Bella Thorne Speaks About Bullying

Bella Thorne, the young actress on the tween show “Shake It Up” recently spoke in an interview about her experience with bullying. You can watch what she had to say below.

 

A Lesson In Differences and Understanding (A Personal Story)

I received the below story from Rahajeng, who shares both her new understanding of being bullied by “friends” and also a history lesson for us all about the culture she comes from and her name. Based on her story, I looked up her name and, at least in Balinese it means “Good”, which is so apropos. I think that it is brave of Rahajeng to share these feelings in her writing. Her words are both honest and her sadness and anger come out as well. It makes me wonder whether she is made fun of due to her difference in culture as well as the other traits she points out. We should embrace differences as a way to build better understanding about each other. I hope when you read Rahajeng’s words, you will see in her writing this understanding as I feel I have too. ~Alan Eisenberg

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This is my personal story. Before, I only knew that bullying is actually some kind of abuse that uses violence, but not after I found this blog from my friend. And I just realized I’m also a victim of bullying. So here’s my story.

I’m a bit overweight. Not really fat but fatter than my friends. My close friends call me ”fatty” or anything else related to my body size. And I never take it serious because I know they’re just joking. And actually I’m a kind of girl that doesn’t really take simple things seriously. Sometimes I call myself  ”fatty” too, for fun.

So I went to college one day, out-of-town, and I found a friend at my dorm. She’s a close friend. I’ve suffered from high level of stress, and it’s a problem that I still can’t get rid of. Because of that, I’m so often got sick . I got sick really often. One day, this friend asked me about why I got sick really often. I said I’m tired, a lot of activities or something else. But I just said it because I don’t want to tell everybody that I’m stressed. I mean a real stress, not a joking funny stress that people often talk about. She said,”You’re fat, but you’re sick so often.” I don’t know what her goal was to say that but me, listening to what she said, broke my heart a lot. After that I entered my room and cried a lot. I mean, why does it matter if I’m fat? So fat people don’t get sick? The illness is not even because of my body size but my stress level. She doesn’t know the real thing but she talked like that. I’m just disappointed about why she would even take the topic about “fat” to relate it to my sickness. I’m really, really upset, I cried all night because of that.

And about this friend. She is thin, really thin. I sometimes have envy about that. I usually have dinner with her, and when I asked her, she often said,”I’m in diet. See? I’m fat.” “Umm I’m so fat.” She often said it in front of me. I don’t know if I’m being so sensitive, but listening to that word, in fact she’s a half of my weight, but she’s saying it in front of me if she’s fat. If she’s fat, so what does it makes me? A giant? The fact that she’s criticize her weight for being fat in front of “fat person” like me hurts a lot.  I cried about this too.

Another story is about my name. In the country I live, parents usually gave names with meaning which means a prayer, for their children to be. There’s a belief in local area that sometimes parents gave the child too-heavy name, which makes it so the child can’t “lift” the name and fulfill the hope and that they often get sick for a long time because of that. If that happens, usually when the child is about 1 or 2 years-old, the parent change the name to a “lighter” one. And my name’s meaning is like “honorable person”. Like I said first that I often got sick, and sometimes missed classes. And because my missing classes, my friends were worrying about me, and asking why I’m so often sick. So there is one friend, at college, while my classmates talked about my absents (in that time I wasn’t there because I was sick), she was giving a serious-like hunch. Like she’s the one that knows everything,”Her name is too heavy.” When I presented in my class in the other day, another friend told me that “one friend” said about my heavy name. At that time I was so angry…so so angry. She don’t even know anything about my sickness and she dare talk about me having a heavy name. It’s like saying that my parent gave my a wrong name, like criticizing  my parents! “Who are you anyway?!” And for her information, my sickness is nothing related to my name, at all. I mean why she’s being so know-everything-girl while she doesn’t! I cried every night for like a week just thinking about this. But thank God, because of this I know what kind of friend is she.

It’s so hurtful when people starts relating something unrelated to your sickness. It’s sickness, it’s not used to be fun. How do you feel when people make up the reason about you being sick?

Maybe anyone who read this may not feel the anger like me, except for you who feel the same thing, but at this time it’s what I feel. And it hurts, a lot. Please stop bullying!

