Abstract :
Though portrayals of bullying in children’s books stretch back to Victorian
public school stories, this article sees a new subgenre about bullying in young
adult novels emerging in the post-Columbine years. Selected works by Jerry Spinelli,
Walter Dean Myers, Jaime Adoff, Carol Plum-Ucci and Rita Williams-Garcia
are examined, although the article begins by looking at a precursor of this subgenre,
Robert Cormier’s classic The Chocolate War. In this subgenre, it is argued that
bullying is not presented as dysfunctional adolescent behavior, but as a tool for
addressing issues of difference and discrimination on the grounds of race, class,
sexual orientation or personality; issues that filter into adolescent culture. High
schools are thus portrayed as totalitarian microcosms where bullying functions as a
means of social control, curbing deviance from masculine, heterosexual, middleclass
and white norms. The narrative techniques and themes of these books—around
homophobia, jock culture, rampage shootings and girl-on–girl violence—will be
examined.
