Chester the Raccoon and the Big Bad Bully By Audrey Penn and illustrated by Barbara L. Gibson (2008)

As a reader I thought that this was a good book that spreads a good message. Chester's mother tells the animals at school that in order to overcome their bully that they need tobefriend him. She compares the bully to a rough blue stone, and to get it like the other stones soft and smooth, that everyone needed to work together to work away the rough spots. As I said, I really liked the message behind this book and think that it could be useful to a lot of children who are bullied.

As a teacher I would use this book to either start or end a unit on bullying. It puts the serious issue of bullying and puts it into words and an analogy that a child would understand. I would use this book as a read aloud book, and then discuss other strategies besides asking the bully to play ball that might work to get the bully to stop. Students might like this book because it makes solving the bullying problem seem like it could be done easily, which is why it would be important to discuss other strategies and tell them that it might not be as easy as this book lets on.