~Rahajeng

A Fine Line Between Autism and Bullying (A Personal Story)

Lisa sent me her story, which has ties to how children that have to deal with autism and special education end up also having to deal with bullying. This has become a common theme in many of the media stories out there today. As more autistic children have been mainstreamed in education over the years, so have the effects of bullying them in our schools. Lisa bravely shares her experience here with us. ~Alan Eisenberg

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Growing up, I experienced much bullying that affects me to this day, even though much of what has happened is a blur. And bullying’s profound effect on me has not simply been because I was bullied, but why I as bullied and how it was handled by adults.

Growing up, it was not only my peers I felt bullied by but also adults, who could not understand my differences in learning and behavior and they often would call me lazy, unmotivated, spoiled, bad, unmotivated, immature, self-centered, doomed to failure, and much more. And when I was bullied, I felt that they sympathized with my bullies because I deserved to be bullied or I “got myself bullied” because of how I acted.

I can’t remember exactly when I began getting teased, which is how my bullying experiences started out. I spent two years in a church-based school, where my experiences included being called names, including the unprintable, as well as being teased because I walked differently and thought differently.  Because I was un-coordinated, I was always chosen last in team sports.Though this teasing and bullying was fairly bad, it was not the worst bullying I would experience. I do recall that once I was walking downstairs. A couple of girls mimicked my walking, snickering, “I’m hurt! I’m hurt!” Another time, as she sometimes did, one girl who was praised by our teacher for being a caring girl who wanted to help others, tracked me down in the halls. She hit me; I remember this particular girl managing to hit me or call me names, when she saw that no one was looking but she managed to be “teacher’s pet.”

During this time period when I was in my early teens, I recall two incidents when I was on the opposite side of bullying. One when I was in the church-based schools’ Cadette Girl Scout’s troop. One evening, during a meeting, because I wanted to be “cool” and “fit in,” I joined with other girls in teasing a girl who, like me, was different. I composed a poem that mocked her and I think I threw it out. But that is beside the point. I had participated in bullying. The second time when I was at an all-day camp and the girls were teasing a quiet girl who was sitting at a front table. Her camp counselor had scolded her and while I felt sorry for her because I couldn’t see that she had misbehaved or anything, I said nothing but succumbed to “the bystander effect.”

It was when I started middle school that the bullying grew vicious and grew really physical. My bullies seemed to know when to find me, whether it was walking to and from school or going from one class to another all over the building. My bullies took note of my differences and called me names like retard, stupid, ugly, slow, dummy, and more, including the unprintable. According to mom, though I don’t remember it, there were two girls who did take pity on me and would try, to little avail, to stop the unremitting bullying. My bullies were slick. They knew exactly where they could catch me, unawares and without any witnesses, and they would hit me, kick me, punch me and trip me as well as snatch my money and even my school books. This bullying was so intense and so frequent that the incidents are a blur and run together. I feared reporting it because I was afraid I would not be believed or because things would get worse.

One incident does stand out in my mind, when I was preparing to leave school and two girls pushed me, hit me, beat me, took my money, and snatched my books and threw them on the ground. I finally was able to go home and when my parents later learned about it, they took me to the police station and wanted action taken to hold the two girls accountable. But the cop said no to my parents, citing the girls’ bad home life and that he felt sorry for them. That was fine of him, but the message I got was that bullying was not a thing to be taken seriously because it was considered a part of growing up.

The reason bullying had such a lasting effect on me even to this day, is not so much the bullying itself but why I was bullied and how it was handled. Because of the circumstances of my conception and birth to my then-teenage mom and the manner of her delivery, I was born with a cluster of behavioral, learning  and neurological issues that I believe add up to undiagnosed autism. If the concept of the autism spectrum had been around in the 1960’s and 1970’s, I think my educational experiences and outcome would have been far different. As a child, I was diagnosed with mild cerebral palsy, epilepsy, emotional and behavior problems and, in adulthood, learning disabilities. Anyway, getting back to my bullying experiences in middle-school, they eventually attracted the attention of school authorities, who, according to mom, contacted her and told her I would not be able to return to public school because they could not protect me there.

