Bashful Book Bee this week wants to talk about “bullying.” Anyone over 10 years old, knows bullying isn’t something new. In the 1960’s, Bashful Book Bee was bullied from the 1^st grade through the 7^th grade by the same little girl. Back then we hadn’t started calling it bullying, we just thought some people were mean or bossy. But for me, my mother taught me to turn the other cheek, and forgive 77 times 7 ….. I believe that concept, FOR ME, helped make me a person who hates conflict…and for the most part worries about hurting people’s feelings.

But in the last few years many students and adults who have been bullied in their childhood have evolved into very troubled people who finally erupt in a horrible way and take lives of others. As an educator, for the past few years the philosophy has been to treat bullies with kindness and encourage students to try and passively work out their differences.

There was a recent study by University of Texas at Arlington criminologist Seokjin Jeong who’s research found that our efforts to curb bullying with anti-bullying programs were having unexpected results. Evidence found many of these programs to    discourage bullying were actually in the schools that were creating more victims of bullying. You can find many references to his article by “Googleing” Seokjin Jeong.

While bullying is something I hope educators and good people never ignore, I believe this week’s book selections are coming up with the new and hopefully the best solution. That solution often being, equipping students to learn to defend themselves and strategies to discourage bullying!

Bashful Book Bee’s book of the week is:

Llama llama and the bully goat by Anna Dewdney. Most educators will be familiar with Llama llama…. But this one really does a great job of helping little ones see the bullying as a bad behavior, as well as ways to discourage the bad behavior.

Bashful found 4 other great bullying books, but they really are specific to a certain age group. Therefore, I put my age suggestions after each title…

·        Bully by Laura Vaccaro Seeger …Prek – 1^st… Simple words, but also a play on words. It uses the actually name of animals to “be” the mean words, for example the bull shouts to the chicken “YOU CHICKEN.”

·        Bully Beans by Julia Cook and Anita Dufalla…. K – 3^rd… Has some great lessons, even that sometimes bullies, are bullied at home. Strategies and solutions to these events are given by the mother in our story, which then provides the children the courage and team work to stop the attacks.

·        Dixie and Big Bully by Grace Gilman would be great 1^st or 2^nd grade, for dog loving students….Dixie helps students feel comfort for students being bullied and accidentally taught the bully a good lesson.

·        Bully by Patricia Polacco… AWESOME, and would have been BashfullBookBee’s pick if it had been better for younger students. But it would be the perfect book for 3^rd – 8^th graders, maybe even high school…. It addresses peer pressure, also addresses what can be the motivation for a bully, even hits on cyber bullying~

I wish the world were a perfect place, but it’s not…. So I hope finding great books to help children learn good lessons, will help them to learn good qualities.

For more information and comments, please email us at bashfulbookbee@gmail.com Remember when teachers order, they receive 15% off cover price.

Bashful Book Bee "BEELIEVE'S" in sharing the love of books and reading with everyone. But her primary goal is to introduce books to children, teachers, educators, parents and grandparents.