me. The reason was simple: I could connect personally to the story. The girl on the cover was blonde rather than my own brunette. She had a Labrador rather than a golden retriever. She wore glasses while I did not. But I understood Helen and her suburban California life. I figured that for many of my students, finding a character to identify with would be a little bit harder. Off the top of my head, I couldn’t think of a young adult book about a Yemeni teenage girl or one that featured an immigrant from Uruguay. Turns out, identical demographics aren’t the only way to hook a student.

In fact, the sad reality is that several students were able to make a significant connection with a book that featured a character who had been bullied or teased. Fifteen-year-old Kholoud, an immigrant from Yemen, presented one of the Bluford Series [4] books by Paul Langan called The Bully. The main character, Darrell, moves to a new school. Kholoud announced that, “This book is about a boy that moves from one country to another and gets bullied for being skinny.” Darrell didn’t immigrate from another country, just across the United States. But Kholoud could better understand the position of a skinny African-American boy more easily if she imagined him moving across the Atlantic like she did. The reason she liked the book so much is that “it taught me to never give up.” I wondered what teasing she had suffered upon moving to the U.S.

Similarly her fellow Yemeni classmate, Eida, a young teen in good shape, found a connection with K.L. Going’s [5] protagonist in Fat Kid Rules the World. She didn’t need to be fat to understand “the truth of how life is hard and unfair when you are being judged about the way you look.” She didn’t say so explicitly, but I imagine she’s suffered her fair share of name calling as a result of wearing a hijab in a school where few others do.

It wasn’t just the Yemeni girls who chose books with underdog characters. Unfortunately, most ninth-graders can relate to the theme of bullying. There has been a recent spurt of unpleasant incidents on campus. Just the other day a group of boys splashed water all over one of the Special Day Class students in the boys’ bathroom and called him names. Two days ago a young man ran down the hall shouting the word “faggot.”

And in my own class last week I witnessed subtle bullying. I read a series of statements about reading and asked students to stand up if it applied to them. One of the statements was “I enjoy reading.” Shy and silent Genero bravely stood up behind his chair. I watched him pause and consider the consequence of outing himself as “a reader,” the equivalent of “soft.” As soon as he stood up, his classmate, herself sitting, told him in Spanish to sit down, that he was a liar. Of course, I had her stay after class and talked to her about how a comment like that could make someone hide their brilliance forever.

As a school, we are worried about the rise in bullying. We are looking for answers. But our ninth-graders may have given us a way to start, by putting some books with subtle (Khaled Hosseini’s [6] The Kite Runner ) and not-so-subtle (Dr. Suess’ [7] The Sneetches) anti-bullying messages in the hands of the bullies. If it’s true that most students can identify with the underdog, then perhaps potential bullies will see themselves in their potential victims and think twice.

Thomas is a Teaching Tolerance blogger and English teacher at Life Academy of Health and Bioscience in Oakland, Calif.