The following Fall, at age 15, I found myself in special education. I did not really feel safer there, as I was a withdrawn girl placed with primarily aggressive peers. Growing up, I spent most of my school years in special class settings, but thanks to my severe bullying middle-school experiences, I spent the rest of my teen years in special education. As the setting was such that our deficits were emphasized at the expense of developing our strengths, seeing teachers and educators constantly tell me what was wrong with me, preach to me to “take responsibility for your actions,” to “learn to pay attention,” and to “conform to society,” coupled with all my bullying memories, including constant adult misunderstanding, just instilled in me a profound sense of a shame-based identity, guilt, fear, social anxiety, resentment and a deep sense of distrust of people in general. Having given birth to a daughter who is officially diagnosed with autism and who is high-functioning and currently on the school honor roll, has provided me with some sense of closure and self-understanding. However, I still feel the effects of my growing up years and whenever I experience any form of bullying, rejection, unfriendliness or even perceived slights as an adults, the feelings I grew up with surface and threaten to overwhelm me.

Even today,  whenever I hear one more story after another about children taking their lives because of the bullying they suffer and the way that it seems that bullying is taken seriously only AFTER these senseless “bullycides,” I experience not only sadness over these lives lost so tragically. I also feel outrage that bullying is seen only as a serious matter when such “bullycides” occur; I grow frustrated when I feel that others minimize my own bullying experiences and that of others among us adults who grew up before the digital age. Perhaps if bullying had been taken seriously all along, bullying would never have evolved into forms resulting in “bullycides” either because bullies have become more violent as well as because many of them have taken their dirty work to cyberspace where they can hide behind their computer screens. The effects of my past will probably always stay with me but if through my advocacy, I can help a few people, I feel it will be worth it.

Yes, the effects of my bullying experiences are permanent and I think that this is why I’m passionately motivated to advocate for all kinds of people, anyone experiencing injustice because they are being marginalized or discriminated against. Thankfully, though my daughter and her generation have more to deal with in this digital age, in the arena of bullying and some other issues, because this is the age of many new discoveries and progress and awareness, they have many more resources and supports to deal with it all.

~Lisa D.

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Lisa D. is a wife, mother, activist and advocate who considers herself a voice for anyone in need. Because of her own life experiences, she advocates frequently about autism, epilepsy, poverty, social and economic justice and religious freedom issues. She now maintains a blogspot as well as a Facebook page; these are an extension of her passions. Her blogspot can be found at http://ldesherl.blogspot.com/ and her Facebook page can be found at https://www.facebook.com/#!/ldesherl.

‘Tis the Season for Change

While not necessarily about bullying, I wanted to share this video this holiday season. Certainly, its theme shows that if we treat each other with kindness instead of being cruel, we can make a different in others lives and as this video shows, our own as well. Happy holidays to all, whatever you celebrate and I hope you enjoy this positive video production.

The Skinny Girl (A Personal Story)

Sometimes when you read a story about bullying, it seems like such a simple minor story and you ask yourself, “why is that person so affected by that incident”? Typically the answer is you really don’t know the whole story. Here is Kelsey’s story, which she bravely shares. She gives the back story of why this incident, while it seems minor, affected her so much. Kelsey brings up a great point about what the bullies don’t know about a person when they make fun of them and what that can cause. She also shares how a teacher, while probably thinking they were helping, actually caused more damage with their suggestion. I am dealing with this right now with one of my children, so understand her point here. Hopefully, with enough of these stories out there, we adults will learn to handle bullying situations a bit better. ~Alan Eisenberg

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The first thing I would like to say is I am glad I found this website because after what happened to me today, I felt like I needed to get my feelings and thoughts out somehow.

I have always been the skinny girl in school. I get looks, comments (usually not so nice ones), and I know people talk about me behind my back. I wish I could just get it into their heads that I do not have any type of disorder (psychologically or biologically) and this is just how I am. The teasing started in 8th grade when a teacher actually told one of my friends to talk to me about why I’m so skinny. It escalated in 9th grade when a girl who was obviously worried about her skinny looks would always ask me how much I weigh so she could make others realize that I was skinnier than her. Also in 9th grade, a boy that had always picked on me since he moved to our school called me out in class one day and said that I should eat more. he proceeded to eat a Reese’s cup and explained to me exactly how to eat so I could learn. I left the room crying and never feeling so horrible about myself in my entire life. No one understands me and only my close friends knew that there was really nothing wrong and I am just the way I am because that’s how God made me.

