There has been a lot of discussion about bullying in the blogosphere lately. And two concerned YA writers, Carrie Jones and Megan Kelley Hall, decided to do more than blog, so they started a Facebook page called Young Adult Authors Against Bullying.
I started to think about bullying, which is a topic I've thought about quite a bit throughout my life. It seems to me that one of the things that YA books deal with -- maybe not as an "issue" but as a part of life -- is bullying.
I certainly have. In my RoCom, Kaitlyn is bullied by readers who do not like her column. And, in some ways, her column is a way for her to bully the very people who write in to her for help. Sure, maybe their dilemmas seem silly to her, but that doesn't mean they really are silly.
Name calling. Labeling. Can anyone get through school without having experienced bullying of some sort? If you want to know what you can do to make the world a little more bully-free, stop by the Facebook page and read some of the great suggestions for how to cope. Offer some of your own.
Even though YA authors might have fewer easy conflicts if we really did manage to create a bully-free world, we'd cope (there are always unreasonable parents and high-stakes tests...and romance is never conflict-free).
Kelly
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