Useful ideas about dealing with bullies, wrapped in a loving hug.
A debut guide advises adults who want to help children eliminate bullying.
In his book, Leigh-Smith writes that when children come to him “saying that they have a bully in their life, the first thing that I do is congratulate them.” This upbeat, brains-over-brawn approach urges children to think of getting bullied as a challenging opportunity for personal improvement and growth, rather than as a negative encounter. This manual details 28 concepts and 20 hands-on strategies for extinguishing a bully’s fire, providing tips on how to ignore or deflect taunts. Part I highlights concepts—such as the different types of bullying—and lays the foundation for helping children understand their own self-worth. Confident kids with healthy self-esteem shed the “victim mentality,” asserts the author, and are less likely to be targets. Part II offers easy activities for building a child’s self-esteem. For example, kids can draw a “Dream Board” of desired life goals to help visualize their futures. According to the author, a child with an anti-bullying team of adults and a larger circle of friends is also less likely to attract bullies. Part III explores how youngsters can develop positive relationships with others. This gentle, thoughtful, and amicable manual sometimes delivers eyebrow-raising advice: telling a small child who has been pounded by a big kid to be empathetic with the perpetrator seems more like fantasy and less like the real world. But the author does present several practical points, including how to cope with cyber-bullies and document persistent harassment. For the novice, some of the mental tips are refreshingly new; for example, Leigh-Smith recommends that a child never stand still when confronted by a bully, as even slight shifts of the body can keep the mind from “freezing.” Embellished with debut illustrator Niebler’s cute black-and-white drawings, the pleasant, readable chapters flow easily and end with key concepts. Leigh-Smith’s conversational stories and sayings are memorable; for example, kids are urged to hold friends like water in their palms, instead of becoming too clingy. When all else fails, the author recommends physical self-defense (he is partial to martial arts) to escape a foe as quickly as possible.
Useful ideas about dealing with bullies, wrapped in a loving hug.Pub Date: Sept. 26, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-4602-9162-7
Page Count: -
Publisher: FriesenPress
Review Posted Online: Dec. 6, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.
The legendary booze-addled metal rocker turned reality-TV star comes clean in his tell-all autobiography.
Although brought up in the bleak British factory town of Aston, John “Ozzy” Osbourne’s tragicomic rags-to-riches tale is somehow quintessentially American. It’s an epic dream/nightmare that takes him from Winson Green prison in 1966 to a presidential dinner with George W. Bush in 2004. Tracing his adult life from petty thief and slaughterhouse worker to rock star, Osbourne’s first-person slang-and-expletive-driven style comes off like he’s casually relating his story while knocking back pints at the pub. “What you read here,” he writes, “is what dribbled out of the jelly I call my brain when I asked it for my life story.” During the late 1960s his transformation from inept shoplifter to notorious Black Sabbath frontman was unlikely enough. In fact, the band got its first paying gigs by waiting outside concert venues hoping the regularly scheduled act wouldn’t show. After a few years, Osbourne and his bandmates were touring America and becoming millionaires from their riff-heavy doom music. As expected, with success came personal excess and inevitable alienation from the other members of the group. But as a solo performer, Osbourne’s predilection for guns, drink, drugs, near-death experiences, cruelty to animals and relieving himself in public soon became the stuff of legend. His most infamous exploits—biting the head off a bat and accidentally urinating on the Alamo—are addressed, but they seem tame compared to other dark moments of his checkered past: nearly killing his wife Sharon during an alcohol-induced blackout, waking up after a bender in the middle of a busy highway, burning down his backyard, etc. Osbourne is confessional to a fault, jeopardizing his demonic-rocker reputation with glib remarks about his love for Paul McCartney and Robin Williams. The most distinguishing feature of the book is the staggering chapter-by-chapter accumulation of drunken mishaps, bodily dysfunctions and drug-induced mayhem over a 40-plus-year career—a résumé of anti-social atrocities comparable to any of rock ’n’ roll’s most reckless outlaws.
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.Pub Date: Jan. 25, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-446-56989-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2009
IN THE NEWS
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
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