Customer Reviews

Please Stop Laughing at Us.: One Survivor's Extraordinary Quest to Prevent School Bullying

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4 star:		(2)
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1 star:		(2)

 

 

I ordered this book after hearing the author interviewed on NPR. I was very impressed by the author, who has done noble work and who, in the interview, gave a fascinating analysis of the kind of child who is bullied (the "old soul" who doesn't fit in, the compassionate one, the sensitive one) and spoke eloquently about the kinds of actions the bullied child and his or her parents should take. I assumed that the book would elaborate on these key topics, and I wanted to be able to share these insights with my daughter, whose child fits the author's description of the child vulnerable to bullying. Fortunately I had the book sent to me rather than to my daughter, who would have been truly puzzled about why I had sent it to her. The book turns out to be a hyped-up narrative, in diary form, of the author's response to fame and to the pressures of having written a best-seller. The stories center on her--what it's like to reveal yourself to a high-school audience, what it's like to have damaged kids needing your advice, what it's like to fall in love with a highschool heartthrob and then almost lose him. The book is riddled with her recorded anxieties and sleepless nights and frantic phone calls and moments of elation. There's one mention of the "old soul" characteristic and one brief paragraph about actions that a bullied child and his or parents should take. I admire the author's courage, and I sense that her work is having an impact on attitudes to bullying. The topic is now making its way into prime-time TV drama. But parents with a child being bullied or vulnerable to bullying would be better advised to track down the interview than to buy the book. Too bad.

After writing her bestselling work Please Stop Laughing At Me...: One Woman's Inspirational Story, former publicist Jodee Blanco jotted down a kind of 'post-memoir memoir', an update on her life experiences after that book hit it big. This book follows her life story as she tries to tell people about her experiences in any way she can- speaking to student bodies, teachers, customers at Border's shops, and so on. The title is very apt since this book extends the personal experiences in her previous one more broadly. She comes up with various terms and ideas about bullying that, even as a layman, she pitches to educators and to parents.

For the average reader (without much of a background in the issues), the book appears to be a mixed bag, but an interesting one. It mashes together incoherently very dull slice-of-life moments, frequent 'flashbacks' to the previous book, ideological prognosticating about what the American school system gets wrong, a constant stream-of-consciousness narrative, and horrifying stories about bullied/bullying kids that she meets. It found it extremely hard not to skip ahead all the time, even though I knew that I would probably miss out on a notable insight that Blanco makes.

The lack of an organized, clear writing comes up all the time. For example, Blanco mentions how she sometimes dreads hanging out with the people who used to bully her. She writes how, say, X person was the inspiration for person Y in the last book, but she never spells out what names are fictional and which are not- only dropping opaque references here and there. It's annoying reading about something she says to 'Clark' and then having to wonder: "Is this 'Clark' the same as that other guy from her first book? Is this 'Clark' the one that made that remark just a few pages ago?"

Blanco spends a great deal discussing her storybook romance with Mitch, the troubled popular kid that she liked from the last book. While it makes sense for her to write about something so important in her life, she seems to go on and on about this in a way that makes you think that you're reading a 12-year-old's diary. She also brings up religious references suddenly and then leaves those hanging, which leaves the reader thinking: "If your Christian faith is the glue keeping your life together, why aren't you talking about it in any detail?" She also makes up terms as she goes along, such as 'Ancient Child' and 'Elite Tormentor', that she frustratingly refuses to explain with real, factual references. There's a gigantic body of work out there in the media and in the academic world about explaining bullying; Blanco chooses to ignore this. As well, she's leaving out so much. What about children who don't identify as the "sages beyond their years" "persecuted for being different" and are bullied, don't they matter? Don't they deserve sympathy? Blanco does not even think of it. She gives her sympathy to goths, obese kids, gay kids, the disabled, and so on while ignoring that ordinary, average-type kids can bleed too.

Ultimately, I would still recommend this book to anyone interested in the subject. However, they should not be expecting something that's either an extension of her first books.

Compared to radio interviews and programs about this book and its predecessor, the book was somewhat disappointing. It primarily recounts the author's experiences, with only a chapter or two having any real substance as to how to deal with bullying.

