Title: "The Bully Book"
Author:Eric Kahn Gale, Nick Lang, and Matt Lang
Publisher:Publish Green
Price: $9.99
From the creative team that brought to the Internet "A Very Potter Musical," "A Very Potter Sequel," and "Starship" comes a small theatre troupe's first foray into the world of writing and publishing. The theatre troupe, Starkid Productions, is "best described as an ensemble of writers, actors, directors, designers, producers, and other goof-offs. Blending live performance with the accessibility of the internet, Starkid has taken the long-revered art of parody and fumblingly marched forward with it into the 21st century," according to their website, www.teamstarkid.com. They released their first musical, "A Very Potter Musical" on Youtube in the summer of 2009, and within days, the musical had garnered over a million views.
"The Bully Book," written by Eric Kahn Gale of Starkid Productions, is an accurate piece of insight into the fifth grade, and follows a fifth grader, Eric Haskins, though his encounters with the urban legend of the existence of a book which contains instructions of how to be a bully. The book kicks off with Eric Haskins' best friend, Donovan, blowing Eric off to befriend Adrian Noble, the tallest child in the class of fifth graders, and a boy who Eric calls "Jason Crazy-Pants" for his love of karate. This action by Eric's former best friend quickly kicks the book off, and the bullying of Eric quickly escalates as Adrian, Donovan, and Jason turn the rest of the class against Eric, including the girl who Eric has a crush on, Melody Miller. According to the urban legend of the Bully Book, a devious 10-year-old wrote a manifesto instructing its readers on the art of gaining power within the school and dictates the selection of a "Grunt," someone who is classified as the "lowest of the low" within the hierarchy of the school. When Eric learns of the "Grunt," he goes on a journey to discover the specifications of one becoming the "Grunt" so that he can change himself so that he does not become the "Grunt". Any bullying that Eric can be spared is for the best. As the novel progresses, Eric discovers a singular page from the actual Bully Book and this further propels him and sends him on a quest to find previous "Grunts" and see how he is like them.
The book is written in an interesting format with alternating chapter formats, one chapter from the journal of Eric Haskins and the following chapter from the actual Bully Book. As an avid fan of Starkid Productions, I found this book to be a pleasure to read and was completely engulfed by the story so much that I was able to finish reading "The Bully Book" in one sitting. This is a very original concept for a book, but was a bit of a let-down at the end because the "twist" if you can even call it that was as predictable as the fact that the color red is a primary color. Anyone reading this book could have easily seen the twist coming. For that reason, this book receives from me 3 stars out of 5 stars.
