The highly anticipated sequel to The New York Times bestseller Please Stop Laughing at Me . . .  Download PDF

“There’s an audible gasp from the audience, and as I look out into the bleachers I see more kids in tears. Others are glancing at each other nervously. A few are rocking back and forth, staring ahead. It begins to dawn on me that I’m tapping into something here that I may not be prepared for. Apparently, the teachers aren’t, either. I see them shooting worried glances at one another as they realize they’re going to have to deal with the aftermath. No one expected anything like this. All I keep asking myself is what have I opened up?”

CHICAGO: Please Stop Laughing at Us . . ., Jodee Blanco’s New York Times bestselling memoir about how she was shunned and tormented by her classmates from fifth grade through high school simply for being different, sparked a movement in this nation’s schools and inspired thousands of pleas for help from people who came to recognize her as a kindred spirit. Since its release, Blanco has been responding to those pleas, working deep inside the trenches of America’s schools sharing her still painful experiences to prove that bullying is not just joking around, it damages you for life.

Please Stop Laughing at Us . . . One Survivor’s Extraordinary Quest to Prevent School Bullying (BenBella Books, March 2008) is the sequel to Blanco’s memoir and is the shockingly honest account of that journey. Written in response to the demand for more information from her devoted audience—teens, teachers, parents and other Adult Survivors like herself, who have come to know Blanco as the champion of their cause—it provides advice and solutions set against the backdrop of her dramatic personal struggle adjusting to her new life as the survivor who unexpectedly finds herself the country’s most sought-after anti-bullying activist.

Please Stop Laughing at Us . . ., Blanco brings readers with her as she crosses and re-crosses the country, occasionally making headlines, from Northern California to Baltimore, Maryland, bringing her anti-bullying campaign to high schools and middle schools. She takes them inside the cafeterias and gymnasiums and vast auditoriums where she shared the story of her painful past to more than half a million students, conducted workshops for teachers and school administrators, as well as meetings with the parents of students who were being bullied and the parents of those who were doing the bullying. In this intimate chronicle, Blanco also lets readers sit in on her one-on-one sessions with the most damaged and frightened victims, some of which became suicide interventions.

Blanco also divulges in Please Stop Laughing at Us . . . how, during her campaign to awaken the American educational system to the danger in its midst and to offer beleaguered students comfort and hope, she made a devastating discovery about the state of public education in America. She found that an environment disturbingly similar to the one she was forced to endure as a student was still being permitted to flourish 25 years later, and worse, that many educators either did not recognize or were deliberately ignoring students in peril.

More than an exposé, Please Stop Laughing at Us . . . is also the story of America’s rejected and bullied students from the rare perspective of the one person with unprecedented access to the truth. Blanco witnessed first-hand the rage of this nation’s youth, droves of whom, after hearing her speak, would confide what they too had suffered at the hands of their peers and sometimes even their teachers, revealing a side of America’s schools the public rarely sees. The book also provides a stunning window into the strengths and vulnerabilities of a nation too clouded by rhetoric and self-defense to understand what really needs to be done.

Readers will learn about:

• Teachers and administrators who bully students
• Apathetic superintendents with hidden agendas
• Zero-tolerance policies that inadvertently empower the bullies
• Why some administrators deny there’s a bullying problem in their schools
• Students who bully teachers and principals and get away with it
• Student rapes that go unreported in an effort to avoid public shame and embarrassment
• Parents who tragically contribute to their children’s ostracism

Though Please Stop Laughing at Us . . . discloses the bitter reality of adolescent suffering in many schools, it also celebrates the heroic efforts of countless educators, students and parents who are making a difference in their districts. Blanco tells of:

• Suicides that were averted because of teachers willing to risk everything to save a student
• Students who risk their lives to protect a tormented classmate
• Principals who take on the system and even jeopardize their careers to fight for a child who’s been wronged
• Bullies who beg forgiveness from their victims in an effort to make things right
• Shunned and forgotten students who rally their schools and make headlines getting anti-bullying policies
   implemented

In Please Stop Laughing at Us . . . Blanco also:

• Identifies the Adult Survivor of Peer Abuse, a distinct population of individuals previously unrecognized
• Codifies concepts that have now become terms of art in the field, such as “Elite Tormentor,”
   “Empathy Deficit Disorder” and the “Ancient Child”
• Identifies the profile of a typical bullied child
• Provides strategies for students on how to respond if you are being bullied by a classmate
• Defines the two types of bullying and why one is innocuous and the other dangerous
• Explains why bullies and victims are the flip side of the same coin and how to help both
• Offers specific advice on what to say and what not to say to a bullied child and why
• Delineates the warning signs for parents and teachers that a child is being bullied or is the bully
• Introduces disciplinary methods that evolve a child’s self-esteem rather than dissolve it

With Please Stop Laughing at Me . . ., Blanco saved lives. With Please Stop Laughing at Us . . ., she will help to save futures.

Jodee Blanco is the author of The New York Times bestselling memoir Please Stop Laughing at Me . . .. She is also a youth advocate and the creator and executive producer of the critically acclaimed, “It’s NOT Just Joking Around!” anti-bullying program. She lives in Chicago.

Book Details:
Title: Please Stop Laughing at Us . . . One Survivor’s Extraordinary Quest to Prevent School Bullying
Author: Jodee Blanco
Publisher: BenBella Books
Publication: March 2008, $14.95 (CAN $18.95), Paper, ISBN: 1933771291; ISBN-13: 9781933771298
Self-Help, 464 pages, 5 ½ x 8 ½