A book can help with
For the child who’s dreading the walk into school.
Few things wind a parent up like knowing your child is being picked on and not being able to fix it for them. And children often keep it to themselves, out of shame, or a fear it’ll only get worse, so you’re left piecing it together from a quiet mood or a sudden ache on a school morning.
A book can open the door. A story about a child going through the same thing gives yours a way to raise it without having to find the words cold, and it shows them two things that matter: that it isn’t their fault, and that it can be told and it can get better. Some of these are for the bullied child, and some help any child see it from the outside.
Here’s what I’d reach for. Find your child’s age and start there.
The first unkindnesses
At this age it’s teasing, being left out, a name that stings. These help a young child name it as wrong, and know that kindness is the thing to reach for.
Chrysanthemum loves her long, splendid name until she starts school and the others tease her for it, and her happy world wobbles, until a kind teacher turns it all around. Henkes is perfect on how much a small cruelty can hurt, and on how much one kind grown-up can mend. A gentle, reassuring first book on being teased.
or on Bookshop.org
A little girl dreads school because of a classmate who’s unkind, until she finds the courage to speak up and the strength that was in her all along. Written by Nadiya Hussain, it’s warm and encouraging, and it gives a young child both the feeling and the words for it. Good for building a bit of backbone gently.
or on Bookshop.org
When it gets harder
By now bullying can be sharper and more hidden, and a fuller story helps a child feel less alone and see a way through.
Using mud as its picture for how being picked on makes you feel, this follows a child who becomes a target and shows, plainly and kindly, how bullying works and how the muck can be washed off. It’s honest about the hurt without ever being frightening, which is a hard balance to strike. A good one to read together and talk around.
or on Bookshop.org
A group of friends befriend Ahmet, a refugee boy who’s new and picked on, and set out to help him, in a story about kindness, courage and standing up for someone. It won several prizes, and it turns the focus outward, to what a child can do when they see someone else being treated badly. Heartwarming and quietly powerful.
or on Bookshop.org
Seeing every side
Older children can take a proper novel that looks at bullying from more than one angle: the bullied, the onlooker, even the bully.
Auggie has a facial difference and is starting mainstream school for the first time, and the story is told from many sides: his own, his classmates’, even those who are unkind. It’s become a modern classic because it makes kindness feel like the brave, interesting choice rather than the dull one. A book that genuinely changes how a child sees the playground.
or on Bookshop.org
This one is told by the bully, a boy who’s used to being the one making trouble, until a chance to do something good starts to change him. Seeing it from that side is unusual and valuable, because it lets a child understand that people who are unkind are often carrying something themselves. Funny, and quietly redemptive.
or on Bookshop.org
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Something to do together
A gentle page for working out what’s happening, who feels safe to tell, and the words to use, so speaking up feels less daunting. I’m making it now, and it will live here soon.
The one thing every child being bullied needs to hear is that it isn’t their fault and it doesn’t have to be borne in silence. These books say it for you, and they open the conversation you might not know how to start.
So keep the door open, take what they tell you seriously, and loop in their teacher, since schools can do a great deal once they know. And keep reminding them, in as many ways as you can, that the fault lies with the unkindness, never with them.
For you, the grown-up
There’s a companion page for grown-ups over on the main Book Quote Therapy library, with books for adults who were bullied, or are being bullied now.
Read the grown-up version →These pages are written for the grown-ups looking after a child: parents, teachers and carers. A good book can sit beside a worried child, though it never stands in for a real conversation, or for proper support when something feels too big to carry alone.