Bullying is wrong! It is unacceptable behaviour that makes the person being bullied feel afraid or uncomfortable. There are many ways that young people bully each other, even if they don’t realize it at the time. Many have a good idea of what bullying is because they see it every day! Bullying happens when someone hurts or scares another person on purpose and the person being bullied has a hard time defending themselves. So, everyone needs to get involved to help stop it.
In 2006 Carnovale released ‘In Full Uniform’. Though the main character’s name is Jesse, the book tells Greg’s story and is dedicated to the teen. “I knew it was a good story. The initial response was absolutely fantastic, but I didn’t want it to go to my head too much,” said Carnovale, noting that initially those he heard feedback from were friends, students, and those who had known Greg – a bit of a biased bunch. But then, after a large series in a national daily newspaper, response started coming in from strangers across the country. The book is standard reading for staff of the Dufferin-Peel Catholic District School Board and is available in school libraries across the Board. Due to popular demand, it was re-released at the end of 2010 and is now available on amazon.ca and chapters.ca. “They all know how it ends… the story is how he got there,” Carnovale explained. Different people will interpret literature in different ways, and the librarian thinks that sometimes readers miss his most important take away message. It’s not that kids can be mean, although they can be. It’s that people can be mean, and that adults need to acknowledge and deal with their own role as bullies (Bolton teacher tackles bullying in book).
Teen Ink: Writer Holly Thompson talks about bullying: I didn’t initially set out with a plan to write about bullying or mental illness. Often we don’t choose our stories; they choose us. With Orchards, I set about writing lines of poetry that began swirling in my head after suicide touched my life. Bullying and mental illness are tough issues, but they are all around us...Orchards is dedicated to the three individuals whose suicide directly impacted me. First was a friend’s 14-year-old daughter; I learned of her death while holding my infant daughter in my arms. The news haunted me for years. About 10 years later, my brother-in-law committed suicide, leaving a grieving wife, two young children, and many devastated family members who had tried for years to help him cope with bipolar disorder. Soon after that, a dear friend lost his wife to suicide. At that point, I started hearing Kana’s voice in my head, and I began writing the first chapters of Orchards (Author Holly Thompson).
About the novel, "Orchards" After a classmate commits suicide, Kana Goldberg-a half-Japanese, half-Jewish American-wonders who is responsible. She and her cliquey friends said some thoughtless things to the girl. Hoping that Kana will reflect on her behavior, her parents pack her off to her mother's ancestral home in Japan for the summer. There Kana spends hours under the hot sun tending to her family'smikanorange groves. Kana's mixed heritage makes it hard to fit in at first, especially under the critical eye of her traditional grandmother, who has never accepted Kana's father. But as the summer unfolds, Kana gets to know her relatives, Japan, and village culture, and she begins to process the pain and guilt she feels about the tragedy back home. Then news about a friend sends her world spinning out of orbit all over again (Orchards).
Book Reporter: Holly Thompson, the author of ASH, grew up in New England and graduated from Mount Holyoke College with a degree in biology. She'd not given Japan a passing glance until she approached her husband-to-be in a Maine island pub, intrigued by his footwear (geta) from his time spent in Japan. After teaching science for two years, she made her first move to Japan in 1983 and stayed three years--teaching English, writing, and beginning her exploration of the less traveled corners of the Japanese archipelago. She later received her Masters degree from New York University's Creative Writing Program and after settling in the New York area for a number of years, uprooted and moved back to Japan with her husband and their two children. Her articles on such Japanese cultural issues as O-Bon festival rituals, tatami manufacturing, midwifery, and wedding customs, as well as on historic travel destinations, have appeared in magazines and newspapers in the United States and Japan, and her short stories have been published in The Broken Bridge anthology, Wingspan and various literary magazines. Her fiction tends to explore differences of sensibility, orientation and expression between Japanese and Americans and the impact of cross-cultural stress on personal lives. Characters include foreigners in Japan struggling to navigate a society lacking familiar referents, Japanese in the United States assimilating one moment and bowing to Japanese tradition the next, and children of intercultural marriages coping with often opposing identities. She currently teaches at Yokohama City University and lives and writes in Kamakura (Book Reporter).
voices.outtakeonline: LGBTQ teens are up to four times more likely to attempt suicide than their heterosexual peers. Over the past year numerous teens have taken their own lives after facing bullying incidents. When asked what advise she would have for these kids, Donley stated, “The advise that I have and I didn't have this when I was that age, is find an adult that knows you and believes in you and likes you, loves you, just the way you are, and keeps affirming that in you. And keep that adult presence in as many ways possible. It seems to me that the message is pretty clear that kids who have at least one adult who really supports them and stands by them fare a lot better. So I would urge them to seek people out even if it means going to organizations that deal with LGBTQ stuff and actually talking to people, to not to be isolated, to figure out a way to feel like you’re not alone, because you’re not, but sometimes it’s hard not to believe that. And find someone to be in your corner” (Gay Activist Jan Donley Speaks OUT).
About The Side Door: On her first day of high school, fifteen-year-old Melrose Bird, a.k.a. Mel, sees a woman on a park bench staring at Drift High School where her teenage son, Alex Weber, died five years ago. Alex Weber's death has never been discussed in the town or at the school. But Mel and her best friend Frank become obsessed with Alex's grave and consumed by the why of his suicide. When Mel happens upon a pair of Alex's cargo pants, she takes them. And what she finds inside the pockets brings into focus the story of Alex's brief life and his death. Determined to pressure the school and the town into recognizing why Alex died, Mel embarks on a journey and confronts a world of adult secrecy and deception. Mel also contends with a peer group who greet Mel's assertion of her identity--her buzz cut and the pants she wears--by scrawling DYKE across her locker. But anyone who thinks Mel Bird will retreat from disapproval or opposition is badly mistaken (The Side Door [Paperback]).
Bullying is an abusive treatment, the use of force or coercion to affect others, particularly when habitual and involving an imbalance of power. It may involve verbal harassment, physical assault or coercion and may be directed persistently towards particular victims, perhaps on grounds of race, religion, gender, sexuality, or ability. The "imbalance of power" may be social power and/or physical power. The victim of bullying is sometimes referred to as a "targeted individual" (Wikipedia).
