Debut author Eric Kahn Gale creates a powerful treatise on one of today's hottest topics: bullying.
Eric Haskins used to be a normal kid, with a normal group of friends and a normal life. But something changed between fifth and sixth grade. Now, his former friends are calling him "Grunt" and bullying him. This is not stereotypical, steal-your-lunch-money bullying. This is the real thing. First, a few boys refuse to acknowledge Eric's existence. Next, they jostle him as he's peeing, ruining his clothes. Through these small acts of exclusion, his tormentors transform him into an object loathed by his entire class. He is no longer Eric; he is the Grunt. Desperate to change his lot, Eric tracks down a book he has heard of, an instruction manual that purports to give its readers the power to arrange the social hierarchy.
Despite some first-time writer missteps (Eric's voice is too grown-up for a sixth grader; one plot point, involving a page ripped from The Book, is an artificial device to create suspense), The Bully Book ultimately succeeds as a story that grants legitimacy to the extreme fear, anger and despair that victims of bullying feel. The existence of a bullying instruction manual, and the methodical, deliberate manner in which Eric's tormentors employ it, may ring false. But ultimately, these points of incredulity allow the reader to access a deeper truth: to the bullied, the sense of organized attack is real. --Allie Jane Bruce, children's librarian, Bank Street College of Education