Hot Issues, Cool Choices: Facing Bullies, Peer Pressure, Popularity, and Put-downs
Hot Issues, Cool Choices: Facing Bullies, Peer Pressure, Popularity, and Put-downs
Did you know that there are kids out there who don t even want to get out of bed in the morning because they know what going to school means for them?
being teased and taunted … being excluded and rejected … being afraid that you’re going to be assaulted and possibly hurt… Sometimes it can even mean that you just can’t hang in there any longer, so you give up and take your own life.
If you are one of the cool kids at school, this book is for you.
But if you’re not one of the cool kids, this book is especially for you.
Emerson Elementary isn’t a real school, but it could be your elementary school. And the students at Emerson aren’t real kids, but the problems they face are real, and so are the choices they make.
The Golden Rule is an old rule, but it’s still a good rule to live by, and after reading this book, you may just possibly become a kinder, more compassionate human being, someone who treats others the way you want them to treat you.
So come along and join the students at Emerson Elementary and help them make some cool choices!
User Ratings and Reviews
4 Stars Sticks are to Stones as Text Messaging is to Losing Face(book)
In “Hot Issues, Cool Choices,” retired clinical psychologist Sandra McLeod Humphrey successfully focuses on serious elementary/lower school social issues from the vantage point of the children who face and live through them. In a two or three page vignette narrated by the troubled child, a specific dilemma is presented to the reader in the vernacular of today’s post MTV generation equipped with newer and more technically competent means of character assassinating and morale deteriorating via text messaging and Internet networking designed to bully and coerce on a cyber level.
It’s a brave, new, albeit scary world where the old cliché about not wanting to go back and do any of it over again rings with the sincere clarity of those of us who have lived through it and are glad its done. Indeed the old-fashioned bullying that most of us experienced at least once or twice in our lifetimes exists but has morphed like the flu virus to attack our younger generations in ways that we, as creators of the new frontier in technology, could not even imagine. The old days of whispering behind some poor unsuspecting victim’s back, passing malicious notes or playing `telephone’ are over, replaced by Internet “flogs” and “hexed” messages with which even those supposedly stable adults would have trouble coping. Imagine the damage to a child’s delicate psyche. Information traveling around the world at light speed just means that everyone is privy to any child’s worst moments almost as quickly as the spread event occurs. Damaging on a cyber level. Hurt cloned to infinite power.
Humphrey does her best to present the problems that plague this generation in a manner in and with which all generations can follow and empathize. Her narratives are entertaining, defining pivotal growth moments in a child’s development where the choices made and actions taken will shape how the burgeoning adult will interact in his/her world. The child’s voice clearly expresses the faced dilemma, but the resolution is left for the reader in a series of questions designed for discussion that follow each of the situations. The targeted elementary school audience is asked to trade places with either the narrator or the child focused upon in the narrator’s issue with the goal of getting out in the open emotions and expressions of desire or pain that left unsaid or ignored can fester into deep seated problems that undermine and even stunt further development that produce a happily balanced adult.
When I read many of the scenarios, sadly, I could pigeonhole some of my own contemporaries who still utilize bullying techniques of ridicule, badgering and Achille’s Heel detection to undermine and control their employees and yes, even their spouses. Rest assured, if the issues so poignantly detailed in this book are not addressed, they continue to manifest in the mind and psyche of even a mature adult. The result: damaged, unhappy and unhealthy people.
With an obvious care for her target audience, Humphrey encourages discussion on a subject that creates frustration and anger in children, parents, and adults subjugated by bullying during their own developing years. Only through shared self-analysis can we shift from the negativity such experiences and remembrances bring to our everyday moments. It is in our own training that we can overcome the debilitating slaughter of our own individual strengths. “Hot Issues Cool Choices” provides a good springboard for animated discussion that propagates the sobering knowledge that bullying happens to everyone and can only be universally combated through openness, role reversal, an ultimate willingness for understanding and respect for diversity.