But the story that led me to this blog today made me feel much more worse than Charles and his Reese’s cup ever did. It snowed all day today so I decided to walk out to my car to start it up so I could leave right at 5. It was getting close to time and there were a few customers left, but a group of teenagers (a boy and 2 girls) had just got into their car and were backing out. I minded my own business, brushing the snow off of my car, when a girl stuck her head out of the back seat window and asked me what my name was. I kind of just ignored her because i didn’t know who she was and i figured she was with her friends and was just going to say something to make me looks stupid. But she called out and asked again. So I told her. and she called back and said “oh. Your name should be Anna. Anna Rexic” and they drove off. The only thing running through my mind at the time was how mad i was because they didn’t even know me. i had never seen them in my entire life. at this point i was shaking and as they drove by up the road i gave them a sign that was very anti-Christian, and of course, they all gave it back to me. If I could find them right now and apologize for that gesture, i would. There is no way I ever want to be anywhere near their level of horrible. I just shook. I was so upset. i went inside and cried as i told my boyfriend what had happened. I cried all the way home. And the entire time i was at home until my boyfriend came and picked me up. I cried for about 5 more minutes in his arms until I calmed down enough to explain to him that what they did was so low.

I honestly don’t know what these kids think is okay. How do they sleep at night? Don’t they know that people who actually do have these problems kill themselves over little things that happen like that? I told my boyfriend I could never imagine doing anything like that to someone. i would never want to hurt someone like that. the fact that I don’t have a disorder is not even relevant. They said something to me that could have harmed someone who was not psychologically stable. and they didn’t even think twice about it.

I just want everyone out there to know that any kind of bullying is not okay. People have problems behind closed doors that they may be hiding and you would never ever know. I’m almost thankful that they targeted me and not one of those people that are potentially unstable and suicidal. I know that I will eventually rub it off my shoulder because they will have their judgment day. Just remember: don’t ever do or say anything that you wouldn’t want anyone to do or say to you; how would it make you feel?

~Kelsey

Six Degrees of Separation No More

Being a child of the 70′s, sometimes I fall back on my old thinking, that there were six degrees of separation between us all and therefore, none of us are that easily found. I remember in the early 90′s, there was even a fun game we used to play called “six degrees of Kevin Bacon”, because the actor Kevin Bacon had been in so many movies in the 80′s and 90′s that you could pick any other actor and get to a Kevin Bacon movie in less than 6. Anyway, I digress. I am finding out more and more that there are only about 2 or maybe 3 degrees of separation between us, because the internet now, instead of others, makes it easy to find someone.

I bring this up because, once again, I was shocked to find that one of the people I wrote about in my blog found it and found their story. I have said many times that I never intended this little blog site to be read that widely and it was never there as a means to be found or for those who shared my experiences to read them. I guess I naively thought that it would always be anonymous and just a place to share my stories, the stories of others, and information on bullying.

So, it was quite shocking the other week for me to see one certain story I wrote start to get a lot of views and then comments started popping up on the story. The comments were from people who knew the other person in the story. Some of the comments were nice and others were more directed at me and a question of why did I feel the need to share these things. I fully admit to being in a bit of shock at that moment and then also spending a night contemplating the comments and the fact that the person I wrote about in the story must have found it and shared it. Out of all my personal stories, this was probably the one I didn’t want to have to revisit. Because this was my story of me as the bully.

If you have read the story, then you know that it is one about when I went to religious school, they didn’t know about the bullying that I experienced outside of there, so they treated me well. I, in turn, did not treat one boy well when we were 12 when I was there. I shared this experience to show that bullying isn’t always black and white and also that it could be that, when you are bullied, you may take it out on others, like in a cycle of violence. It was a minor story, but one I wanted to share to show both sides and as a cathartic release. With that done, I promptly put it behind me and moved on.

…Until the story was found by the other person the other week. Ironically, I later learned that they learned about my website at the 25th year High School Reunion in my childhood town. It seems my little site and me are known by some of the kids that I grew up with. Some had found it and told others at the High School reunion that I had a blog on and write about bullying that took place in Lexington, MA. Someone even referred to me as a bullying expert. I take that as a compliment, although my expertise is only in my own experience and the collective experience of others. Of course, the person who knew me and was in the story was told about this and became curious about what I wrote about.

See, it seems I was not alone in what happened to me in Lexington, MA. There are others that experienced heavy bullying there as well. So, this person went to my site, recalled when we knew each other, found their story and themselves in it, and then promptly put it up on their Facebook site, telling their friends they were the bullied of the kids that were bullied themselves.  Then their friends started commenting on my blog about knowing this person. And then I found out and I must admit that my first reaction was one of sadness again, for what I had done when I was 12 years old and for knowing this person also read about it and relived it again. Even though it was 31 years ago, I knew I needed to reach out and try to apologize.

