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

Jodee Blanco is the author of "The New York Times" bestselling memoir, "Please Stop Laughing at Me," She is also a youth advocate and the creator and executive producer of the critically acclaimed, "It's NOT Just Joking Around!" anti-bullying program. She lives in Chicago.

Drawing from her own history as a bullied child, Jodee Blanco tells how she was able to convert her painful childhood into a survivor's guide for peer-abused children. Far more than a memoir, the book offers specific solutions to specific problems. Listeners learn how to identify and help a bullied child, how to distinguish between different types of bullying — what's innocuous and what's dangerous, why adult logic doesn't work with teenagers, new disciplinary methods, and much more.

Publishers Weekly

An entertainment industry publicist before becoming an antibullying crusader, Blanco (Please Stop Laughing at Me) was a victim of bullying from fifth grade through high school. For Blanco, bullying is a broad term-it's not "just the mean things you do, it's all the nice things you never do." For her, even the Columbine shootings were a result of students marginalized by bullying. She offers many stories of tearful children who have been the subject of abuse, and offers her own advice to thwart and/or deal with bullying, but in the end, she doesn't truly persuade readers that her remedies are effective. As an "Adult Survivor of Peer Abuse," her personal experience gives her all the insight she thinks she needs-it's only "clinical experts" who need theories and evidence ("there are clinical experts who might scoff at me for trying to give comfort and guidance"). She retells frequently the story of how she overcame-and forgave-her own bullies at her 20th high school reunion. Her former tormentors just seem to have decided to accept her after 20 years: a happy ending, but hardly a winning strategy for a troubled teen today. Blanco tells readers she has counseled countless students, victims and bullies alike, and while her stories are dramatic, neither the dialogue nor the instant results seem authentic. Readers looking for advice based on concrete fieldwork should turn to Wiseman's Queen Bees and Wannabes. (Mar.)

Copyright 2007 Reed Business Information

Dedication     ix
Acknowledgments     x
Introduction     xiv
The Wounded Healer     1
The Rebirth     15
Learning to Walk in Different Shoes     31
The Adult Survivor?     53
The Real Versus The Surreal     67
Out of Control     85
The Little General     101
It's Not Just Joking Around!     113
Revelations     139
A Twist of Fate     151
A Soldier Returns to the Place of Battle     183
Our Maiden Voyage     201
Everything Old Is New Again     237
An Unexpected Epiphany     265
The Toughest Audience of All     281
If They Would Have Known Then     303
The Moment of Truth     331
Desperate Parents     351
Slammed     379
The Wounded Healer Reconsiders     389
Dorothy's Rainbow     399
Publisher's Note     411
Addendum     413
Author Q&A     424
About Jodee Blanco     427
Glossary of Key Terms     430
Letters     433