Book Review: Bully By Patricia Polacco

Bully by Patricia Polacco, is centered on the lives of two friends named Lyla and Jamie and Gage the mean popular girl who taunts them. Lyla and Jamie both meet on the first day of school and immediately hit it off. Then Lyla makes the cheerleading squad and things begin to suddenly change. The most popular girl in her grade then invites Lyla, to join her clique. Overnight, Lyla is popular and now belongs to the group everyone wishes to belong to. Lyla begins to realize, these so called new friends are vicious bullies and even come after her best friend Jamie on Facebook. Lyla then decides, she wants nothing to do with them. The only problem now is that no one ever dumps the clique and now they are out for revenge. Immediately the whole school turns on Lyla because they suspect she has cheated on a state test, due to her having the highest grade in her class. The popular clique continuously harasses Lyla in school and cyber bully her through social media networks. Eventually Lyla’s name is cleared because of evidence linking the popular clique to having committed the foul act. Although, the problem is resolved, Lyla still questions whether or not she wants to go back to school for the following year. Patricia Polacco, originally born Patricia Ann Barber, was born on July 11, 1944. She …show more content…
Polacco did not learn to read until she was 14 years old, due to a disability called Dyslexia. She has stated in her website that she was bullied as a child due to her disability. Since Polacco herself was bullied, she has first hand experience to just how cruel children can be to one another. Since she dealt with such hardship as a child and now having the ability to touch the lives of millions with her stories, I believe Polacco wrote bully to help kids see how bullying negatively affects their peers. In turn, Polacco was able to use her words, to get such a powerful message