This is her second book dealing with how she recovered from all the bullying and went to talk at schools around the country to help other kids who were being bullied and help the bullies to stop. Also addressed parents and teachers. Her advice includes telling the bullied kids to stand up for themselves in a nonviolent way, find friends outside of school even if it means going outside of their school district. Parents should not just send kid for counseling but go with them. Parents need to support their kids and let the kids talk about their problems. Try to come up with an action together that will help the situation. This book has a great message and offers practical help to both the bullied kids and their parents and teachers. It tells how the kids who used to pick on her in school are now her friends and she even married the most popular guy in school that all the girls liked which gives much hope to those going through the same thing. Great book!

I recommend this book for all teachers and anyone who is being bullied relentlessly to see there is hope.

Jodee, you have done it again. Your insight and your inspired words will make a difference in the world.

This problem can be addressed and remedied or at least lightened...but only if it is brought out into the open. So many children suffer with their mental state during their teen/formative years...it's no wonder that the impact of the actions of others can throw them off track so easily.

I am proud to have read this book and will recommend it to my friends with kids moving through the grades. You are making a difference and it is a special gift that you are giving. I am going to make sure these books (1 and 2) are in the local libraries for my side of the Dallas/Fort Worth metroplex...and supply them to them if they are not.

God Bless you and the lives you have saved...and will continue to save!

I hated to see this book end. It was like talking to my new best friend. Finally, somebody got it right telling the story of being bullied. I admire Jodee. The work she is doing is so important! I just LOVED this book and hope you write another.

Be sure to read the emails and letters at the end of this book. They are sad, but good to know people now have someone to turn to--Jodee!

This book is absolutely amazing. Once I started i couldn't put the book down and though I never bullied or was bullied, this book really made me think. This book made me cry so keep a box of tissues around. You won't regret buying this book, especially if you have been a bully or been bullied in the past!

I love this book. It let me see that I was not the only person who ever got bullied. I think with all the school violence going on these days, this is really important because so often it is the people who are being bullied that act violently. Jodee Blanco really understands this and I think schools should let their students read. That way maybe there would be fewer of these incidents.

Applause for Jodee for telling her story to help youth and teens to understand the pain of bullying and harassment behavior.

Bullying is a serious problem facing schools in the US. It is a physical and emotional action that has the potential to cause long-term damage to our youth and society.

Please Stop Laughing at Us telling a sincere story of the abuse of ones power over another.

The one main lesson we can learn from this story is Bullying is not a conflict - it is abuse.

This is a great book for parents, teachers and teens to read.

Deb Landry

Author, Sticks Stones and Stumped!

Apparently, the book sales of "Please Stop Laughing At Me" necessitated this sequel with the pronoun change.

Jodee Blanco would have us believe she is an alchemy of Joan Of Arc, Anne Frank and Carrie. Do her recollections of her public school experiences really represent the type and frequency of bullying everyone has at one time or another been subjected to? Is, or was, Blanco the epitome of a particularly fractious personality that proved irresistible to hooligans of both sexes? Or is the reader, and those required to attend her school seminars, the true victims of apocryphal stories?

Perhaps the following Blanco quote reveals how this women has manufactured a past that rivals the most prolific modern day horror writer's imagination.

"You know the (book) Carrie (by) Stephen King? Well, what I went through in school made that character's experiences look like a Disney flick."

Blanco said this in 2003 to her interviewer Jacky Johnson, a sophomore at Seminole High School. Even Blanco's book titles are distilled from the movie's tag line, "They're all going to laugh at you." Blanco compares her bullying experience to the same type of trauma usually reserved for veterans of combat. In fact, she said on NPR's Diane Rehm show that she still suffers from post traumatic stress. Hyperbole seems to be a byproduct of being ostracized in school.

But let's examine some of the humiliations Blanco was forced to suffer at the hands of her numerous assailants.

1) Eighth-grade biology class, a classmate hurled a dissected pig at her chest, splattering blood and formaldehyde into her nose and mouth

2) A group of wrestlers held her down and shoved fistfuls of snow into her mouth until she couldn't breathe

3) Burned with cigarettes

4) Stoned by a group of boys.

Were there no police reports filed in these criminal acts that went far beyond "bullying?" The only indignity that didn't happen to Blanco was the bucket of pig's blood dumped on her at her prom night. But of course Blanco didn't attend her prom.

What could possibly be the catalyst for this barbaric treatment?

"Well, when you're independent like that, and you're your own person, it often makes you the target of abuse." Blanco attributes this singular treatment by her peers to being an iconoclast?

Bullies, in school and out, are an undeniable blight on society. Blanco has divided her school peers into two types of people: those who are bullies, and those who are bullied. That would account for 10% of the student body. Where does that leave the other 90%?

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