New York Times Reports Book Industry Loves Bullying

An article published in the New York Times says that,"Nobody likes a bully – but these days, the book industry loves having them to kick around."

According to the article, publishers are being flooded with titles with the keyword "bullying" and the works are targeting a variety of age groups. Not only are there books, but the documentary that we have talked about before, "Bully" as well as other film projects and books based on the films are in the works.

One major indicator that the topic of bullying is on the rise is the increase over the last ten years of bullying as a keyword or tag in literary works. WorldCat, a catalog of library collections worldwide, reports that English-language books with the keyword bullying was up 500 titles over the last decade.

It seems that many writers, particularly in the fiction space, are creating stories and characters that are bullied and then tell the story from the victim's perspective. Some books are even telling the story from the bully's perspective. Two well-known authors in the young adult space teamed up and wrote a book that was a collection of stories from 70 authors who all shared their personal stories about bullying.

One New York Times bestseller tells a story about a boy with facial deformities; the book has sold 350,000 copies and there are school systems, teachers and libraries that have made the book required reading.

In almost all of these instances, the idea to share a story and then get it in the hands of children in the hopes that they will read and then connect with the characters in the book. By connecting with the characters, the hope is that when the reader is a victim of bullying or witnesses bullying, the reader will have empathy and understanding about the situation and know what to do.

Any and all material that can get out there about bullying is a good thing. Kudos to all authors, film makers or anyone else that creates something to help others when it comes to bullying. I only see one challenge when you are writing or filming and then distributing the materials for kids and teens…

You are pre-supposing that the kids and/or teens are going to see, buy and consume the information. Admittedly, I do not know the numbers on how many kids or teens are actively searching and buying materials about bullying; I don't know how many kids hear about a movie like "Bully" and beg their parents to go watch it of buy it on pay-per-view.

What I do know is that there is one sure-fire way to make sure that adults and kids get the best information available on bullying – you have to target the adults and parents.

We adults/parents are the key. WE are the ones that can train ourselves and then pass on the training to our kids. The books, movies and anything else that is created to stop bullying and raise awareness is outstanding and we need to keep doing it, but unless someone is learning and then teaching it to our kids, we are leaving the education and preparedness of our children to chance, random sightings of movies or book assignments from teachers, instead of making sure our kids are prepared.

You wouldn't leave teaching your child how to swim up to chance, a random movie or a book assignment from school, would you?

Stay strong,

Sensei

P.S. – This very article highlights why I wrote, "Bullies Suck" for adults and parents, and NOT kids. I realize that it is adults that are the conduit to the kids. If adults understand and "own" this information, they can teach it to their children. Bullying is proven to be a pandemic and has both short and long-term damaging effects to those who do it or are a target of it. Let's not leave bullying education up to change, a movie or the school system. Get "Bullies Suck" and start your education now.