Review by Choice Review
"Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me." Bazelon (senior editor, Slate; Truman Capote Fellow, Yale Law School) challenges this centuries-old adage to ignore the pain of a "mere taunt." She skillfully constructs a stage on which the reader experiences the carnage perpetrated by peer abuse on the lives of three young victims. The cast of characters is fictitious but the devastation caused by their tormenters feels authentic. The "storyteller" captures the attention of the audience with chilling narratives that breathe life into the study of bullying. In addition, the book addresses the wounds that may be inflicted by the potentially damaging weapon of social media in the cultural milieu today. The compelling accounts of these haunted voices are thoroughly punctuated with salient empirical research findings. This cleverly crafted blending of drama and informed data fuels the discussion about the power of empathy to combat the culture of bullying and elevates the author as an authoritative voice in the national conversation about prevention. A teacher's guide is available (online or in print) through the publisher. Summing Up: Highly recommended. All readers. S. Durr Middle Georgia State College
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by New York Times Review
The question of whether humans are becoming more brutal or more civilized has been debated urgently by the Athenians, the philosophers of the Renaissance, the Victorians and the existentialists. Those who argue that cruelty is currently becoming more acute point to the Rwandan genocide, global warming, and the malicious acts of selfish corporations and corrupt politicians. Contrariwise, others point to a safer and kinder society of greater prosperity and less prejudice against social, religious and ethnic minorities; Steven Pinker's 2011 book, "The Better Angels of Our Nature," proposes that we live more peaceably now than ever before. The dichotomous argument has particular resonance in the context of childhood. Teachers no longer routinely hit students; laws require accommodations for young people with learning disabilities; parents keep watch for teachers' abuse and vice versa; developmental therapists are around every corner. Yet the Internet has unleashed meanness of a previously unimagined scope and celerity; broken households escalate children's proclivity to launch unmonitored assaults on weaker kids; ethics are preached neither at home nor at school; and the accessibility of assault rifles enables nearly apocalyptic juvenile excess. Adult bullies from talk radio to Congress get constant airtime, and in many quarters their belligerence is applauded. Still, we are shocked when children behave belligerently toward one another. Youthful aggression has always been a problem and always will be; the pitilessness of childhood, like that of the world, is most likely a constant quantity. Emily Bazelon's intelligent, rigorous "Sticks and Stones" charts the experiences of a few bullied children and synthesizes the scholarship on how to contain or prevent such harm. She focuses primarily on the stories of three kids: an African-American girl, Monique McClain, who became the target of a few girls at her school in Connecticut, went through a depression and finally switched schools and found happiness; a gay boy in upstate New York, Jacob Lasher, who struggled against prejudice but also enjoyed being a provocateur; and Phoebe Prince, an Irish girl transplanted to a town in Massachusetts, who was bullied atrociously and committed suicide. Bazelon includes chapters on anti-bullying measures with good track records. She reviews jurisprudence on bullying, and examines both the virtues and the pitfalls of treating it as a crime. She tries to delineate what parents can achieve, what schools can achieve, and what may come of the shifting power differential among parents and schools and social agencies. Bazelon is at her best as a storyteller, and the most interesting parts of the book are its human narratives. She resists the idea that there is always an innocent victim; among her three subjects, she paints Monique as essentially blameless, but the others as having some hand in their own suffering. Her writing about Phoebe Prince for Slate, which inspired and is expanded in this book, is especially trenchant; it rejects the simple "bullied to death" narrative that dominated the media at the time. Bazelon indicates that Phoebe's situation was complicated: she had been cutting herself, had had problems in a previous school, had made a prior suicide attempt and had gone off her antidepressants six weeks before she took her life. Given Phoebe's history, Bazelon writes that she couldn't understand the prosecutor's decision "to lay the burden of her suicide at the feet of six adolescents." If charity begins at home, then so, too, does brutality: at home and early, and Bazelon looks for the seeds of troubling behavior in the home lives of bullies. She is taken with the work of Dan Olweus, the grand old man of anti-bullying theory and practice, whose programs target the school, the classroom and the individual. She describes a headmaster who was able to transform the climate at his school largely through charisma, will and the methodology proposed by George Sugai, who believes that positive rewards given to students for positive social skills may be just as effective as punishment for those who are out of line. Investigating the role of the Internet in modern bullying, Bazelon visited the offices of Facebook, achieving an unusual degree of access. She describes both the company's woefully inadequate anti-bullying protocols for young subscribers - Facebook's current business model seems built on "habituating kids to giving up their privacy" - and their ill-advised efforts to bully her once they got a whiff of her criticisms. Bazelon explores the role of adults in the lives of kids who are bullied, and shows that often, parents and teachers who set out to help end up exacerbating the problem. She refuses the notion that the real reason for bullying is violent video games, rock music, parental neglect, social media or any other single cause. She thinks with nuance, making it clear that the problem is overdetermined and requires complex, subtle solutions. Sometimes, that makes the book feel confused. "Sticks and Stones" lacks a central thesis; it describes a problem, reports on many proposed solutions and leaves it to readers to draw their own conclusions. As someone who was bullied as a child, I found myself wishing to avoid these familiar narratives, which stirred up nostalgic fear; as the father of