Title: Bitopia
Author: Ari Magnusson
ISBN: 978-0984861057
Published February 27, 2012
Suggested Retail: $9.99
Paperback, 240 pages. Also available on eBook.
Publisher: Olivander Press
Title: Understanding Bullying and Ways to Make It Stop! The Bitopia Discussion Guide Grades 5-8
Author: Ari Magnusson
ISBN-13: 978-0984861088
Published November 7, 2012
Suggested Retail: $14.99
Paperback, 120 pages. Also available on eBook.
Publisher: Olivander Press
Review:
Aren’t these some horrible facts?
- One in seven students from grades K-12 are either bullies or victims of bullying.
- An estimated 160,000 children miss school every day because they fear attack or intimidation by bullies.
- Victims of bullying are 2 to 9 times more likely to consider suicide than students who are not bullied
Source: http://www.dosomething.org/tipsandtools/11-more-facts-about-bullying
What’s even worse is that the age of onset for bullying is between three and four years of age!
I remember being verbally bullied in 5th or 6th grade by a classmate and was picked on for my weight. It wasn’t until two of the more popular girls in my class stood up to her and told her to quit one day when we were in the school bathrooms that she finally stopped. She had a battle with weight, herself, and I suppose in some way, the words she said and how I reacted made her feel better.
Ari Magnusson is a 1st time novelist with Bitopia and a subject of bullying himself, which was during his first year of high school. Bitopia features a boy named Stewart who being a new kid in school, was tormented by three boys. One day, they were following him home and he managed to escape down a storm drain.
Stewart then gets lost in a maze of pipes and ends up in a mystical place that he later learns is named Bitopia. He befriends a young girl named Cora, who brings him to a city behind a large stone wall, which is inhabited completely by children. The lush, green landscape beyond the great wall is not safe with skeleton-like creators called Venators lurking outside to do the residents harm. The Venators work to penetrate the wall that forces Cora and Stewart unfortunately out beyond the protective wall of the city to explore and seek a means to defeat them.
Bitopia addresses an important factor with bullying – fear. This book is recommend for 8 and above. I think young readers would appreciate this vivid tale of action and suspense that shares a way to overcome bullying. I think adults would enjoy it too.
I am not a teacher, but Understanding Bullying and Ways to Make It STOP! features illustrations and some great questions to reinforce the information presented. It can go with actually reading Bitopia or just as the curriculum guide to use with an anti-bullying program, with the important cyber bullying statistics going on now a days we need to make it stop.
The topics covered in Understanding Bullying and Ways to Make It STOP! are:
- The Who, What, Where, Why, and How of Bullying
- Social media and bullying
- Relationship conflict and conflict resolution
- Bullying definitions and key concepts
I found the curriculum guide useful to read as a parent and I think a school official could certainly benefit from this title too.
About the Author:
Ari Magnusson was born in New York but grew up on a farm in rural central Pennsylvania and spent his summers in a cabin on a river in upstate New York, settings that influence his writing, including many of the scenes in the land of Bitopia. Ari attended Dickinson College, majoring in history and music. After college he moved to Boston, where he studied fiction and journalism at the Harvard Extension School and at Grub Street. In his first year of high school, Ari was bullied and endured what felt like an eternity of fear, anxiety, and dread until the day a bystander intervened. Even better, he witnessed a technique used by the bystander that rendered the aggressor’s bullying behavior ineffective. From that day on, Ari put the technique into practice and was never bullied again. He is a passionate proponent of educating youth on bullying and individual empowerment techniques.
Disclosure: I received a copy of these books to create this review. No other compensation was received. The thoughts and feelings expressed are my own.