I admit that I slept little that night. The next day I emailed the people who commented on the site and asked them how they found out and tried to get information on a way to contact the other person in the story. One of the people told me about Facebook and also gave me the information needed to contact the person in my story. I was very nervous about talking to him. It had been a long time and you never know what reaction you’ll get. My childhood confidence fears were all back. But this was an opportunity to have closure, maybe for both of us. So finally, the next day, I called him at his office. He picked up the phone, his name is David.

I said hi and told him who I was. I’m not sure if he was expecting the call, but my first reaction was that he was glad I called. When I first heard his voice again I could recognize it immediately. He and I had shared many  years together in religious school, so I remember him well. Memories flooded back to me in waves as he started to talk. He was immediately warm and positive. It set the mood for the rest of the conversation. Before I could get many words in, he told me about how he found out about the story. He told me about others from Lexington who also suffer from the long-term effects of bullying and that I was not alone. He told me about all that happened to him as well and how he dealt with it. While he didn’t recall my story as a major issue, he did also deal with cruel kids.

Finally, I got to say something as well. What I wanted to say was that I was sorry. Not just for the story shared, but in some way for his finding the story and having to read about the incident all over again. I don’t know if that’s strange, but for me, I just never expected to have it read and then to have to deal with the ramifications of that happening. But in the end, the closure, I hope, is good for all, including me. So I apologized, which he said wasn’t necessary and then we talked some more, and some more. We moved on and then, through this phone call started to rebuild a relationship. It’s hard right now to say where that will go, but we want to meet up at some point soon and continue the conversation.

He also allowed me to friend him in Facebook and see his original posts. I would say that took some courage on his part as well. Since he linked only to the story of me as the bully on my site and not the ones of me being bullied, it was interesting to see what his friends had to say, some about me. I was OK with all of it because, if I was one of David’s friends, I would have also been angry to find out about a time he was bullied. I would have defended my friends as well (as we all should). I consider his adding me to his Facebook the beginning of adding me back into his life and possibly moving time closer together to become friends again. While we live states apart, we can now talk again as if we were both in Lexington.

I made one final request of David before we hung up the phone. I asked him, since this story was about me as the bully, if he would share his perspective of the story from the other side. He agreed that he would like to do that. I think it would be great if he would and that shared experience was documented. Even though I didn’t expect it, his finding the story has led to some closure and hopefully a positive ending. I think, for me, the most fascinating part of this experience was to find out that I was discussed at the 25th High School Reunion and that bullying was a subject of discussion. It tells me that, maybe bullying was much bigger than me in Lexington (at least in the 70′s and 80′s) and that there are people who read this. Maybe even those who were the bullies that bullied me. Wouldn’t it be interesting if my phone rang one day and they called me to tell me they found the site and read the story about them…and that they were sorry too.

Author Karen Mueller Coombs Shares Her Story

I am honored to have award-winning author, Karen Mueller Coombs guest blog on my site. Ms. Coombs is a former elementary school teacher who knows first-hand what bullying is like. She shares her knowledge and experience in the blog below and in her book, Bully at Ambush Corner. I am truly honored to have her share her story with you here. ~Alan Eisenberg

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The words came unexpectedly, harsh and sneering. Mean words. Cutting words. As in a bad dream. But this wasn’t a dream. It was daytime. School time. Fifth grade. And the words were directed at me—by boys who I’d been in school with for two years. Boys I thought liked me. Boys I thought were my friends.

Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me? Ha! The words withered my confidence, stole my joy. They hurt more than sticks and stones. They hurt my heart. They hurt my soul.

“Who do you think you are?”

“You think you’re so smart.”

“Look at you. Wearing a brown coat and WHITE shoes!”

My shoes? They were picking on me because of my shoes? I was proud of those shoes. They were new and I’d been excited to wear them to school for the first time. After all, they were “white bucks,” the same shoes made popular by the singer Pat Boone, and I was the first in my school to get a pair. Now I wished I’d never heard of Pat Boone and his stupid shoes.

The day before, I had been accepted, popular, sought out by my fifth grade classmates. Now, it seemed as though a conspiracy had sprung up overnight among the boys. GET KAREN!

I attended a county school that drew students from miles around. Even so, the enrollment was small, likely fewer than two hundred, with only one fifth-grade class. It was impossible to fade into the background with so few classmates. And I didn’t want to. After all, I was smart. I was cute. And I was popular.