Bottom line? Sandra McLeod Humphrey presents a small easy-to-read book of short narratives told in the voices of a group of students in the same elementary school. Each story presents a situation where a child is forced to make a decision that puts his or her social survival on the line. The issues that Humphrey depicts universally outline typical bullying scenarios with the added accoutrement of cyber-tools such as cell phones and the Internet which provide more wide and faster spread gossip and mud slinging that hurt and damage far more that the hackneyed sticks and stones of this current generation’s parents and grandparents. Humphrey’s intent is to open such scenarios to discussion with questions and suggestions at the end of each narrative that promote the idea of trading places with those in the tale to act out different solutions to the spotlighted dilemma. As we all know some bullies and their victims grow up to be older bullies and their older victims–both of which are unhealthy needy examples of unsatisfied lives not well lived. Recommended to anyone who has tasted the experiences of peer pressure, harassment and manipulation that result in inferiority complexes, anger and frustration.
Diana Faillace Von Behren
“reneofc”
5 Stars This book was a great learning book!
Every child should read this book. It doesn’t matter what side of the story you would be on. Once I started reading it I didn’t stop until I was finished with the whole book. I think there is a lot of children that could learn from this book. It might even possibly save someones life. It teaches how to deal with bullying situations.
I highly recommend this book!
Peggy Headings
(Author of The Adventures of the Muffin Family)
5 Stars Issues for youth
Hot Issues, Cool Choices: Facing Bullies, Peer Pressure, Popularity, and Put-Downs is filled with short stories that 10-15 year olds will relate to. The stories are easy to read and very interesting. Each scenario is followed by a few questions to ponder on and a Trading Places question. The scenarios are situations students face every day.
Hot Issues, Cool Choices: Facing Bullies, Peer Pressure, Popularity, and Put-Downs is well written. Humphrey’s style is perfect for students. They will find the stories interesting and thought provoking. Sandra McLeod Humphrey brings wisdom and expertise to her book Hot Issues, Cool Choices: Facing Bullies, Peer Pressure, Popularity, and Put-Downs. MS Humphrey is a retired clinical psychologist. She worked closely with children for over 35 years.
5 Stars Negotiating the adolescent minefields
Growing up is tough. You got peer pressure, the need to be accepted and fit in. You got the social strata at school, there’s the cool group, the geeky group, the outsiders, the bullies, the kid who gets ridiculed, and you have the spectre of teen suicide, dealing with the fallout of the first relationship, being propositioned with drugs.
Inevitably, one gets their behavioral cues from others, who may not really be the best influences.
So, how does one negotiate one’s way through this potential minefield without getting blown to smithereens.
Hot issues, cool choices explores all these potential dilemmas in the form of metaphors. They are well imagined, beautifully described, and quite entertaining. Inevitably, one will recognise the characters, and identify, and so I recommend this book, what would you do for example if the cool people wanted you to be in their group, but only because they are too lazy to do their own homework, and want you to do it for them, or they tell you who you can and cannot associate with.
As you get further into the book, it’s easy to imagine a teacher using stories from this book in class, and what I particularly like about this book is that the author does not tell you what to think, merely inviting one to explore the dilemmas such situations present, and truly come up with one’s own ideas of what to do.
It ’s easy to imagine a group of kids or teens, having a laugh reading this book, and exploring the scenarios, then to find themselves making better decisions. The more options one has in how consider a situation the better the their response will be, and the wiser the action.
In that respect it’s quite a brilliant book, and quite rightly it has gained kudos from many quarters, including winning a Mom’s Choice Award. My wish for this this book is that it be available in everyschool, and read by every adolescent, an ambitious idea, yes, that’s how important I think this book is. If that’s not possible, at least if someone were to buy this book right now, that would be a good start.
I wonder if you found this helpful.
5 Stars A good conversation starter
“Hot Issues, Cool Choices” is a collection of 26 short stories (about four pages) for children, written in first person in a chatty child’s voice. Each story illustrates a moral dilemma, sometimes from the point of view of the antagonist. Following the stories are a series of questions to ponder.
I have a five and eight year old and we read a couple of stories at a time. It facilitates some very good discussions and gives me insight into their world. I thought it might beyond comprehension for my kindergartener, but she surprised me with her depth of understanding.
I like that the stories are short and keep the children’s attention. It does require cooperation of the children, though. Older children might just read it and think the issues over themselves, but I do think it’s better to use it to help guide them. After all, my children sometimes sided with the antagonists.
* My thanks to Sandra Humphrey for providing me the book for review.
Filed under: Parenting Advice Book Reviews