For instance, check this out; The Eighteenth Emergency by Betsy Byars. Many, many years ago I followed a reading of this story for a week on BBC1 on the television show Jackanory, a children's programme that involved some one reading a book over the course of five days. It was usually an actor or some well known television personalities stretching themselves( the word "celebrity" had some actual meaning then I suppose..) as they performed the story. I was really enjoying this particular story as it involved a boy called Mouse who seemed to spend every minute of his day in the outside world ducking a school bully called Hammerman.
I empathised. I could have turned dodging bullies into an Olympic sport. I can imagine it too, not being able to climb the podium because a horde of bullies want to hang me out a window by my ankles or dump me in the school sandpit. Both of which experiences I survived. Although beaches have an unusual resonance for me as does being hung upside down over perilous heights.
This was in the seventies. A decade from the tail end of another century from which I sprung. Only for whatever reason I missed the last part. I was eleven years old and I never found out how it ended, how Mouse dealt with his bully..Until now that is. The copy of this Puffin paperback seemed to wave to me with its delightful Quentin Blake cover and I thought;"At last, after forty four years I will learn how to stand up to a bully.
And you can too.
Although you will have to read the book.
Do not leave it as long as I did though.
