at the gorgeous Rashid between classes. And when it’s time for ‘The Talk’ in sex education, Veena is one of the few for whom it’s all genuinely news.
Effortlessly clever, but lacking in the street wisdom that could come along with motherly advice, Veena decides she has to tackle the problem of her flat chest herself – and asks her best friend, Unita, to come shopping with her. When they find the answer – an affordable, padded bra – there’s still the problem of when to start wearing it. How do you go from being ‘flat as a pancake’ to needing a bra overnight? Veena’s first attempts to put the bra on in a toilet cubicle at school are hilarious, and she ends up working out a mathematical equation for how to do up the hooks behind her back. When she suddenly erupts in terrible boils, she assumes it must be an allergy to the socks she’s stuffing in, or the bra itself – and confesses all to her mother. It turns out to be chicken pox (see: chicken pox).
Veena’s bra-related torments and her gradual realisation that there are boys other than Rashid who might appreciate her for more than her sock-magnified curves will help teens relax about whether or not they get the underwiring right.
SEE ALSO: embarrassment • flat-chested, being
broken limb
SEE: bed, having to stay in • pain, being in
brother, having a
SEE: sibling rivalry • sibling, having to look after a little
bruises, cuts and
Keep a copy of this in the medicine cabinet, along with the plasters, Savlon and Wasp-Eze. The fetchingly drawn story of a little girl whose grown-ups buy her a nurse’s outfit and a first-aid kit for her birthday (‘You can call me Nurse Clementine from now on!’), it’ll provide an excellent distraction while you clean and disinfect the wound. Clementine’s approach to on-the-spot care is to wrap the hurting part copiously in bandages, adding a firm instruction to keep them on for a week. When there’s no one left in the family requiring treatment, she wonders what on earth to do with herself. And then, thankfully, her brother gets stuck up a tree . . . The pen and wash illustrations – majoring in cream, peach and the gentlest of apple greens – are as soothing to the eye as is the sight of a top-to-toe bandaged little brother to Nurse Clementine at the end.
SEE ALSO: cheering up, needing • pain, being in
bullied, being
Being bullied is a grim ordeal and one which every grown-up hopes their child will be spared. If it does happen, it’s helpful to have some stories to hand which offer practical solutions as well as solace. One captures the complex group dynamics involved in bullying with striking clarity by casting splodges of colour as the characters, set against spanking white spreads. ‘Blue’ is quiet – not outgoing like orange, or regal like purple, or sunny like yellow; and Red, a ‘hot head’, likes to pick on Blue. When Red taunts Blue, Red gets bigger; and though sometimes the other colours comfort Blue, telling him what a nice colour he is, they don’t ever dare say it in front of Red . . . It’s hard to triumph over a bully by yourself, and how Red is brought into line by the power of the group provides an inspiring model. Read it to the bullied, to those on the sidelines, and also to the bully themselves. After all, what Red really wants is a friend, just like everyone else.
A bully can often work their way into a position of power without anyone noticing. If this happens in a classroom, share It Was a Dark and Stormy Night. A bunch of moustachioed brigands have kidnapped eight-year-old Antonio and carried him off to a secret cave. There they demand he tell them a story – being, actually, a bunch of overgrown kids. Brave Antonio takes a big breath and launches in with ‘Once upon a time’, but he hasn’t got much further before the brigands interrupt with their own ideas of what should happen next – none more so than the Big Chief himself, who wants to be the hero and sulks when he’s not. The brigands know better than to argue with the Big Chief and they let him have his way. But when Antonio gets to the bit where the brigands share the treasure out equally among themselves, and the outraged chief insists that he would take all the treasure himself, they begin to shuffle uncomfortably. Never has the unfairness of their situation been pointed out to them so clearly. Antonio soon has them turning on their chief for his domineering, bullying ways, upsetting the stewpot in all the commotion. Get a discussion going about how sometimes it takes an outsider – or the right story – to overthrow the narcissistic bully in a group.
The misery of being ostracised by a gang is captured with great sensitivity in the Canadian graphic novel Jane, the Fox and Me. Teenager Hélène is persecuted by the hip clique at her Montreal school. ‘She smells like BO,’ they write on the washroom door. No one will sit beside her on the bus, and though her mother stays up all night making her a new dress (last year’s fashion, alas) Hélène finds she can’t bring herself to confide in her. When a school trip is announced, everyone is thrilled. But for Hélène the idea of being cooped up with ‘forty kids . . . not one of them a friend’ is pure torture.
Sensibly, Hélène escapes into a book at camp – Jane Eyre – where she finds another lonely girl, but one who grows up ‘clever, slender and wise’ nonetheless. When Jane finds Mr Rochester (‘how wonderful, how impossible’, thinks Hélène, wise to easy romanticism), only to lose him again, Hélène is about to tear up the book in despair. But just then a dark-haired girl she’s never noticed before walks into her tent – and changes everything. It’s only when colour starts to splash the pages that we realise how monotone Hélène’s world has been until now; and how quickly joy, when it sees its chance, rushes in. A fine fictional example of bibliotherapy at work, this gem of a book is the ideal cure for a teen getting back on the road once bullying has come to light.
SEE ALSO: anger • anxiety • good at anything, feeling like you’re no • heard, not feeling • loneliness • loser, feeling like a • mistake, frightened about making a • nightmares • parents who can’t talk about emotions, having • role model, in need of a positive • run away, urge to • sadness • stand up for yourself, not feeling able to • self-harm • scared, being • sleep, unable to get to • stuck • suicidal thoughts • trusting, being too • worrying • wrong, everything’s going
bully, being a
Many things can make a child into a bully, but only two things can really cure them: learning to see things from the point of view of their victim, and understanding why they might feel the impulse to be