Other kids got picked on and taunted. Not me. I’d been known to throw a verbal jab or two, as I describe in my Bully at Ambush Corner blog entry Yuck! Cooties!, but I’d never been a target. Until now.

As the day passed and the taunting went on, rather mild in words, but stinging in tone, and shocking to the inexperienced 10-year-old me, I felt smaller and smaller. Recess was a nightmare, class time not much better. We were working on projects that sent me to the back of the room, where the boys could isolate me and hiss their biting remarks at me without the teacher overhearing. I prayed she’d notice and step in, but that didn’t happen. I became a bundle of nausea, anxiety, and confusion, longing for the day to end. I’d always been a tough kid, a tomboy. Now it took every bit of my strength to keep the boys from seeing how badly they hurt my feelings, to keep from bursting into tears.

Apparently I wasn’t much of an actor, because when school ended, one of the boys approached me. He was alone, but as I braced myself for one last volley, he simply looked down at his boots and said, “I’m sorry.” He was the boy whose mother had recently died. A boy who knew pain and had recognized mine, even as I stoically tried to hide it.

Naturally, I didn’t mention the bullying to my mother. For some reason I felt embarrassed by the day’s events, as though admitting I’d been picked on meant I couldn’t stand up for myself, meant I’d lost my standing with my classmates. Meant I was no longer the popular girl.

I dreaded going back to school the next day, dreaded what new taunts might be waiting. But it was over. As quickly as it started, the bullying ended.

I never learned why my classmates turned on me so suddenly and unexpectedly. Surely they weren’t jealous because I had new shoes. It had to be something more, some sort of pack mentality. Whatever the cause, it left me reeling.

The boys and I were in the same class for another three years before my family moved and I changed schools, long enough for youthful crushes to wax and wane, long enough for first kisses, and, unfortunately, long enough for them to have another go at me in a much more shocking fashion.

My experience in fifth grade wasn’t the first time I’d been affected by bullying, simply the first time I’d been the target of my classmates. Eventually, I’d use my encounters with a bully in first grade and with the boys in fifth grade as inspiration for my book, Bully at Ambush Corner, an e-book about bullying for middle grade readers. My blog, Bully at Ambush Corner, goes into detail on how I came to write the book.

Once upon a time—back in the 1500s—the word bully was a term of endearment, meaning sweetheart or good friend. By the late 1600s, it had come to mean a tyrannical coward who terrorized the weak, today’s current definition. Apparently not everything improves with time. But with rising public awareness and condemnation, perhaps bullying, like its original definition, will fade away. Here’s hoping.

~Karen Mueller Coombs
  Author of Bully at Ambush Corner

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Author’s Bio

On Karen’s bulletin board is a quote from Emerson: “May the work that you do be the play that you love.” It’s a perfect statement of the way she feels about writing—at times, it seems more like play than like work. She is an award-winning author of nine published books for children and young adults, including her latest, Bully at Ambush Corner, an e-book for middle grade readers.

Although born in Wisconsin, Karen grew up in the Northern Alberta town of Grande Prairie, where the Aurora Borealis flickered and shimmered across the night sky. The winters were long and cold, so cold her nostrils stuck together when she breathed too deeply, so cold her legs turned blue if she were foolish enough to go outside without warm stockings or pants, so cold she could hear the ice on the slough snapping and popping as she lay in bed at night. Winter days were short. It was dark when she left for school in the morning and dark when she came home. No matter how cold, she ice skated and played hockey, often by moonlight. When she was older, Karen curled, her favorite winter sport. She wishes curling had been an Olympic sport when she was younger, because she would have loved to try out for the Olympic team.

In the summer, the sun rose very early and darkness didn’t arrive until nearly midnight. Days seemed endless, wonderful for a child who loved to wander the countryside, either on foot or by horseback. And both the long nights of winter and the long days of summer were perfect for a child addicted to reading.

After graduating from high school in Grande Prairie, Karen attended the University of Alberta, first in Calgary and later in Edmonton. She taught first grade for a few years, then studied journalism at the University of Utah. There, a class in writing for children unearthed her passion.

Now living in Southern California, Karen is thrilled that she can ice curl in a local league and play golf when she isn’t reading and working at “the play that [she] loves”—writing.

For more information about Karen, go to her website at www.karencoombs.com or check out her blog, Bully at Ambush Corner.