POIGNANT MEMOIR PUTS A FACE ON A BULLIED LIFE
“The bullies never remember, but the outcasts never forget.”

That telling line from a poignant new memoir best summarizes the hurt and frustration that results from bullying … hurt and frustration that can follow a child into adulthood.

In Please Stop Laughing at Me … One Woman’s Inspirational Story, Jodee Blanco tells it like it was … and it was horrible.

Using the backdrop of her 20th high school reunion, she chronicles the unrelenting verbal and physical abuse that followed her from the time she was a 10-year-old fourth-grader. Her story puts a face up for her principles, telling the truth and befriending children with disabilities. It was a life of contradictions between what adults would say and the reality of how she was treated by her peers.

“It seems that if you are mean or cruel to another kid, that was ‘okay’ because it was just a normal part of growing up,” writes Blanco If you are on the receiving end and allow it to bother you, you were the one who needs help. What kind of logic was that?”

From cover to cover, Blanco reasons through what happened to her, laying the groundwork for what may become an anti-bullying Bible. Within this 273-page, easy-reading, soft-cover book, she paints a stark picture of fear, hatred, loneliness, frustration and disillusionment — a picture many adults will recognize, either with empathy from having experienced similar traumatic events, or sheepishly from knowing they were the bullies. Putting the face on the problem of bullying as no other can: the face of experience.

Despite changes in schools and changes in communities, Blanco always seemed to be a target for bullies, mostly for doing what, by adult standards, would be the right thing: standing Blanco’s book has been described by other reviewers a “must read for parents, educators, and everyone concerned with the health and well-being of our children” (John Bradshaw, author of the New York Times bestseller Homecoming) and as a book that “will do for survivors of school bullying what Dave Pelzer’s book A Child Called ‘It’ did for child abuse” (Jack Canfield, coauthor of the international best-selling series Chicken Soup for the Soul).

Because of its easy style and riveting storyline, this book is appropriate for middle school and high school students, as well as parents, teachers and administrators. If any child can be given hope of surviving being bullied … if any child can see the bully within themselves and stop … if any parent or teacher can see a better way to handle bullying situations before they escalate, then Blanco’s years of mistreatment will have an element of triumph.
Linda Dawson, The Illinois School Board Journal, Nov/Dec 2003.


PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
A publicist (and author of The Complete Guide to Book Publicity) who has promoted several bestsellers, Blanco was once a troubled child, tormented by her school mates. In this moving account, Blanco describes how she was first victimized in a Roman Catholic grammar school because she defended some deaf children when they were picked on by hearing students. She gave the names of the ringleaders of this cruel activity to one of the nuns, and was subsequently ostracized by former friends for being a tattletale. After Blanco transferred to another school, she continued a pattern of reporting bad behavior to authority figures and became a true outsider. According to the author, her parents were sympathetic, but they made things worse by forcing her to see a therapist. He prescribed medication that made her sleepy and told her that "kids will be kids." In high school, she was physically abused by students who also objected to her "goody two shoes" attitude. During her teen years, Blanco's emotional problems were compounded by a physical problem that caused her breasts to grow at different rates (later corrected by surgery). Blanco does feel, however, that those painful early years gave her the strength to become a successful adult. Although the text is overwritten in parts, the author's courageous and honest memoir of the years she spent as the victim of her contemporaries points smartly to the inability of adults to deal with issues of serious bullying.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

BOOKLIST
Blanco relates her hellish experience, which began back in grade school. Unable to maintain her friendships with the "cool" group because she befriended a younger deaf student, Blanco was ostracized and, worse, tormented. Her parents sent her to a different school, but after an initial promising start, Blanco was again ostracized after she called her mom to pick her up from a party that got out of control. Another school switch and a psychiatrist did nothing to better Blanco's situation. She hoped high school would improve upon junior high, but the kids continued to torment her, even going so far as to beat her up. Blanco chronicles in detail her feelings of depression and how difficult it was for her to face her cruel classmates on a daily basis. Blanco's story is often painful to read, but her eventual success and triumph over the past are inspiring.
Kristine Huntley, Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

MAPC Library, Winnipeg, Manitoba - Canada
Reading this book gave me the opportunity to experience life in the shoes of someone who had a school lifetime of being bullied. Definitely an easy read book and a book that I found very hard to put down because I wanted to see if it resulted in hopefully a happy ending or the type of ending that no one wished for any child. I was not only moved by this book, but it gave me a deeper awareness of why children and teenagers (especially teenagers) can be so cruel to others at times and how many barriers there are for the bullied to go to through to solve their situation.

This new addition to our resource library explains the characteristics of bullies, bystanders and the bullied through the eyes of a bullied female.

What amazed me the most was how the educators, parents and medical professions handled the barriers this girl expressed to them.

If you have concerns about your child/teenager being hurt and tormented by others, have an interest in the topic of bullies or would like to gain an awareness about this topic I would recommend that you read this book.
By D. Giesbrecht Copyright 2003