Dear Bully: 70 Authors Tell Their Stories

Parents need to know that Dear Bully was conceived by Megan Kelley Hall and Carrie Jones; the two author/editors started a Facebook page in response to the suicide of bullied high school student Phoebe Prince in South Hadley, Mass. Hall and Jones invited other young-adult and children's authors to write and post their own childhood memories of bullying. Seventy of the writers who responded appear in the Dear Bully book, ranging from picture book writer/illustrator Mo Willems to Goosebumps creator R.L. Stine to Generation Dead author Daniel Waters. This group of writers grew up before cyberbullying was invented, so their experiences involve bullying in general -- especially at school. However, the writers often touch briefly on the topic of online bullying, and Waters in particular explains how characters in his Generation Dead series were inspired by cruel behavior he observed on YouTube, where a bully would let others know about a violent act that he or she planned to commit -- such as knocking down a child coming off of a school bus -- then record the event and post it online. The real experiences described in Dear Bully are often violent and always upsetting, but they offer the reassuring message that so many people understand how bullied teens feel.