young children, I devoured them with anticipatory terror. Yet even though I came away from this book far better informed, I was left with no particular sense of what to do. Bazelon often provides excessive detail about process: details of how she arrived at conclusions that are not particularly startling. There is little meta-thinking; the analysis has an atomized quality. In "The Bully Society," published a year ago, Jessie Klein argues persuasively that the preponderance of bullying stems from the escalating social imperative for boys and girls to conform to oppressive masculine stereotypes. Bazelon accurately avers that such generalizations are reductive. "We have to be smart and careful about the Web," she concludes. "The Internet won't do it for us. The best thing we can do is help kids learn to look out for themselves." But sometimes reductive answers can be arresting, and one longs for Bazelon to proclaim a bit more, not always to let common sense trump revelation. Her most winning achievement is the kindness she demonstrates throughout the book. She is nonjudgmental in a generous rather than simply neutral way, and she culls as much pathos from the circumstances of bullies as from those of their victims. She identifies not only the sadism of abusive children, but also their sadness. She is a compassionate champion for justice in the domain of childhood's essential unfairness. In several touching instances, she recounts her retreat from journalistic neutrality. On a subway in Washington, she sees some teenagers berating an older man, and forces herself to intervene after she thinks: "Wait, I'm writing a book about bullying! Bystanders are supposed to speak up!" The intervention leads to her being attacked verbally, and generates feelings of intense embarrassment; she ends up wondering whether she should have just stayed out of it. Then she suddenly figures out why so many students keep their distance when they witness bullying. In another passage, she describes exploiting her personal connections to help Monique escape her bullies by switching schools - "figuring that there's nothing fair about who knows whom in life." It's not standard operating procedure, but it reflects an essential humanity that is more important in this book than pure objectivity would be. Adult bullies from talk radio to Congress get constant air time, yet we are shocked when children act that way. Andrew Solomon is the author, most recently, of "Far From the Tree: Parents, Children, and the Search for Identity."
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [March 3, 2013]
Review by Booklist Review
Bullying has become a buzzword recently with high-profile examples of its tragic ramifications appearing frequently on the national media. Bazelon first became involved in reporting on bullying for a series in Slate magazine, which ultimately led to this book-length analysis of the phenomenon. The book is framed by the author's examination of three different bullying situations. These cases lead to a deeper discussion of the factors that foment bullying and how bullying affects its victims. Bazelon also examines the motivation for bullying and how adults, parents, teachers, guidance counselors, and school administrators can address the problem, whether it's traditional face-to-face bullying or cyberbullying. She also deconstructs the language of bullying, which teens often refer to as drama, and looks at how a teen's social capital can affect his or her likeliness to be bullied. This very perceptive and accessible work on a topic of increasing relevance is a must-read for any teacher, administrator, or after-school provider for teens and tweens.--Gaus, Eve Copyright 2010 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Providing a nuanced understanding of bullying, Bazelon explores the lives of three young adults deeply affected by this enduring and important social issue. The author considers meaningful ways of addressing and reducing the negative impact of bullying, and though she does not provide easy answers, she does help provide a better understanding of a complex problem. Narrator Rebecca Lowman captures the spirit of the author's text throughout this audio production. Lowman provides matter-of-fact delivery, excellent pacing, and smooth transitions. She avoids melodrama, particularly in passages describing episodes of bullying, and provides distinct voices for the people-both young and old, male and female-quoted in the text. A Random House hardcover. (Feb.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Kirkus Book Review
A nuanced approach to the epidemic of bullying in American schools. In 2009, Slate senior editor Bazelon began writing articles about cyberbullying. She shared in the growing concern about how social media can amplify the effects of bullying. After writing the first few articles, her focus shifted. While cyberbullying is "changing the nature of teenage bullying," it is still "a new incarnation of an old phenomenon." Probing further, the author realized that bullying is more complex than she originally thought. She explores the part normally played by aggression (when teens jockey for social position) and contrasts this to occasions when a disparity in power exists (and could signify bullying). Failure by both parents and schools to intervene in order to protect victims on the one hand, and overreaction on the other, can lead to bullying. In extreme situations, complex legal issues involving the responsibility of school authorities may arise (including potential criminal charges when violence occurs). Bazelon also considers the way that the prejudices of school personnel or the broader community against people who defy conventional gender roles can tacitly encourage victimization. The author uses three major case studies to exemplify issues. The first illustrates how overreaction by a mother when her daughter was mocked led to an escalating situation. In the second, school authorities tacitly countenanced the abuse of gay teens, who successfully sued for violation of their constitutional rights. Lastly, a tragic suicide involved a girl whose detractors were charged with murder, even though they had no direct involvement in her death. In the concluding section, Bazelon surveys promising new approaches to dealing with bullying, and the appendix includes fact sheets and a resource guide. A convincing case against media hype and a premature rush to judgment.]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Review by Choice Review
Review by New York Times Review
Review by Booklist Review
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Review by Kirkus Book Review
