Book Club assignment
Please stop laughing at me
Summary
Please stop laughing at me is a book about enduring and beating bullying. The book follows the main character Jodee Blanco as she goes through middle and high school being bullied. The book also explains her emotions about every situation that happened, and how she dealt with them. This book truly explains the effects of the “harmless jokes” that are played on thousands of people every day. The book is very inspirational to middle school and high school students, but it also has helped advisors to gain information on how to defeat the serious issue of bullying.
Character analysis
The main character in the book is Jodee Blanco, who is a girl going through school being bullied. Throughout the book, all that Jodee wants is to be accepted and considered "cool". Jodee is very smart but lonely due to the bullying that she gets at school. Her mom is her biggest supporter, along with her dad and her grandfather. "I can't wait for my mom to see." pg. 143
Conflict/Resolution
The conflict in my book is defiantly character vs character, because the conflict is bullying. In some parts of the book though, the conflict could be considered character vs self because Jodee wanted to kill herself. Jodee ended up solving the solution by moving multiple times, and going to her high school reunion. " My stomach was in knots that night, too. But I forced myself to go." pg. 255
Theme
In the book Please Stop Laughing at me, I believe that there are several themes that you could use. Overall, I believe that the main theme of the book is that you can take more punishment then you think. I believe this because Jodee had to endure all of the bullying for multiple years, and even thought about killing herself but never did. Jodee's story is all about endurance and self determination to succeed.
Textual Evidence
I think that the most powerful part of the book was when she was suicidal, because it was her fight through her darkest times. I think that this section was important because it showed her facing her greatest fears and succeeding.
Book Review
Overall, I would give Please Stop Laughing at me 2 stars, because of several reasons. The main reason I rated it so low was because most of the book was the same stuff over and over, and when it finally got somewhere it fizzled out with a very boring ending. For a majority of the book I felt that it was actually a pretty decent book, but failed on a few key aspects. The book was really good at grabbing my attention, but wasn't able to keep it.
Jodee Blanco - Please Stop Laughing at Me