Lady Reader's Bookstuff: Andrew Smith on Books & Bullying + Giveaway

Tuesday, October 30, 2012

Andrew Smith on Books & Bullying + Giveaway

9:24 AM | Posted by lady reader |

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Andrew Smith speaks out about Bullying.

I want to talk about the B-word.

Bullying.

Nobody is going to say they’re in favor of it. But maybe my take on the subject is different.

There are more than a few bullies in the books that I’ve written, and I think they all come from different angles. If I made a Bully Menu for my books, I guess the dishes would be described in the following manner:

Book	Bully	Flavor
Ghost Medicine	Chase Rutledge	Chase is an intimidator, a kid with such an overestimated sense of his self-worth that he has absolutely no capacity to empathize with anyone else.
Stick	Ricky Dostal	Ricky is afraid of anyone who doesn’t fit in. This is a classic manifestation of teenage bullying—picking on a kid for being different than the rest of the group.
Passenger	Avery Scott	The cop is also an intimidator. He picks on his victims because he truly believes most human beings to be inferior and unintelligent.
Winger (coming 2013)	Casey Palmer	Casey picks on kids for two reasons: First, because he doesn’t want anyone to find out the secrets he hides; and second because he feels like his role as quarterback of the football team dictates he acts the part of a bully.

I think that to understand bullies (and I’m not suggesting that understand equates with approval) it’s important to realize that bullying has diverse origins.

We hear an awful lot about bullying these days, and it may be an unpopular view, but I think that sometimes the terms “bully” and “bullying” are unfairly used. Because the term can be associated with horrible behaviors, just calling someone a bully because they disagree with you, or are argumentative can be very harmful.

So be careful.

Now, here’s my take on why we’ve been seeing an epidemic of bullying in our society: It has to do with the replacement parent—technology—along with the combination of atavistic social behaviors.

Here’s how it works: When kids spend too much time away from the direct contact and interaction of real, human, parent figures, they tend to easily fall victim to group-originated behaviors. You see it all the time on social media sites like Facebook, Tumbler, and Twitter. Humans genetically evolved as social animals, and sometimes social behavior can be pretty ugly—picking on the runts, for example, or killing off members of the herd who don’t fit in. The only way we can reasonably hope to strain out those ugly (but sometimes natural) behaviors in kids is by having adults who are there, who participate, and who guide.

Otherwise we’re just populating the planet with a bunch of jerky kids who will undoubtedly grow up into even jerkier adults.

We can totally stop bullying. All we have to do is love and invest in our kids, as opposed to ignoring them.

I told Gabriel that ghost medicine was everything we could ever want; that it was more powerful than we knew, more than we could reckon with. And in the end, I guess it did make us disappear. But it wasn't like a cheap illusion in a magic show, because we didn’t realize that it took us in pieces...-Ghost Medicine, a 2009 ALA Best Books for Young Adults

There were five gunshots.
I did the math.
Then it was quiet as death.
-Stick, a 2012 ALA Best Fiction for Young Adults Nominee

I coach a group of young writers in Southern California. I also travel all over the place speaking about the importance of literacy and the development of creative thinking skills for our kids.

The future of the planet depends on creative thought, yet somehow, there is an active campaign out there telling kids (especially boys) that creativity is not as important as correctly choosing which bubble to fill on a standardized test.

RULES:

Open to US Only * Winner must respond within 48 hours*

Please note, all giveaways will be shipped out at the end of the month.

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2 comments:

Marsha Sigman said...: Great giveaway! Just discovered his books and completely addicted.ha; November 2, 2012 at 12:45 PM
Matthew MacNish said...: Now I get it. Each link is a separate giveaway. Damn.; November 3, 2012 at 10:03 PM